twenty.
His words were ominous in the half-dark—full of grim promise.
They made her want to run—from his story, from the secrets the covert held for him, from the danger that he held. She had enough of her own secrets, didn’t she? They filled her to spilling so she could barely keep up with hiding them.
“She told me Rig had had an old soul.” Jude’s voice had gone cold, floating out to touch her in an icy wave. “How he’d been haunted by some load of guilt that she didn’t need to read to have figured out. ‘We all have our brand of self-torment, Jude Ambrose,’ she said, ‘but your brother Rigby had stopped being able to breathe through his.’”
“We should leave now.” Marsden turned off the metal detector. A cage-like silence fell around them. “The light in here—it’s changed.”
Jude ignored her. “She said she hoped people were being kind about his death.” He was little more than a smear of color against the wavering gray of the trees, as much phantom as not. “Because Rig . . . Everyone who knew him had liked him, you know?”
She knew she would have. And everyone had liked her father, too, before they found him floating in the Indigo. But not enough to embrace his widow—her blood was still too mad, her ancestry too foreign.
“Have they been kind?” she asked, suddenly needing to know, hoping Glory was mourning Rigby above anything when it came to how they were treating Jude and his father right now.
His laugh was low but real. “Lots of casseroles.”
She had to laugh, too. “Did you leave the café, then?”
“I had to. Standing there, listening to Theola say all that about Rig like he’d actually told her stuff he couldn’t have told me . . . I ran out of there like the place was on fire.” Jude took the detector from her, fiddled with the knobs so he had reason to look away. “I was always supposed to know Rig best. But now, I wonder if I really knew him at all.”
“You did know him. He was your brother.”
“If I did, then it was only what he allowed me to see, and that’s not the same thing.”
“Don’t we all do that?”
He pushed his hair back, watching her. Then: “I don’t know. Do we?”
Marsden was sure she was sinking, the ground suddenly gone as soft as freshly tilled earth. What could have been kept from her when it came to her parents’ relationship? Of her father and his demons and the moment of his death?
“Maybe, in this town”—a wind rippled through the covert and she rubbed goose bumps from her arms—“it really is only the dead who can tell you the truth.”
“What?”
“Like with Rigby. Why you went to see Theola at all. And my dad.”
“Your dad? It was an accident. In the Indigo.”
She heard it in his voice, the town’s doubt, how it had its own version of Grant Eldridge. “But I know what everyone really thinks. And it’s what I think, too. You know why? Because the night he died, he looked right at me and said he’d never wanted the kind of life he was living.”
In the dim, something brushed at her hand. It was Jude’s, his fingers cool and sturdy, and they slowly wound their way through hers.
“Then your dad was a bastard for saying that.” His tone was a slow burn.
Suddenly, there was a burst of sound—from behind, a sharp crack—and they both jumped a foot into the air before crashing back to earth. The detector flew free and landed on ginger with a soft thud.
“Christ!” Jude’s fingers were still wrapped around hers. He leaned close. He smelled of sun and leaves and brisk evening air. “What was that?”
It took her a handful of seconds and a few deep breaths to unlock her throat so she could answer, to wipe away the scenarios that came to mind and know they weren’t real. “A branch,” she murmured. “And probably a squirrel. It’s okay.”
She was still holding his hand. Or he was holding hers. Whichever it was, Marsden knew she’d been right in deciding he had the kind of hands made for sketch artists. In her mind’s eye, she painted slowly, languidly—the bumpy mountain ranges of his knuckles, the long plains of his bones, the deep lakes that were all recessed dips and smooth swoops.
Once she memorized him, she dropped his hand and took a careful step back. She couldn’t tell if he was more relieved or disappointed, or if he cared at all. Then she decided not knowing was probably for the best, for the both of them.
“It’s nearly dark in here”—she knew she sounded brusque, wanting to promise him he would be fine: Don’t worry, Jude, no one at school will ever have to know you touched me—“which means we really do have to go.” After leaving the covert’s strange, haunted woods—its trees all tangled up, their shadows as dark as ink—time would go back to normal. It would go back to being late afternoon instead of feeling closer to midnight. Hours, rewound. Glory’s summer sun, still blazing hot and true.
Jude nodded, the motion a blur. “For a second, I thought for sure it was a trespasser, maybe even a skimmer. And then I thought it was a gun, and . . . well . . .” His voice was small, young sounding.
Marsden bent down, picked up the detector, and knew what she had to do.
It was entirely wrong, considering what Jude had already trusted her with.
But she’d only ever agreed to let him into the covert. Letting him into her head, to peek past all her defenses and weapons and discover what she had to hide? None of that had been part of their deal.
“Jude, what I said about my dad a minute ago, can we forget it? Because I’ve never talked about it, and I didn’t mean to start now.”
A long, long moment of utter silence, and then he finally said: “Okay.”
She blinked. “That was . . . easy.”
“Did you really think I would say no?”
“Not really, I guess.”
“Because I’m not an asshole, remember?”
She laughed, making him laugh. And then his stomach growled, and they were both laughing again.
“Okay, you’re right, we can barely see a thing and I’m starving,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Before Marsden could tell herself it was better to leave it alone—Hadn’t she just decided they were a terrible idea? How she was doing him the bigger favor by giving him an out?—she shot out a hand and touched Jude’s arm to stop him from moving past. Despite being in a place built solely on sad things, she couldn’t keep from liking touching him. Her blood flowed heavy in her veins, her stomach fluttered. It made no sense. She was going to make things even more awkward for them.
In the half-dark, Jude had gone strangely motionless, an animal unsure of which way to turn. Which way was safe.
Still, he didn’t pull away.
“I have to ask,” she said. “What makes you so absolutely sure you’re right about Rigby having a time capsule and burying it here? I mean, beyond that book. Because I know there’s more than just you finding and reading it.”
After so many hours of turning up nothing but junk, he only seemed more driven. She needed to know: Was pure faith really all it took, or was a touch of madness needed? How far could she let herself go in her own search for answers from the covert?
Jude sighed. “Beyond the facts?”
“Yes.”
“You know how sometimes you just feel it in your gut? That it’s something way beyond logic and probability yet somehow just is?”
Marsden nodded, wondered why she’d even questioned. Gut was why she couldn’t stop skimming, why she kept Wynn close. Gut was what had her telling Jude Ambrose yes, despite logic and aside from her own selfish needs.
And gut was how she knew that however this summer ended, it was going to be hard to see him go.
“So has Wynn ever mentioned to you that I’m a pretty good cook?” she blurted out.
His surprise was whole, and then he grinned, his smile a flash in the dark. An ache flared to life in her chest, sharp and lovely and dangerous.
“She said you were terrible, actually. I think the cold, greasy toast for her squirrel pushed her over the edge.”
Fumbling slightly, she let go of his arm and felt for his hand, not letting herself question her own motives or reasons. Why she was choosing a mistake for him.
“I’m going to make you dinner,” she said. “C’mon.”