Page 43 of Dead of Summer
Orla finds a bottle of the same tequila David had brought to her house. She’s developed a taste for it, particularly since the Xanax has runout. It isn’t as expensive as she’d thought. Orla takes the largest bottle from the shelf—she’ll need it if she is going to survive another night in that house—and walks slowly toward the front of the store. The rows of bottles comfort her, as does the gawky kid who rings her up at the register. The world is still as it should be. Her breathing has begun to return to normal as she steps back out into the night. She looks out at the curve of the restaurants’ glittering reflections on the water. The clinking of silverware and dinner conversations are barely audible in the distance over the lap of waves against the pylons.
Orla crosses the cracked pavement to the pier, her sandals crunching across the debris of broken clamshells dropped by hungry seagulls. Orla doesn’t know how she’ll go back to the house. The drips of paint play on the backs of her eyelids whenever she blinks. Before Alice died Orla never believed in ghosts. But now she sees them everywhere. As she leans back and allows her eyes to close, she sees a flash of the drawing, mutilated by thick black lines.
She jerks them open just as the lights blink out at the Crab. There is only one light on the dock, and it’s sending an orb of foggy light down on the bench. The air is thick with humidity. Beyond the periphery of the light, Orla can hear but not see the water as it rushes past. The moored boats clang and creak out there in the dark. She wonders what it would be like to sleep outside. There’s no way it would go unnoticed someplace like this. What a way to make her grand public reentry to Hadley—arrested for sleeping on a bench along the harbor. She’ll have to go back to the house. But she is going to need help. She pulls the tequila bottle out of its bag and fumbles with the top, her body thrumming with nerves.
“Need a hand with that?” She jerks with fright at the voice behind her. A bearded man comes into the light. He sways slightly as he walks, and Orla realizes he must have come from the Crab. She wonders how much he’s had to drink and how long he’s been standing there like that, watching her. Her body tenses as she looks past him at the desolate road.
“I was just l-l-leaving,” she stutters, calculating how fast she could run. He reaches into his pocket, and something silver flashes in his hand; he unfolds it into a short knife as he advances on her.
“No, please I—” Orla pulls back, preparing to run away until she realizes it is a fish scaler. He reaches for the bottle.
“May I?” She lets him lift the bottle from her hands and watches him use the blade on it to take off the plastic and lift the cork.
“You should see your face right now.” He is smirking. “Saw someone over here, thought you might need help, but now I see it’s you. Heard rumors you were back. You don’t recognize me, do you?” He steps away from her, sitting down on the next bench over. Orla peers over at the weathered face and realizes there is something familiar about him.
“I’m sorry. It’s been so long.”
He flops into the bench next to hers. “It’s Walter Severson. I knew your parents way back when. I know, haven’t aged a day, right?” He grins, revealing a row of stained, crooked teeth. She remembers him now. A surprisingly handsome man in his younger years. He’s aged. Badly. He was always around town working odd jobs.
Orla offers him the bottle, feeling like she should be polite, but he declines, patting his chest. “Beer guy myself. Can’t do the hard stuff anymore.” Orla can tell he is lying. He pulls out a packet of cigarettes and tips one to his lips. He offers her the packet, but she shakes her head.
“I heard from Jean you were back, but I almost didn’t believe her.” He looks out at the harbor, the red of the cigarette glowing as he takes a deep drag.
“Jean knows?”
Walter drapes a weathered hand across the back of his bench. His skin is deeply tan but bears a crisscross of white scars from years on a fishing boat. He is the kind of person Orla could never quite explain to rich people in New York. He is Hadley Island through and through, the type who would never leave. There is something about him that is also in her. Like a piece of home. Or a secret you try to bury.
“Surprised you’d show up back here actually.” His eyes don’t open allthe way, and she can see only the small slivers of blue under his lids, so bright they nearly glow in the dark.
“I am too,” Orla says quietly.
“Why’d you come then?”
She takes a long swig out of the bottle. She has no reason not to answer truthfully. “I’m going to sell the house.” It feels good to have at least one of her secrets out in the open.
“Oh, okay.” He shrugs as though it makes sense.
“What? You don’t think I’m a traitor?” Orla says, surprised he isn’t more reactive.
“Maybe. Or maybe you just want to start over,” he says. “Nothing wrong with that. People do it every day.”
“Not here,” she says. Walter smiles a little at that.
“Not me,” he agrees. “Nothing running away would fix for me. And besides that, I’m comfortable here. Got my place. Got the Crab. And this view.” Walter gestures out at the black nothingness in front of them. “Speaking of, Jean’s not too happy you’re back.”
“She doesn’t like me,” Orla says, reverting.
“I think it was just what you did to her brother-in-law,” Walter says matter-of-factly.
“I didn’t do anything to him,” Orla protests.
“Well, you told the police that he killed your little friend.”
“I didn’t. I only said I saw him there. Which I did.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, raising his eyebrows likedon’t kill the messenger.
“You don’t believe me?” Orla’s heart pumps a bit faster.
