Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Read online

  A burst of bright, salty ocean air flooded in, and I breathed deep. So did River, his chest flaring out so I could see his ribs press against his shirt.

  The guesthouse was farther away from the ocean than the Citizen, but you could still see a thick line of blue-blue-blue through the window. I noticed some big ship, far off on the horizon, and wondered where it was going to, or coming from. Usually, I wanted to be on those ships, sailing away to some place cold and exotic. But that itchy, gypsy feeling wasn’t in me right then.

  River went over to the bed, reached up, and took down the black wooden cross that hung above the pillows. He brought it to the dresser, opened the top drawer, set the cross inside, and bumped it closed with his hip.

  “My grandfather built Citizen Kane,” I said, “but my grandma Freddie built this cottage. She got religious later on in life.” My eyes were fixed on the dark red shape left on the wall, where the cross had shielded the paint from the fading effects of sunshine. “She probably hung that cross up there decades ago and it’s been there ever since. Are you an atheist? Is that why you took it down? I’m curious. Hence the question.”

  I flinched. Hence? My habit of reading more than I socialized made me use odd, awkward words without thinking.

  River didn’t seem to notice. And by that, I mean he seemed to be noticing everything about me, and everything about the room, so that I couldn’t tell if he noticed my use of hence more than anything else.

  “No, I’m not an atheist. I’m just somebody who doesn’t like to sleep with a cross over his head.” He looked at me again. “So, what are you . . . seventeen?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good guess. Because my brother says I still look about twelve.”

  “We’re the same age, then.” A pause. “My parents went down to South America a few weeks ago. They’re archeologists. They sent me here in the meantime. I have an uncle who lives in Echo. But I didn’t want to stay with him. So I found your poster and here I am. Sort of strange that both our parents took off and left us, don’t you think?”

  I nodded. I wanted to ask him who his uncle was. I wanted to ask him where he came from, and how long he was going to stay in my guesthouse. But he stood there and looked at me in such a way and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “So where’s this brother of yours?” River brought his fingers up to his hair and gave it a good shake. I stared at him, and his tousled hair, until he stared back at me. And then I stopped.

  “He’s in town. You’ll have to meet him later. And I wouldn’t get too excited. He’s not as nice as me.” Luke had walked into Echo after breakfast, intending to track down this girl he knew, and try to grope her in broad daylight at the café where she worked.

  I pointed out the window. “If you want to walk into town to get groceries, there’s a path that starts back by the apple trees, behind the maze. It hooks up with the old railroad trail and leads right onto the main street. I mean, you can drive if you want to, because you have a car, but the path is really nice if you like walking. It goes by this old train tunnel . . .”

  I started to back out of the bedroom. I was beginning to feel stupid, talking on and on like some dumb girl who opens her mouth and lets all her thoughts fall out of it. And feeling stupid made my cheeks blush. And I had no doubt that this observant boy next to me would observe my cheeks turning red, and probably guess why.

  “Oh, and there’s no lock on the front door,” I continued as I sunk into the welcoming semi-darkness of the hallway and put my hands to my face. “You can get one at the hardware store if you want, but no one will steal anything from here.” I paused. “At least, no one ever has.”

  I turned and left without waiting for his reply. I walked out of the guesthouse, past the collapsed greenhouse, past the tennis courts, around the Citizen, down the driveway, down the narrow gravel road to the only other house on my street: Sunshine’s.

  I had to tell someone that a panther-hipped boy had come to live in my backyard.

  CHAPTER 3

  SUNSHINE BLACK HAD soft brown hair to her waist, and dimples in her elbows and knees.

  She was sitting outside, on her cabin’s porch swing, one leg bent and dangling over the edge, drinking a glass of iced tea and staring off into space. We were the same age, and while we weren’t really friends, we were each other’s only neighbors. And I guess that amounted to the same thing.

  She looked at me as I walked up the wooden, uneven steps (Sunshine’s dad had built the cabin himself), and then moved her legs so I could sit down beside her.

  “Hey, Violet. What’s up?”

