Dark and Shallow Lies

by Ginny Myers Sain

Evie’s wind chimes kick up in the night breeze. She’s been busy the last few weeks. There must be at least fifteen of them dancing outside her bedroom window now.

And everything goes silent. The wind. The rain. The thunder and lightning. It all just – stops. No movement. No breeze. Dead still.

It occurs to me that he’d look right at home on the cover of one of those cheesy romance novels. The kind Honey keeps stashed in her nightstand. The ones I’m not supposed to know about.

I’m shivering now. Shaking so hard I’m afraid I’ll crack open. I’ve never felt this kind of cold before. A cold so deep it hurts.

I hold Elora’s ring to the light, then I take a deep breath and tell myself that Elora is dead. And I can’t be afraid any more.

There’s nothing special about you, Grey. And there’s nothing special about us. A few years from now, I won’t even remember you ever existed.

“Yeah. Well, don’t come back for me.” Hart lurches to his feet and throws the empty whiskey bottle with everything he has. It slams into the boardwalk piling behind me and shatters into a million pieces. “Because I’m gonna end up a piece-of-shit loser in the end. An abuser and a filthy drunk. Worthless and mean and alone.”

He’s still barefoot and shirtless, and I wonder if he ever wears any damn clothes.

This incredible light comes over Zale’s face, and I feel all my worries blow away in the evening breeze.

So here came the psychics, wading into the swamp with their crystal balls and their tarot cards held high.

Beautiful things. And terrible things.

We hike through the thick woods and thicker dark, ducking low-hanging branches dripping with Spanish moss and dodging thorns that grab at us like fingers until we reach the tiny clearing at the center of the little island.

Then I close my eyes and think about my mother. I don’t move. I stay so still so long that my legs become cypress trees, rooted deep in the soft ground. I become part of the landscape of the bayou. Like the saw grass and the water hyacinth and the duckweed.

I open my fingers to stare at the little silver hummingbirds, and I know I have to tell him the truth. Even though I don’t want to. Because we’re all bound up by our secrets. And that has to stop with me.

“Sugar Bee,” she says, “we need to talk.”