Hereafter (Shadowlands) (10 page)

My father never came home. I spent the entire day on the front porch pretending to read on my iPad, but I was really watching the road. Aside from a few bicyclists, a skateboarder, and one happy strolling couple, I saw no one all day. By the time the sun had started to dip behind the gray house across the street, I had about a dozen theories as to what the mayor had meant when she’d said, “I will take care of it,” and none of them were good.

I looked up at the ceiling of the porch, leaning my head against the hard edge of the back of the swing. From the corner of my eye, I saw that one of the potted marigolds on the porch railing had withered and drooped, its formerly bright yellow bloom gone brown. I sat up fast. I could have sworn that a few hours ago, that flower had been alive and well, its stem curving toward the sun.

“Hey, Rory!”

I was so startled I almost jumped.

Aaron strolled toward me, a large take-out bag swinging by his side. I sat up as he opened the front gate, placing my feet on the porch floor.

“Hey,” I said, trying to smile.

“I brought you guys dinner, enough for four.”

Aaron lifted the bag, which was imprinted with the Crab Shack logo, and smiled back. He was wearing a red polo shirt with the collar turned up, just like the guy he’d chatted up at the bar the other night.

My heart sank at the reminder of my father. “Thanks. That’s great. But my dad’s not home, so it’ll only be three.”

“More for me, then,” he said happily, reaching for the front door and holding it open for me. Amazing how the source of such anguish for me was a happy surprise for him.

“Darcy!” I shouted as the door swung closed. “Aaron’s here.”

I heard her bed squeak, then her door slam, and she appeared at the top of the stairs. Her hair was all done up and curled around her face, like she was getting ready for prom.

“Hey, there!” Aaron said brightly. “What’s with the do?”

“Like it?” she asked, turning her head from side to side before tromping down the stairs. “I call it the Sheer Boredom.”

Aaron laughed. “Very creatively named.”

“What’d you bring?” Darcy asked, squiring him into the kitchen. “It smells yum.”

Just as Darcy opened the bag, the front door opened and my dad stepped into the house, flicking on the porch light.

“Dad!” I shouted. He barely had time to open his arms before I ran into them. “You’re back!”

“I am,” he said, dropping his keys on the table next to the framed photo of my family. “What’s with the hero’s welcome?”

I hesitated. He wasn’t acting like someone who’d gone on a fruitless mission to right his daughters’ lives. In fact, he looked happy and relaxed. Beaming, even.

“Um…where’ve you been?” I asked.

He was already looking past me toward the kitchen, where Darcy and Aaron were unpacking the food on the Formica table.

“You’ll never believe it,” he said. “I was at the mayor’s house, and she’s going to help me get my book published!”

“Really?” Darcy squeaked, taking a bite of fried shrimp as she sat down at the table. “How?”

“Apparently, she used to be in publishing, and she knows all these agents and editors,” my father said, strolling into the kitchen and eyeing the array of fish, fries, and sauces Aaron had laid out. “How’re you, Aaron?” he asked, slapping him on the back.

“Doing well, sir. Help yourself,” Aaron replied.

“Daddy, that’s great,” Darcy said as my father went to the cabinet for plates. “Are you done with it?”

“Almost,” he replied happily. “She said she’ll read it as soon as it’s finished.”

I walked slowly to the kitchen threshold, watching as the three of them settled in for their meals. They looked like some kind of brightly lit sitcom. The single dad, his pretty daughter, and her sweet little friend. For a brief moment I wondered if that was why this house was decorated like something out of the fifties. Were they—whoever
they
were—trying to paint the perfect American family backdrop before people moved on?

“That’s where you’ve been all day? With the mayor?” I asked.

My father frowned, thinking, as he loaded his plate with fried clams. “No. I went for a walk, had lunch at the general store, then bumped into her at the library.”

Untrue. Completely untrue. He’d stormed out of here on a mission and driven to the ferry. There was no way he’d spent the day wandering around. Someone or something had screwed with his memory—screwed with his mind. I looked at Darcy, waiting for her to ask about the mainland, but she didn’t. She simply pushed herself up from the table and went to get everyone drinks.