  “Lots, actually.”

  A crow cawed in the trees above us, and I breathed in the sharp smell of the pine trees, which you could smell better at Sunshine’s. Her little house was farther back from the ocean, set right into the forest. Tomato vines grew up the side of the porch and gave off their own faint earthy scent too. I took another deep breath.

  “Oh, yeah? Where’s Luke? What’s he doing today?”

  “Luke is pestering Maddy. He knows how much I hate that he’s kissing her. She’s too stupid to say no to him. It’s manipulative. He’s being manipulative. I once said that she seemed sweet and innocent like a girl in a fairy tale, and so he had to go corrupt her. But enough about Luke. I’ve got news.”

  Sunshine raised one eyebrow, half interested.

  “I had a taker on the guesthouse,” I said. “He’s already moved in.”

  Sunshine’s eyes widened a little. She had sleepy brown eyes, which made her look seductive, and very Marilyn Monroe, and probably made boys imagine what she would look like after being kissed. My eyes were big, and, according to Luke, staring and know-it-all. Which I think means I have a penetrating gaze. Which might be the same thing, but sounds a hell of a lot better.

  “Is he old? Is he a pervert? Is he a serial killer? Is he going to rape you in the middle of night? I told you not to get a renter, you know. I can’t see why you don’t just get a job if you need money.”

  I weaseled the glass of iced tea from her hand and took a drink. “I can’t get a job. If you come from old money, you have to run through it all and then drink yourself to death in the gutter. Getting a job isn’t allowed. Anyway, the guy isn’t old. Or a serial killer. He’s young. Our age. His parents left him, like mine. And he’s come to live in Echo. He was supposed to stay with his uncle, but he didn’t want to. So now he’s in my backyard.”

  Sunshine wrapped her arm around one creamy knee. “Well, our summer just got more interesting. What’s he look like?”

  “He’s . . . he’s all right. He looks expensive. In a vintage way. He has a good smile. It’s kind of crooked.”

  Sunshine grinned. “What’s his name?”

  “River West.”

  “Really? That sounds made up.”

  “You should talk, Sunshine Black.” I tilted the glass to drink the last of her tea. “Maybe he did make it up. I never asked to see any identification.”

  Sunshine shook her head. “That was dumb. Violet, you’re so naïve. Look, we’ll need to get a hold of his driver’s license then and check. Leave that to me. Does Luke still have any of that chokecherry wine he made last fall?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I think there’s two bottles somewhere in the cellar.”

  “Good. Then we’ll all get drunk, and I will let the stranger in your backyard kiss me, anywhere he likes. Meanwhile, I’ll steal his wallet.”

  “Or I could just ask him if I can see his ID.” I didn’t like the thought of Sunshine kissing River. Or doing anything else with him. At all. An entire summer of the two of them sweating and moaning in my guesthouse filled me with a cold kind of horror. Besides, River was mine. And by mine, I mean I saw him first. And by saw him first, I mean he didn’t seem like the kind of boy who would get drunk on homemade wine and try to kiss Sunshine.

  Sunshin
e laughed. “Where’s the fun in that? Violet, you’re scowling.”

  “No I’m not,” I said, though I knew for certain I was.

  I heard feet on gravel and looked up.

  Luke. He was walking up Sunshine’s dark, tree-lined driveway, jeans hanging low on his narrow hips and a too-tight T-shirt hugging the stupid muscles in his stupid chest in a way that, I’m sure, poor Maddy loved. And Sunshine too.

  Luke had our mother’s hazel eyes. But he mainly looked like our dad, with his auburn hair, and his wide forehead, and his square face.

  The crow cawed again overhead, and a strong sea wind came in and burst through the trees, making the green pine needles shake themselves all over the place. That sound always gave me goose bumps, the good kind. It was the sound an orphan governess hears in a book, before a madwoman sets the bed curtains on fire.

  “Hey, Sunshine. Hey, sister.”

