Everafter Page 6

  As she turned from Beach Road onto Brick Hill, she paused to shift the weight of her backpack. That’s when she heard it: the soft sound of crushed leaves, a hasty step backward into the brush alongside the road.

  Ivy’s heart skipped a beat. Bryan? Or was it Chase possessed by Gregory, tracking Ivy and hoping to find her “new” love?

  Fighting the urge to turn around, she walked on steadily as if she’d heard nothing, but her mind raced to figure out who was following her and why.

  A car’s headlights brightened the roadway, and Ivy stepped quickly into a cluster of shrubs. She waited until she could no longer hear the engine, before emerging from the bushes. Amid the chirp of crickets, she heard stones crunching underfoot as her pursuer stepped onto the edge of the asphalt.

  When Ivy had left the cottage, she had taken the route through the woods between Aunt Cindy’s place and the main road. So whoever was stalking her had already had his chance to grab her. And he had another perfect opportunity now, she realized, on the dark stretch of road as she passed Ice House Pond. But he wasn’t taking it. He wasn’t going to hurt her, she reasoned, because he first wanted to see where she was going.

  She approached a familiar triangle. The road bending to the right led to Tristan; Ivy took the fork to the left.

  Checking the position of the egg-shaped moon, she tried to remember the layout of the roads. On a map Nauset Harbor looked more like a river than a harbor, bending back on itself as it meandered inland, becoming Town Cove, with homes along the shore and a series of public landings. She headed in that direction.

  She longed to face down her pursuer. The tension of continuing on calmly wore on her nerves and turned her fear into anger. She kept reminding herself that Tristan’s safety was what mattered. Rather than confront, she had to deceive the person looking for him.

  She was near the cove now, and she started searching for just the right house, one with window shades closed and no car or lights, a place where a fugitive might be hiding. She began to think it was impossible, then she saw it—perfect—with its grass too long and a piece of advertising stuck in the frame of the door. Ivy circled the house and deposited her pack of supplies on the back step. After three sharp raps on the door, she hurried on, hoping to gain enough separation to turn around and observe her stalker.

  She was about a hundred yards down the road when an alarm went off. Ivy turned back and saw the blinking floodlights. The house where she’d left the backpack had been wired! Her pursuer had probably forced a window. The lights in neighboring houses came on. Ivy laughed to herself and took off for home.

  She ran all the way, figuring that her stalker had rushed off to his own safe harbor. She knew Tristan would be worried. As soon as she reached the inn’s parking lot, she rested against her car and pulled out her phone.

  A branch snapped underfoot. She spun around.

  “Hello, Ivy,” Chase said, emerging from the trees. He was out of breath. She guessed that he had taken the route through the woods, while she had kept to the main roads.

  “Chase.” She studied him, looking for some sign that Gregory was possessing him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Following you.”

  “Really?” she replied with false cheerfulness. “Then you’re back to where you started.” Sliding her phone in her pocket, she felt for her keys. The car key had an alarm button.

  “Ivy, if you keep running supplies to Luke, sooner or later the police are going to catch up with you.”

  “Especially if you tell them,” she said.

  “I can help you, Ivy.”

  “No thanks.”

  She started to move past him, but he reached out and pulled her back by the belt loop. It was one of Gregory’s habits. Ivy’s skin crept.

  “It would be safer for you if we worked together,” he said.

  His eyes were normal, but his voice . . . That was it, she realized. The darkness was in his voice. Still, she continued to speak to him as if he was simply Chase. “Luke is an accused murderer. I wouldn’t recommend that you help him.”

  “I would enjoy it,” he replied. “I’m a great admirer of murderers, especially those who do it with passion. They’re powerful. With their own hands, they squeeze out life, even that of the people they once loved.” Chase slowly flexed his fingers, studying them, then smiled at Ivy. “Admit it, Ivy. You like bad boys.” He moved his face close to hers.

  Ivy turned away, revulsion thick in her throat.

