Page 31 of Dead of Summer

FAITH

Faith almost misses it. She has to double back to the wooded lot to find the shape of an eave peeking out from between the branches.

From there, she can almost trace the shape of the house camouflaged behind all that wild greenery.

She glances back down the road to make sure no one is watching her and then steps into the woods.

The trees thin a bit as she draws closer to the property.

Now she can see the side of a railing and past that a window clouded with dirt.

Faith pulls aside a branch, noting the broken underbrush below her feet.

Someone else has been here recently. She moves along the side of the house, carefully stepping up onto the porch.

She jumps back as her foot nearly goes through a rotted piece of board.

She takes the hem of her dress in her hand and uses it to wipe a patch of the window.

She leans forward, pressing her nose to the smudged glass.

The house is still furnished, she’s surprised to see.

The sofa and chairs stand around a low table that’s set with a tray as though ready for tea.

But the walls are in bad shape, the floor so warped that one of the chairs sits at an angle on top of it. It’s just a sad empty house.

The sunlight filters through the camouflage of branches.

They cast an array of dizzying shadows through the underbrush.

Her eyes dilate. There is a flash of something in the woods near the house, and everything around her is moving, tilting.

She retreats quickly to the edge of the wooded patch stumbling out onto the lawn of the neighboring house.

Rattled, she makes her way back along the side of the house next door.

This house is well kept, its grounds manicured.

Her breath slows as she walks quickly along the side of it toward the road.

A large bay window juts off the side and she pauses, looking through the gap in the thin linen curtains at a wide stone hearth and warm wood floors draped with worn throw rugs.

Framed photos hang on the walls. Faith glimpses a candid family portrait where a mother and father embrace a child with flame-red hair.

Her heart starts to pound faster as she takes in the assortment of pencils scattered across the dining table. This must be Orla’s house.

She looks closer now, curious, pressing her face up to the glass.

She had felt threatened by Orla on the beach, but now Faith feels a pang of deep envy at the life Orla must have had growing up in a house like this.

She imagines the dinners spent gathered around the table, a Christmas tree put up in the corner, the security of these sturdy walls during a howling storm.

It’s hard to imagine a little girl like that becoming the woman she saw on the beach with so much unhappiness etched on her face.

Faith finds herself getting irrationally angry at Orla.

She probably doesn’t even realize how fortunate she is.

Faith squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, trying to reset herself.

She remembers why she is here. The dead friend next door.

There’s nothing lucky about that. When she opens them back up, she sees it: a light blue shirt draped across the back of one of the chairs facing away from the window.

Faith sucks in a breath as she realizes that it’s David’s.

As soon as she’s back at the Clarkes’ estate, Faith rushes up the stairs to their bedroom.

She goes straight into the dressing room.

David’s clothes dangle, neatly pressed on hangers now.

The suitcase is tucked against the back wall.

She yanks it out and unzips it. It is completely empty.

She paws through it anyway, lifting every flap, her fingers scraping the sides, looking for the little red bag with the box inside.

He must have moved it. Frantic, she goes to his clothes, hanging in their neat rows above.

She runs her hands over each of his shirts searching every pocket for the bulge of the little red box. But she can’t find it anywhere.

The ring is gone. Maybe it was never meant for her to begin with.

When she leaves the closet, David is standing in the middle of the bedroom.

“Oh!” Faith clutches her chest. “I didn’t hear you come in. What are you doing?”

“I was just looking for you,” he says, a strained smile on his face. “But maybe you’re busy?”

She holds up the sweater, grateful to have grabbed it at the last second. “It’s getting cold out.” A funny look passes over his face. Fear twists in her stomach. He doesn’t believe her. “Why were you looking for me?” she asks, her throat suddenly parched.

He is staring at her. “I thought we could go to the lighthouse.”

“Now?” She glances through the windows, a thick band of clouds is moving in, below them the ocean is churning, the waves tipped with white.

“It’ll clear up,” he says. She marvels at the certainty with which he says it. Like he has power over the weather. Had he always been like this, so full of arrogance and bravado, and she had just ignored it?

“David, are you sure?”

“You’ve wanted to go all this time, I thought you’d be into it?” he says, and it feels like he is challenging her. “I had the kitchen staff pack us up some wine and cheese.”

Reluctantly she follows him out to the driveway where a car is already waiting for them.

A Mercedes this time. She thinks of the key in Geoffrey’s desk drawer and wonders if this is the car it belongs to.

If so, would David have gone into the drawer to retrieve it?

Would he have seen the NDAs, remembered the photos?

Of course she can’t ask him any of it. Not any more than she can confront him about the shirt on Orla O’Connor’s chair.

David is silent, focused on the road. He hardly looks like he is in the mood for a picnic, she thinks, bracing herself as a gust of wind hits the side of the car.

The Mercedes swerves, making her carsick as it follows the pitch of the road up toward the lighthouse.

It is a stark whitewashed box of a building supporting a black-and-white painted tower anchored to the rocky ledge of a tall cliff. The waves foam angrily against it.