  Luke smirked at Sunshine, tossed his hair back, and tried to look cocky and reckless. I thought it came off stupid, but Sunshine didn’t. She lowered her eyelids, then reached back and pulled her long hair over one shoulder so it would swing across her ribs in the way she thought was sexy.

  “Hey yourself, Luke. How’s Maddy?” Sunshine squeezed closer to me so that Luke could sit down on the other side of her.

  “Maddy smells like coffee. But that’s good, because I like coffee. Violet, why don’t you go on home and make me some.”

  “Shut up, Luke. You should be the one making me coffee. I just got us enough money to buy some food. And get the phone back.” I paused, for effect. “Someone answered my poster, and we’ve got a renter for the guesthouse.”

  “You’re kidding. That dumb idea actually worked?” Luke raised a hand and then let it fall back down to settle on Sunshine’s thigh.

  Sunshine smiled.

  I reached over and knocked it off.

  If Sunshine had been a boy, she and my brother would have been best friends. But Luke would never be friends with a girl, even if they were into the same things—like locking me in closets with brutish boys from school, or setting the books I was reading on fire.

  Sunshine and Luke had been teaming up since she moved here. Before that, she’d lived in Texas, Oregon, Montana . . . wherever her librarian parents were needed, apparently. Five years ago, right after Freddie died, my parents got so broke, they had to sell off six wooded acres of our estate. Sunshine’s dad had grown up here, and so he bought the land, built a little cabin on it, moved back to Echo with his family, and started running the little library in town with his wife.

  Sunshine squished closer to Luke and he put his hand back on her thigh, higher up than it was before.

  “Stop it. Both of you. I’m sitting right here.”

  Luke laughed. “Who cares? I want to hear about this stranger in our cottage. Girl? Guy? Did you get paid already? Where’s the money?”

  “Yes, he paid. And no, you’re not going anywhere near it. I’m getting groceries this afternoon.”

  “His name is River West,” Sunshine slipped in. “And Violet’s decided she’s going to be mad as a hatter in love with him.”

  “That’s not remotely true,” I said, looking at her with my penetrating, know-it-all gaze. “That couldn’t be less true.”

  But Sunshine was dead right, and we both knew it.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE THREE OF us walked back to Citizen Kane, squeezing through the jungle path that led around the house, trying not to let the branches scrape up our arms and legs.

  Sunshine had decided that we should all go grocery shopping together, and we should invite River to come with us. So I went up to the door of the guesthouse and knocked. I heard River call, “Come in,” and so I did. I found him in the kitchen with his hands deep in soapy water.

  “Thought I would clean up a bit. The dishes were dusty.” He looked at my brother. “Are you Luke?” River pulled his hands out of the water, reached into a drawer, and grabbed a white towel embroidered with a smiling lamb.

  I watched him dry his hands and it occurred to me that the towel he was using was probably a thousand years old like the rest of the guesthouse, and the fingers that stitched the red grin on that sheep were nothing but bones in the ground.

  The dead are all around us, Freddie used to say. So don’t you go being afraid of the dead, Violet. And if you aren’t afraid of the dead, then you aren’t afraid of dying. And if you aren’t afraid of dying, then the only damn thing you have to be afraid of is the Devil. And that’s the way it should be.

  I missed my parents. I missed the sight of my mom’s fingers, covered with splotches of paint, and her dreamy green-brown eyes that weren’t like my eyes at all, because mine were, as I said, blue and staring. I missed the way her teeth showed too much when she laughed, and how her nose seemed just a bit too big if you looked at her from the side.

  And I missed my dad. I missed standing in the dark doorway of the servants’ entrance and watching him carrying a canvas around the backyard as he tried to find the best light. I missed the way he sighed whenever he looked at the crumbling greenhouse, then shook his head and went back to his painting. He was a lot older than my mother, and his brown-red hair was thinning. I missed the way it looked copper in the direct sun. I missed the way he would drink sherry after supper in the library, and then snore so hard, I could hear him all the way upstairs. I missed the wrinkles by his eyes, and his wide forehead.