They’d messed with her mind, too.

“Are you gonna have some?” Aaron asked, glancing at me over his shoulder. “If you are, you’d better start or I’m gonna eat it all.”

I just stared at him. They were all brainwashed. Every one of them. If Darcy disappeared tonight, then tomorrow, Aaron wouldn’t remember her. And if Aaron disappeared, too, my father wouldn’t remember either of them. How did they do it? How did they erase everyone’s memories and replace them with new ones?

“Rory?” my father said.

And even worse, if this was happening all around me, how did I know it wasn’t happening to me, too? Everything that had occurred since I got here could be a lie.

“Actually, I’m not really feeling that well,” I said, taking a step backward. “I think I’m just going to go to bed.”

I raced up the stairs two at a time, ignoring my father’s call to come back. What did it matter? There was every possibility he wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning.

I saw it the second I awoke the next morning. Sitting dead center in the middle of my polished brown nightstand was a single gold coin. I reached for it, my fingers trembling, and laid it flat in the center of my palm. How had the coin gotten there? I felt like I had on every Christmas morning from the day my logic-loving, four-year-old brain had realized the improbability of Santa Claus. Every year for four years I’d tried to stay up to see how it all really happened, how those gifts appeared under the tree, but every year I dozed off and woke up with a start, amazed at the wonder of it all, but secretly angry at myself for failing, yet again, to see the truth with my own eyes.

Leaning back against my pillows, I flipped the coin over and over between my fingers, trying to keep the hovering sadness at bay, knowing I was just avoiding what the coin really meant.

Today was the day. I was going to do my first real ushering, all on my own. But instead of feeling full of purpose and light, my chest was impossibly heavy. I was going to begin my mission without Tristan.

I tromped downstairs and into the kitchen, focused on the coffee machine, but a blur of blue outside on the beach stopped me cold. It was Tristan. He was sitting on the beach behind our house, staring out at the water.

Suddenly, I could have sworn I felt the coin burning a hole in the front pocket of my jeans. I forgot all about the coffee and headed outside. Tristan didn’t turn as I approached. He had his legs pulled up, his forearms resting across his knees as he played with a bit of broken reed between his hands. The wind whistled in my ears as, out on the ocean, a rainbow-striped sail bobbed over the waves. I dropped down next to Tristan and pulled out the coin. He glanced at it.

“Today’s the day,” he said.

“Do you know who it is?” I asked.

He shook his head and pushed his legs out in front of him, poking the reed into the sand at his side, making a long, straight mark like a tally. “Not yet. But you will, soon enough.”

I swallowed hard, staring out at the water, my jaw set. “What’re you doing here?”

“I wanted to check in about yesterday—”

“Yeah. About that—” I interjected.

Tristan hesitated for a beat. “What’s up?”

“What the hell happened to my dad?” I demanded. “When he came home, it was like his memory was wiped.”

“What did you expect to happen?” he asked neutrally.

For some reason, that blasé tone got right under my skin. This was my father’s mind we were talking about. His memory. His emotions. He might be just another dead guy to Tristan and the mayor and the rest of Juniper Landing—just another visitor to keep in the dark—but he was my father. The only parent I had left.

“I don’t know,” I snapped, shoving myself up to my feet. “I thought you guys would pretend the ferry broke down or the mayor would…just convince him she’d find out what was going on with Nell.”

Tristan got up as well, still holding the small reed. The wind blew his hair back from his face, and I couldn’t help noticing how sharp his cheekbones suddenly seemed.

“What would be the point of that?” he asked calmly. “He’d only start asking more questions tomorrow.”

Like memory wiping was an obvious and not at all insidious solution. I groaned and started to walk back toward my house. Tristan, of course, followed.

“Rory, look, I’m sorry if you find the whole thing disturbing, but that’s just how it works around here,” he said. “Would you rather your father be up there right now in a panic, planning his next attempt to leave?”

