Page 19 of Tourist Season
And I have no idea why.
There’s atick, tick, tickat the window.
I jolt in my seat and reach for the gun, swiveling to point it in the direction of the sound. But it’s only Morpheus, perched on the flower box, a shining string of silver chain dangling from his beak. I expel a long and shaky breath and head to the window with the gun still clutched in my hand.
“You scared the fuck out of me,” I say when I open the window and take a piece of homemade jerky from the container on the counter to offer it on my palm. With a knocking greeting and ruffled feathers, he sets his gift in my hand before taking the meat and moving a few steps away. I know what it is before it even hits my palm. “Oh, Morpheus.” My thumb traces the engraved silver panel on the bracelet.A²BC. Cracks in my heart that never seal seem to split a little wider, and it takes a long moment for me to swallow down a sudden well of tears. Morpheus must have followed me when I went to the Lancaster family plot last week, and has brought it back in case it was lost. “This is lovely, but I meant to leave it where you found it. You shouldn’t take things from the cemetery, you could make people very upset.”
Morpheus caws and knocks, then imitates my voice as he says “good boy,” his attention fixed on the jar of jerky. With a sigh and a tense, fleeting smile, I leave the bracelet on the counter and give him another piece of beef, casting a wary look around the garden. The rain has stopped but the mist still lingers, obscuring the manor house from view. Chances are strong that Nolan has returned to his room at the Capeside Inn. Maybe he won’t notice I’ve been there just yet. But I can’t be sure. I might not have much time.
I set a few more treats out for Morpheus to keep him occupied, and I leave the window open, knowing he’ll raise an alarm if anintruder comes from the direction of the garden. And then with a final glance out the window, I return to the table with the gun at my fingertips as I sit before Nolan’s book of sins and secrets.
I flip to the next page closer to the front of the book, working my way back farther in time. There’s a third man. Marc Beaumont. Another name I don’t recognize. Another strip of skin, another set of photographs. No crimes listed this time, but a map with anXat the bend of an unnamed river. He’s probably buried there, what’s left of him, anyway. I chew my lip, trying to pull these pieces together, but still nothing comes.
I turn the page.
This time, there is no slice of skin, no name at the top of the page. Instead, the name is in a photograph, carved into a granite gravestone:WILLIAM EMERSON RHODES. There are photos of a young man—some of him on his own, some with Nolan and a young woman, a family resemblance woven through the shapes of their lips and angles of their noses and the dimples in their cheeks. Two brothers and a sister. I stare into William’s eyes, trying to force a connection that feels hidden from my view, as though if I just scraped away another layer of sediment, a picture would emerge.
A picture.
My focus trails back to the gravestone. I almost know what I’m going to see there before I read it.
July 5, four years ago.
“Billy,” I whisper, but it’s not my voice I hear. It’s a man’s desperate voice in the night. It’s grief, trapped in a gurgling cry.Billy.
My hand is shaking as I turn the next page.
Nolan Rhodes, standing with a cane, his parents and sister flanking him, a sign for Wycombe Memorial Hospital over theirheads in white block letters. Nolan Rhodes, in a rehabilitation facility, working with a physical therapist, the scar on his elbow still red and freshly healed. Nolan Rhodes, learning to walk. Learning to write. To feed himself. I turn the page. Nolan Rhodes in a hospital bed. On a ventilator. In a halo of metal. Surrounded by tubes. His face swollen and unrecognizable. Nolan Rhodes, clinging to life.
There is no photograph for the moment I see in my memory. A man on the deserted highway, his broken arm reaching for a man whose open eyes are unseeing. Every breath he takes is an agonized rumble. Every exhalation is a whisper. A plea.Billy. Wake up, Billy. Please wake up.
I turn the final page to the first one in the book. There’s only one thing on the page. A handwritten list.
Marc Beaumont, front passenger side.
Dylan Jacobs, rear passenger side.
Trevor Fisher, rear driver’s side.
And last of all, the woman who drove the car that hit him. The woman who took his brother’s life. The one who left them to die and drove away. My blood turns to crystals of ice that dance in my veins as the final words of the list are branded onto my soul.
Harper Starling, driver.
Harper Starling. The first person I ever killed.
TRACESNolan
THERE’S SOMETHING KIND OF ENDEARINGabout this town, even in the fog and the misty rain. The Victorian houses of mismatched bright colors. The endless dark water and the waves that crash against the cliffs. The way the people who live here stop to talk to their neighbors over freshly painted fences. They wave to one another as they drive down streets lined by antique gas lamps and banners that flap in the never-ending breeze. But to the tourists, the locals are friendly yet reserved, protecting the true Carnage from visitors like me. They ask where I’m from. How long I’m here. What I do for a living. What I’ve come to see. But they won’t remember my answers. Most of my responses aren’t truthful anyway.
The run takes its toll on my body, the hills steep and unforgiving, the chill of the mist seeping through my sweat-slicked skin. After two loops through town, I decide I shouldn’t push my knee much farther, and I turn back for the inn, cooling off at a walk when I reach Main Street. I near A Shipwrecked Bean and think of Harper standing in the line, her dark hair cascading over hershoulders, the aroma of coffee and pastries masking her gentle scent, which I didn’t catch until we stepped outside. Sweet, soft herbs, musky and wild. Orange blossoms and bergamot. I can still remember it, as though it lingers in the fog that rolls through the town.
It takes me a second to realize I’ve stopped in front of the café. I’m looking at the line behind the ordering counter, but I’m seeing Harper. I’m reliving that moment I asked her for a recommendation and she turned around. Those full lips. Glowing skin. Bangs that skimmed her brows, the dark strands offsetting her gray eyes, irises the shade of the overcast sky. Features that seem so delicate, but she is not fragile. She isfierce. I knew it the moment she turned and looked at me, so fucking beautiful she nearly brought me to my knees.
My heart stutters beneath my ribs and I press my hand to my chest, closing my eyes. I still don’t understand it. How could I not have known who she was? How could I have been caught so easily in her spell? She’s the same woman who crashed into me. Who stole my baby brother right out of my grasp. Who ripped my life apart, and then simply …drove away.
When I open my eyes, it’s my future I see. My hands wrapped so tight around Harper’s throat that she can’t even beg for the mercy I won’t give.
She can fake her death. Run away into some idyllic secret life in a seaside town. She can stash her secrets and dodge time. But she cannot escape me.
