The Girl Who Stayed

Book 2: The Girl Who Stayed

by Tanya Anne Crosby

Genres: Siblings; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Zoe Rutherford wasn't sure what she was expecting when she returned to Sullivan's Island. The house on Sullivan's hadn't represented home to her in decades. It was the place where she endured her father's cruelty. It was the place where her mother closed herself off from the world. It was the place where her sister disappeared. But now that her parents are gone, Zoe needs to return to the house, to close it down and prepare it for sale. She intends to get this done as quickly as possible and get on with her life, even though that life seems clouded by her past, both distant and recent. But what she discovers when she gets there is far beyond her imagining and will change her in profound ways.

THE GIRL WHO STAYED is a remarkable exploration of the soul by a writer with a rare talent for reaching into the hearts of her characters and her readers, a novel of transformation that will leave you moved and breathless.

Release date: April 25, 2017

Publisher: Story Plant

Print pages: 304

Sample

Prologue

Hannah’s Bike

There was a feeling Zoe sometimes got . . . as though something were about to happen. She didn’t know what or when, but it clung to the day like a cold sweat—a blind intuition that originated somewhere else . . . not in the gut . . . deeper . . . in the bones.

That’s how it started, then as now.

They found Hannah’s bike in the dunes near Breach Inlet, the silver handlebar glinting hard against a waning sun. More to the point, Zoe found the bike.

The pale-blue Schwinn lay twisted on its side, the black rubber of the left handlebar buried at least two inches deep so that sand spilled from the bar’s interior once Zoe lifted it to walk it home.

Whether her sister dropped it there hard enough to drive the bar down into the sun-bleached sand, or whether it lay so long, undisturbed, that sand, driven by coastal winds, piled up and into the rubber hole was uncertain. Zoe only knew her sister worshipped the bike as much as Zoe did her first typewriter.

A few weeks earlier, when the bike’s pristine blue paint was desecrated in a headlong collision with the fire hydrant on the corner of Middle Street and Station 26, her sister was devastated.

“No!” Hannah had screamed. Half dazed, scrambling to her feet, she’d been far more concerned over the scratches on her bike than she ever was over her skinned and bloodied knees. With scrapes from her thighs to her ankles, she’d brushed herself off and hurried to right her fallen bike. “Stupid tourists,” she’d said, sounding like their dad.

“You’re bleeding,” Zoe had said.

“I don’t care.”

“But it’s getting on your shoes.”

“I don’t care,” her sister had said again, brushing her palm over the fender of her bike to test the finish.

At home, Zoe found a Band-Aid and placed it on Hannah’s bleeding knee, worrying a bit because the edges wouldn’t stick over a wound still dripping with blood. Solemn and filled with purpose, Hannah had been too busy searching for something out in the garage to bother washing herself off. Blue metallic paint, Zoe realized after a while. Tight-lipped, her sister searched until she found what she needed on a high shelf, where their father kept the construction materials for his model planes.

It seemed to Zoe that Hannah had felt much the same way about the scars on her bike as Zoe did after discovering the S on her typewriter showing signs of wear. Except that with those older model typewriters you couldn’t easily change the keys, and while it was possible to touch up bike paint, the marring of such perfect machines seemed in those last days of innocence like the death of an era—the same way it felt to get a C after years of As and Bs, or blood stains on a brand-new pair of white Converse sneakers. In retrospect, neither she nor Hannah ever truly understood the concept of loss until Zoe hauled Hannah’s bike up out of the dunes and wheeled it home.

Alone.

From that moment forward, Zoe understood only too well.

Later that day, with her sister’s bike parked carefully in the driveway, Zoe sat at the kitchen table, tilting an empty saltshaker back and forth, wondering  why her mom put rice in the salt, but never in the pepper. As her mother paced the kitchen, and her brother Nick rode shotgun in their dad’s red Ford pickup, probably yelling out the window for Hannah, Chief Hale wanted to know why Zoe had thought to check the beach when nobody else had.

Zoe didn’t know; she just had a feeling.

What Zoe wanted to know was why Chief Hale was asking dumb questions, when he should be out there searching for her missing sister. From Zoe’s seat at the kitchen table, she could hear choppers hatcheting the air outside.