  His laughter was harsh. “All right,” he said. “We can pretend, if you want to, that I don’t know what’s inside you, and that you haven’t guessed what’s inside me. But never forget: I know you, Ivy, your secret dreams, your secret fears—I know the most hidden part of your soul.”

  Ivy crossed her arms in front of her, feeling exposed, her spirit as well as her body. “Just leave Luke out of this,” she said. “This is between you and me, Gregory.”

  His fake smile disappeared. For a moment the eyes that Ivy gazed into were as empty as the sockets in a graveyard skull. She felt as if she was peering into hell.

  “Till we meet again,” Gregory said, then turned and left.

  “IN CHASE!” TRISTAN REPEATED INTO THE PHONE. “IVY, are you okay?” He had been pacing for the last half hour, knowing that something was wrong. It wasn’t like Ivy to be late and not call. “Where are you—I’ll meet you.”

  “No, really, I’m fine. I’m just outside the cottage. Can you survive on the supplies you have?”

  Tristan glanced at the pile of candy wrappers on the table next to the recliner. “Sure. One of the kids left a stash of Snickers and chocolate chip granola bars in the back of his closet.”

  “They didn’t leave anything better in the kitchen cupboards?”

  “You mean anything better than chocolate and nuts?” Tristan sighed loudly into the phone. “I guess I could look.”

  He heard Ivy laugh. Tristan’s heart had finally stopped pounding with fear. Sitting on the couch, he stared at a muted video of Lacey racing through a house of bizarre-looking squirrels.

  “Gregory doesn’t seem to have any idea that you’re in Luke’s body,” Ivy said to Tristan. “He was telling me about his admiration for murderers. Maybe he thinks I’ve finally developed good taste in guys.”

  Tristan laughed roughly.

  “But you know how he works,” Ivy went on. “He goes after anyone who’s close to me. You’re probably number one on his list. Or maybe, since he thinks you’re a killer, he’s looking for an ally. Anyway, it’s just a matter of time till he finds you.”

  “I look forward to it,” Tristan replied. “I’m tempted to take a long walk on the beach west of the church. That’s where you said his house was, right?”

  “Tristan, no! Don’t even joke about it.”

  Tristan crumpled a candy wrapper into a tight little ball. Hour after hour, day after day, waiting, unable to do anything—

  “Tristan?”

  “I heard you.”

  He had spoken too sharply; her sudden silence told him that.

  Tristan got up, climbed the short flight of steps to the kitchen, and started opening cupboard doors, scanning their contents with a flashlight. “Lots of healthy stuff here,” he said into the phone. “Tuna fish, pasta, cans of soup. So don’t worry.”

  “Good.” She sounded relieved. “Listen, Mom, Andrew, and Philip are coming to the inn tomorrow, just overnight before they head up to Boston. It’s going to make things a little complicated.”

  “I understand. I want you to stay safe and hang out with Philip.”

  “I love you, Tristan.” Her voice quavered.

  “I love you, Ivy. Always.”

  After hanging up, Tristan opened a can of tuna, ate a forkful, then put it in the fridge. Carrying his flashlight into the living room, he shone it on a quaintly illustrated map that hung above a chest. Tracing its roads with the narrow beam of his light, he located the old church, the public beach where Mike Steadman had been stru
ck dead, and the private beach west of it, where Gregory now resided.

  It was close enough to walk.

  Seven

  “DRAW THAT,” PHILIP INSTRUCTED WILL. “IVY WEARING sea tinsel.”

  Beth glanced up and smiled. “I like that description.”

  Ivy fingered the pile of dark, papery sea grass that Philip had artfully arranged on her head. “I assume I’m the bad guy in this story.”

  “Yup,” Will said, his pencil moving swiftly. “But I’ll change the nose, and no one will recognize you.”

  Beth laughed. Her own pencil had been moving fast since they’d spread their towels on the beach. From where Ivy sat, it looked like poems rather than stories, but Beth framed her notebook with her body, making it hard for someone else to read.