  But it was nothing to the ache I felt inside my insides for my gosh-darn always-around-because-my-parents-weren’t Freddie. Always around until she died, that is. I missed her white-blond hair, bobbed and wavy and unchanged since the ’30s. I missed the woolly berets she wore even when it was warm out, and the way her clothes sometimes smelled like lemons and sometimes like expensive French perfume. I missed the soft skin of her face, peachy-white and clear, with no wrinkles. Some women were like that—their faces stayed young, and their eyes bright, no matter how old they got. I wanted to look like Freddie when I hit the upper decades.

  Luke fidgeted. I pushed the sad, missing-Freddie thoughts out of my head and caught River’s eye. “Yeah, this is my brother, and our neighbor Sunshine. She lives in that cabin down the road.”

  River shook Luke’s hand. I noticed that Luke was several inches taller than River, which surprised me, since I remembered River being really tall.

  Or did I? No, when I first saw him, I thought he was very not-tall. Average. River had grown a foot in my mind, just in the last hour.

  Sunshine eyed River, and then looked over her shoulder at me and ran her tongue over her lips. I ignored her and watched Luke. My brother treated all girls pretty much the same, but he did one of two things when he met a guy. He either talked down to him, using a special, condescendingly hateful Luke tone. Or he worshipped him, with all the pent-up fervor a fatherless boy could muster.

  “River. Glad you found Violet’s poster.” Luke paused and scratched his elbow, all forced nonchalance and faux easygoing. “It’ll be pretty cool having you around. Nice to have another guy. I usually have to spend my summers with these two.” He thrust his chin at Sunshine and me. “I need someone who can drink whiskey without whining. And I could use a spotter when I lift weights. I got a set in one of the rooms on the third floor of the Citizen. You lift?”

  Worship it was, then.

  River smiled at Luke but didn’t answer.

  “We’re going to the grocery store. Want to come?” Sunshine sidled her way in front of Luke, and flipped her hair, and seemed to take up the whole kitchen all of a sudden.

  “Yeah,” River said. “I just plugged in the fridge. I need some food. Hence, I’ll come with you to the grocery store.” River looked at me and winked.

  I stared at him, and then kind of laughed, and he flashed his crooked smiled at me. My cheeks started going red again, so I ducked out and went back to the Citizen to grab a fe
w canvas bags. Then the four of us walked down to the apple trees. White apple blossoms were blowing around in the sea breeze, and a few fell on River’s shoulders as we passed under the trees. He left them on, didn’t brush them off, and I liked that. Our feet hit the dirt path, and we started toward Echo.

  Luke kept asking River questions about where he came from and what he liked to do, but River somehow managed to avoid giving my brother any direct answers in a way that seemed casual but was actually pretty brilliant, if you were really paying attention. Which I was.

  Sunshine walked along beside me, all long hair and round butt and round thighs, curving and sliding against each other, happy as a clam that she had two pretty boys to flirt with. I smelled dirt, and leaves, and forest things, and felt in a pretty good mood too.

  When we’d gone about a half mile, we came across the old railroad tunnel, lurking back in the green trees. No trains ran through there, and hadn’t for years. The tracks were all gone, but the tunnel still stood, pitch-black and winding for a mile or so into the hill. Where, I guessed, it ended in a cave-in. I’d gone maybe twenty or thirty steps inside, but never coughed up enough courage to go in all the way and find out what was in there, in the dark, at the very end.

  It had always surprised me that no joy-killing adults had ever tried to board up the entrance. Maybe the tunnel was too far from town for any group of stupid teens to have gotten lost in it and died. Or broken a leg. Or smoked pot. Or knocked up some poor straight-A student and set the town afire with moral certainty and anti-tunnel evangelizing.

  Or maybe the lack of tunnel interest was because of Blue Hoffman. And the rumors. We all came to a stop in front of the tunnel and stood there, staring, like four people facing down an old foe.

  “You know,” Luke said, “no one even knows how far back that thing goes. I say we men skip the grocery store and go check it out. What do you think, River? Should we send the girls to get us food while we go exploring?”