I looked at the windows of my dad’s bedroom. He’d been up late working on his novel with renewed enthusiasm, now that the mayor had him convinced she could get it published. He was probably at his desk right now, editing and rearranging, muttering lines of dialogue out loud to himself.

“Of course not,” I said. “But that doesn’t make it right.” I stared past him at the sailboat, wishing I could be on it, sailing off to…well, anywhere but here. “How does it work, exactly?” I asked. “Does the mayor have special powers or something? Did she sneak in here at some point and wipe Darcy’s brain, too?”

“No. It’s not like she has to touch a person or something,” he said, his blue eyes serious. “Most of the time, the memory fix just happens on its own. Like when a visitor leaves and no one remembers them the next day. It’s automatic. Your dad was a special case. She had to place new memories in his mind, and once she did that, Darcy’s memories were changed to match his.”

I shuddered in the wind and hugged myself tightly. “How does she do that? Place new memories?”

Tristan ran his fingers through his blond hair. “It’s kind of wild, actually. She just sits with the person, looks them in the eye, and tells them a story,” he explained. “When she’s done, whatever’s she’s told them, they believe it actually happened that way.”

“So she hypnotizes people,” I said.

“In a way. But she doesn’t do it often,” Tristan said. “Only in extreme situations.”

I nodded, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “Why can I still remember what happened?”

Tristan turned to face me fully. “Because you’re a Lifer,” he said, like it was obvious. “Our minds can’t be altered.”

“How do I know that?” I demanded. “How do I know that anything that’s happened to me is real?”

“Because,” he said, reaching out and placing his hand on my forearm, “I’m telling you. I swear to you, Rory. You’re safe here.”

I stared down at his hand, an accusation in my eyes. He quickly released me.

“Can you do that, too?” I asked, watching his hand as he pushed it into his pocket. “Implant new memories? Can I?”

Tristan sighed. He walked over to the bottom step leading up to our deck and sat down, sliding toward the railing to give me enough room to join him. “No. Only the mayor can do that.”

“So she does have special powers,” I said, sitting next to him but making sure no part of my leg touched any part of his.

“A few.” He used the reed to draw a series of vertical lines in the sand on the step. “She was sent here after the Jessica thing happened,” he said, keeping his eyes on his work. “She can tell if a Lifer with bad intentions arrives here, and if they do, she can send them straight to Oblivion.”

My throat tightened. Somehow the wind suddenly felt colder than it had a moment ago. “Well, that’s terrifying.”

“What?” he asked.

“One person having that kind of power,” I told him, wondering how he couldn’t see it. “Has that ever happened? Has she ever sent anyone there?”

Tristan nodded. “Twice. Both men. I never even found out their names. She just…dealt with them.”

“So they didn’t even get to plead their case?” I asked. “They didn’t have a chance to redeem themselves?”

Tristan looked me in the eye and shook his head. “We can’t let it happen again, what happened with Jessica. We can’t take that chance.”

It seemed so extreme. But then, I hadn’t been here when Jessica had sent their world teetering toward the brink. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, the visitors rising up against the Lifers. All the fear and anger and paranoia. The wind hit me with such force at that moment that I shivered.

“Are you cold?”

Tristan moved to put an arm around me, and I automatically flinched. “Don’t do that.”

He blinked. “What? I was just—”

I stood up, trembling from head to toe as goose bumps popped up all over my skin. “You can’t tell me you can’t be with me and then keep doing things like that. It’s not fair, Tristan,” I said, my voice cracking.

He stood up and faced me, so close that our bare toes touched. My chest radiated heat with each pained thump of my heart. I crossed my arms over my stomach, holding on to myself for dear life.

Focus, Rory. Focus.

“Rory—”

“No,” I said. “Please, Tristan. Just…don’t.”

He took a tiny step backward, and it was all the incentive I needed. I raced up the steps and across the deck, slamming the kitchen door behind me. Only when I was safely inside did I look back. And Tristan still stood alone in the sand at the bottom of the steps.

Watching.