  Ivy’s mother, stepfather, and Philip had arrived at noon, and Ivy had joined them after work. They had set up camp behind the dunes, on the long spit of land that was the end of Nauset Beach, facing Nauset Harbor rather than the ocean. It was low tide, with the mud flats exposed, their wet surface shimmering with blue sky and clouds, reflecting the perfect summer day. Aunt Cindy had armed Philip with sand rakes and a wire basket for clamming, with the promise to show him how to make “chowda.”

  “Ready, champ?” Andrew asked, picking up the rakes.

  Ivy’s mother and stepfather had just returned from a walk—holding hands—which made Ivy smile. Beth gazed at them for a moment, then scribbled madly, perhaps something about love after forty.

  “Don’t forget the basket, Philip,” Andrew said.

  Ivy watched her stepfather and brother stroll side by side toward the flats. “Philip walks like Andrew.”

  Her mother, after much arranging, settled into her sand chair. “I know.”

  “How does that happen? They don’t have the same body structure.”

  Her mother smiled. “It’s love, not birth, that makes a child.”

  An hour later, Ivy tried her hand at clamming, and Philip was eager to teach her how. She heard in his instructions an echo of Andrew.

  “Go easy. Feel the ridge? Spread your fingers like this. That’s the way.”

  Ivy smiled at the little-boy version of the soft huskiness of Andrew’s voice.

  “Dig with your fingers on each side. Ease it out,” Philip told her.

  Hands coated with black sand, Ivy held up her trophy.

  Philip raised a triumphant fist, something Andrew didn’t do.

  When the basket was full of clams, Andrew and her mother carried it back to the inn. Ivy and Philip paddled about in the tandem kayak. Philip, rowing in the front, sang like a drunken pirate, then scrunched down and laid his head back, staring straight up at the sky. “It’s so deep,” he said.

  Ivy glanced upward and smiled. She had always thought of the sky as high, but she liked imagining it as deep, another ocean.

  Philip dropped his arm over the side of the kayak. Sunlight, reflecting off the water, danced on his smooth cheek. “I wish I knew how far away heaven really is.”

  “Why?”

  “So I’d know how long it takes for Tristan to go back and forth.”

  Ivy stopped paddling. “What?”

  “So I can be home the next time he visits.”

  She caught her oar just before it slipped into the water. “What do you mean, ‘the next time’?”

  “I think—I’m pretty sure—he came to our house while we were away.”

  “Because?” Ivy asked.

  “He missed me.”

  She laughed lightly, but her heart was beating fast. “He can’t help but miss you, Philip. I meant, what makes you think he was at our house? Tristan went on to the Light, remember?”

  “Well, that’s what we said,” her brother replied. “But it’s likely we were wrong.”

  It’s likely—another Andrewism.

  “Mark Teixeira was moved,” Philip went on. “On my baseball rug, the bases were loaded, and Mark Teixeira was up at bat.”

  Philip was talking about his baseball cards. Ivy had watched Tristan move the cards around the bases and had told him that Philip never forgot where he left his players.

  “Someone made Mark hit a grand slam. Tristan would do that.”

  Ivy let the boat drift. Should she tell Philip the truth? For herself, knowing that Tristan was here with them outweighed all the risks created by that knowledge. But what was better for her brother?

  “Couldn’t Lacey have done it?”

  “No, she thinks baseball’s boring. I wish that Tristan had waited till I got back.” Philip sighed. “Sometimes I talk to him, even though he doesn’t answer. I still miss him. A lot. Do you?”

  Ivy’s throat felt tight, keeping her from answering right away.

  Philip sat straight up and turned to look at her. “You don’t?”

  “Every day I’m not with him, I miss him,” Ivy said.

  “Why did God take him away?”

  “God didn’t,” she replied firmly. “Gregory did.”

  “Then why did God let it happen?”

  “I don’t know, Philip.”

  “Neither does Dad.”

  They were three-quarters of the way across the harbor—so close, Tristan could have come out on the deck and waved to them. It would help Tristan to see Philip. And Philip had always been able to keep her secrets when they were living in the same house as Gregory.

  “Did you tell Dad that you think Tristan came to our house?”