Guilt did the same thing inside her brain.

It was warm that day—warmer than most days in December. So of course no one bothered to check the beach. Who would think to swim so late in the year? Especially there, where everybody knew the currents were so deadly.

In fact, there was a sign that read “Deadly Currents,” but no one who lived on the island needed any dumb sign to know it was a bad place to swim, no matter what time of year.

And yet her sister had been drawn to people and to places that were less than prudent. There was a sort of fever in Hannah’s eyes whenever she pushed boundaries—something she did often, especially on her pale-blue Schwinn.

For example, they weren’t supposed to cross the bridge onto the Isle of Palms, but sometimes Hannah did, stopping at the bait-shop gas station. Each time she would buy a Coke, pop the top, and stand outside, sipping victoriously until the time came to get back on the bike and head back home. Her sister had that certain middle-child lack of responsibility, with maybe a little something to prove.

But the one thing Hannah was never reckless about was her bike. That day out on the beach, the kickstand was up and the bike lay carelessly on its side. It wasn’t as though her sister had left it standing and the wind or some brat kid pushed it over and it fell. No, it was cast aside without any real thought for what lay beneath, ready to scratch the shimmering paint. The bike lay in one of those twisted death throes, like the ones portrayed on TV, with the body outlined in thick white chalk. Except, of course, they didn’t do that for bikes.

To everyone else it made perfect sense that Hannah wouldn’t have bothered with a kickstand there in the shifting sand, but Zoe knew her sister better than that. Hannah would have found a spot where the sand was packed hard enough to support the weight of her precious bike and then she would have tested and retested the footing before walking away—slowly, like a mother with a teetering toddler.

So why—why was Hannah’s bike lying twisted in the sand?

That was something Zoe never discovered.

Chapter 1

“Ene, Mene, Muh”

The cell phone on the passenger seat gave a rude squawk. It rang on and on but Zoe ignored it, as though the act of doing so might buy her more time.

Compelled to look at every blond head she passed by—inside cars, along the bike ramp—it crossed her mind that Hannah would have loved biking over the new bridge—the third bridge to span the Cooper since the island’s colonization. Originally, there had been two, standing side by side.

Zoe dated a guy once who’d claimed his grandfather helped build the first Cooper River Bridge. He was an oddball, talking incessantly about an ex-girlfriend, who just happened to look a lot like Zoe. Hearing this had made Zoe look at him differently, not the hunky guy he’d appeared to be, but the obsessive stalker beneath, who’d rather kill and stuff an ex-girlfriend than lose her. Regrettably, this image was further reinforced by his other favorite topic, which happened to be the family business, a mortuary. Not taxidermy, but close enough.

So one night, while crossing the Cooper—about three miles worth of mindless chatter—he’d gone back and forth between telling Zoe about this look-alike ex, explaining the process of embalming, and regaling her with tales of his grandfather’s escapades during the building of the first bridge. Of course, at the time, both bridges had been past their prime, and even without stories about cadavers and look-alike exes, it was creepy enough driving over a swaying expanse of groaning, creaking metal—in the dark, mind you. Suffice it to say, the date hadn’t turned into a second and even now, Zoe couldn’t remember his name.

Bart, maybe.

The bridge Bart’s grandfather had worked on was built around 1929, the second in 1966. The Silas Pearman Bridge was constructed to relieve load limits on the Grace Memorial Bridge, but both had been narrow enough to make driving over them harrowing, especially after the lanes were opened to two-way traffic.

It wasn’t like that anymore. The first two bridges were demolished and a third went up—the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, a cable-stayed, eight-lane overpass that included pedestrian and bike lanes. This bridge was named after a retired US Congressman, although if you asked anyone the name of any one of these three bridges, they’d give you the same answer: it was the Cooper River Bridge.

The point being: on that old bridge, especially at night, you drove all the way across, shoulders tense, black skies overhead, black river below, ignoring the headlights that appeared as though they were coming straight into your lane. There was nowhere to swerve off to, nowhere to escape—unless you wanted to ram through thick sheets of metal and off into the river below.