As they grow closer the light in the top of the tower flashes above the tree line. A warning , Faith thinks out of nowhere. She glances at David. His brows are tight over his eyes giving nothing away as they park the car in a sandy lot near the edge of a windswept field.

There are only a few cars in the parking lot. As David goes to get something out of the trunk, she watches a couple packing up their chairs.

“Going to be a disappointing sunset tonight with these clouds coming in,” she hears the woman say to her partner as they wrangle a golden retriever into the back seat of their car. The clouds roll quickly past, their purple underbellies swollen with rain.

“Should we go back?” Faith asks.

“It’ll be fine.” David picks up the basket and tucks a rolled-up picnic blanket under one arm.

He gives her a tense smile as they leave the parking lot.

They trudge silently through the tall stands of seagrass toward an open field at the foot of the lighthouse.

It stretches from the building out toward the edge of the cliff.

The sky grows darker; the woman in the parking lot was right, the sunset tonight would be gray and dull, the sun snuffing out uneventfully on the horizon.

David wordlessly reaches for her hand as they walk.

She lets him take it. His grip is tight, his fingers digging into the edges of her hand.

The trail wraps around the front of the lighthouse to the edge of the cliff. It’s colder than it was back at the house. The wind blows up off the water in heavy gusts whipping at her dress.

The guardrail tapers off and Faith looks down over the edge.

Far below, the waves collide with the rocks, sending a fine spray up into the atmosphere.

She can feel it on her skin, in her hair.

This island, it has a way of attaching itself to you.

David stops walking nearly mid-step and turns toward her.

“Faith…” For a moment she thinks he’s going to tell her something important, but he seems to change his mind. “Here okay?”

She nods. He unfurls the picnic blanket, and they sit.

David uncorks a bottle of wine and pours two glasses.

Faith kicks off her sandals and stretches her bare feet out over the edge of the rocks feeling the spray of the waves.

Out in the distance the waves toss a small fishing boat around.

Faith can make out the tiny figure of a fisherman on its deck. He throws out a lobster cage.

“I wanted to apologize. I didn’t expect to be swept up with work from dawn till dusk. I wanted to take you out, explore the island.”

“That would have been nice,” she says.

She used to think she knew David so well that she could tell what he was thinking but she wonders now if she was wrong. If they were always two very separate people and she had only imagined their closeness. But now she looks up at him and he raises his glass to hers.

“Who’d have ever thought you could be bored by a mansion?” she adds in an offhanded way, taking a sip.

He must not have expected her to agree with him so quickly. “I didn’t know that hanging out by the pool was such a hardship on you. Honestly, Faith.” She draws back, stung.

“You’ve completely disappeared, David. I don’t even know where you are half the time.”

David stiffens. Then he shakes his head in disbelief. “I’ve been doing my job .”

Before she can stop herself, she shoots back, “In the middle of the night?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demands, but she can tell by the way he tenses up that he knows exactly what she means.

“You came to bed at three a.m. Where were you?” she pushes.

“Now you’re spying on me in my own house. That’s great.” His eyes dart around. Cornered.

“I woke up and you weren’t there,” Faith cries, feeling called out. “What was I meant to do?”

“I don’t know. Go back to bed like a normal person?”

Faith’s chest hurts. They’ve never fought like this before.

There is a meanness in his voice that has never been there before.

There is also a challenge in her own voice that he has never heard.

She feels like they are beginning to spin off the rails.

Faith should stop before it’s too late. She knows she should apologize, to reel it back if she wants to keep things okay between them.

But the ring is gone. And so is the girl, Gemma. Faith has less and less to lose.

“Were you with Orla?” she asks him quietly.

“What? Why would I be with Orla?” he scoffs. “Of course not. Look, your obsession with her has really gotten out of control.” He looks down at her, a sneer on his perfect face. For the first time he looks ugly to her.

“You’re lying to me,” she says before she can stop herself. “I saw your shirt. You left it at her house.”

David watches, stunned, from the side of the blanket. The wine has tipped over and is spilled on the blanket between them. The little picnic is ruined, but Faith no longer cares.

She stands up and slips into her shoes as he sputters angrily, “I invite you into my home and you sneak around spying on me and digging up things from my past?” He abruptly stops speaking.

“I never pegged you for the jealous type,” he says at last, shaking his head. Faith’s stomach sinks.

“There’s another girl missing, about the same age as your friend Alice was,” Faith says, even quieter. “But maybe you already knew that?”

At this David leaps up from the blanket. He advances on her and she stumbles back across the grass. “Where did you hear that?”

“It’s a small town, David. People talk.”

“My father has never done anything wrong,” David insists, his voice rising angrily.

Startled, Faith looks at him. “Why do you say that? I never once mentioned your father.”

David is staring at her now and breathing heavily.

Why did it take her so long to see who he is?

All this time she’d thought of David as the victim, assuming he was being manipulated by his father out of a sense of duty, but maybe it was deeper than that.

Maybe they were protecting each other. She was wrong about David.

Wrong about it all. Her mother would have told her that men like David were nothing but trouble.

David storms petulantly toward the car, leaving the picnic behind for someone else to clean up. Faith can see right into him now. He isn’t angry anymore. He is afraid.