  Philip shook his head. “Some things you can’t say to other people. Dad would probably freak out if I told him Lacey likes to sit in his recliner. After she leaves, I always have to push it back in.”

  Ivy laughed out loud, but tears were in her eyes.

  “Lacey said you’re friends with that guy from the hospital.”

  “Luke,” Ivy responded. “What else did Lacey say?”

  “That he’s hiding from the police, but he didn’t really hurt anybody. Is she right?”

  Ivy heard the trace of worry in her brother’s voice. “Absolutely right. I’m trying to help him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I care about him.”

  Philip frowned. “More than you care about Will?”

  “Different than the way I care about Will.”

  “Different than the way you care about Tristan?”

  This kid didn’t miss much. “More like the way I care about Tristan.”

  Philip looked over his shoulder at her, appraising her with a long, surprisingly adult gaze. All that he had been through had made him wiser than his years, Ivy thought. Her heart rather than her head made the decision: She paddled toward the opposite shoreline.

  “Where we going?” Philip asked.

  “To see a friend.”

  “Luke?”

  “That’s right.” She’d leave it to Tristan to tell Philip who he was.

  Philip was silent while they towed the kayak onto the narrow strip of sandy shore and walked a roundabout route to the house. When they were ten feet from the front door, hidden from the street by a cluster of bushes, Ivy whistled a melody from Carousel. Philip listened as she whistled the song twice, his eyes wide with curiosity. A brass latch turned, operated from the inside, and the main door fell inward about an inch.

  Ivy glanced toward the street, then whispered to Philip, “Walk like we come here all the time.”

  She entered first and Tristan’s arms encircled her.

  “I’ve brought someone to see you, Luke,” Ivy said, letting Tristan know she hadn’t revealed his identity.

  Tristan let go of her. His face lit up. “Philip!”

  Philip looked him up and down, his lips pressed together—measuring “Luke” against two very high standards, the Tristan he had known and Will.

  Tristan smiled at him. “Do you remember me? From the hospital.”

  “Yes.” Philip’s answer was clipped.

  Tristan reached into his jeans pocket, then stretched out his hand. In his palm lay Philip’s angel
coin. “You gave me this. I’m never without it.”

  Philip’s eyes dropped to the gold coin. “I thought you needed it.”

  “You were right.”

  Philip began to reach for it, then withdrew his hand.

  After a long silence, Tristan asked uncertainly, “Do you want it back?”

  “I want Ivy to have it.”

  Ivy saw the flicker of hurt pass over Tristan’s face, though he covered it up quickly. She wanted to tell him that Philip saw him as an intruder taking Tristan’s place in her heart. “Philip and I were just talking about Tristan,” she said, “how much he misses him, how he still talks to him even though Tristan doesn’t answer.”

  Tristan nodded, then handed Ivy the coin.

  “Let’s sit down,” she said. “You still have that great movie in the VCR?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tristan replied, his eyes still on Philip, “and I discovered four others. Got a whole Lacey Lovett film fest.”

  “You have Lacey’s movies?” Philip asked.

  “Right this way,” he said, leading them back to the family room. “You have a favorite?”

  “I’ve only seen one,” Philip replied. “A friend pinched it for me.”

  Pinched. Philip was a word sponge, Ivy decided. He’d probably picked up that expression from his friend Lacey and didn’t know it meant stealing.

  They sat on the sofa in front of the big-screen TV, Philip sticking close to Ivy, Tristan sitting down on the other side of her. He reached for a stack of DVDs and handed them to Philip, who sorted through them, reading the descriptions on the backs.

  Tristan couldn’t take his eyes off Philip, and Ivy realized he had missed her brother as much as her brother had missed him. When Tristan finally glanced at Ivy, she read the question in his haunted eyes. Tell him?

  “It’s up to you,” she whispered.

  Tristan swallowed hard and looked away. Ivy wondered if he was afraid of Philip’s reaction. Tristan knew he was Philip’s hero. Did he imagine that Philip would love him less because he no longer had angel powers?

  “Where’s The Revenge of the Zombie Soccer Mom?” Philip asked, opening the empty plastic case.