Once on the bridge, you were at the mercy of oncoming drivers and your choice—the only choice—was to stay the course, fists gripping the steering wheel, holding your breath, hoping today wasn’t your day to end up in the grill of an oncoming vehicle. And all the while, you could feel the bridge shuddering beneath you.

That’s how Zoe felt right now: Tense. Expectant. No choice but to move forward. Hoping to avert impending disaster.

Back when Zoe’s great-grandparents first purchased the house on Sullivan’s, they’d had to take a ferry. It was a short hop from the peninsula in plain view of Fort Sumter. Edgar Allan Poe once wrote that the island, little more than a splinter of land, was “separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime.” Zoe loved his description, unflattering as it was, because it was the way she saw the island too—full of secrets whispered through dense tangles of sweet myrtle . . . secrets kept, no matter how long or hard you searched.

Leaving the bridge, shoulders tight, Zoe passed repurposed buildings and shopping centers that appeared as though they’d already lived out one commercial lifetime during her absence and now were preparing for a dubious rebirth, with freshly painted facades and empty parking spaces out in front. The hamburger joint she and her friends had satisfied munchies at was gone, converted into a ratty tire shop. But the Page’s Thieves Market was still there, with the vintage street clock still guarding the porch, like a shiny silver sentinel.

They sold houses now as well—at least that’s what her brother said. Maybe she could enlist their help.

The last few times Zoe had come to Charleston she’d stayed with her brother Nick, never bothering to check on the house. She left Sullivan’s on the day she turned eighteen and never looked back, except to return long enough to bury her mom. Her dad was already gone before she moved away, puffing on unfiltered cigarettes every minute of his miserable life, until the smoke cleared and he was no more. Throat cancer. But like she told Nick, Rob Rutherford was dead to her long before that.

Of course, Nick led a Hallmark life, like the one they’d always believed they’d shared . . . back before that day in December, back when all the neighbors crowed about their perfect family. Beautiful children. Beautiful parents. A house with a foundation as old as Charleston. How lucky they were.

How lucky they were.

That house. It had weathered Hugo, withstood the sea, but never made it past Hannah Rutherford’s disappearance—or, more to the point, her family hadn’t survived. The house on the feral lot on Atlantic Avenue, with the screened-in porch was standing still  . . .

Zoe pulled into the familiar driveway, stopping the car where she remembered parking Hannah’s bike all those years before. The engine idled like an old man with hiccoughs. She pulled out the keys and palmed them, clutching the metal so hard the teeth cut into her skin. The scar on her forehead itched, but she tried to put it out of her mind. Seated in the driver’s seat, Zoe took a moment to survey the dirty white bungalow.

It was older now, not so old as some. The wood and cinderblock siding needed a good coat of paint. The yard had returned to scrub. The native sweet myrtle had overtaken the lot. It clambered toward the house, clawing desperately at the siding. In one spot, it managed to stab meanly through the porch screen.

Fifteen feet high in some places, the shrubbery on the right side of the lot obscured the neighbors’ house from Zoe’s vantage in the drive. On the other side, a six-foot-high row of red azaleas were in full bloom—blood-red blossoms dripping from every branch.

On the front side of the screened-in porch remained a baseball-sized hole in the mesh. Zoe remembered when it happened. She and Nick had been throwing the baseball out in the yard, just the two of them. Wearing her dad’s stiff glove, she’d made a sad attempt to help her brother improve his game.

Standing in the front yard, her brother had looked sullen, ready to give up. “Come on,” Zoe had said. “You’re so much better than me.”

The comparison hadn’t cheered him. He was better than Zoe, but Zoe rather sucked. “I’m no good, Nicky. Why don’t you ask Kevin to come throw with you?”

Kevin was Nick’s friend who’d lived over on Goldbug Avenue—a kid whose family still ate dinner together and who sometimes went fishing with his dad.

Her baby brother had given a half shake of his head, as though the effort might be more than he cared to make. He’d dropped the ball into his glove, then picked it up again, dropping it yet again, probably wondering why their dad was inside yelling at their mom. Again. Or maybe he’d simply been wishing he had a brother instead of a sister—one sister. That was key. By that time, Hannah was already gone, her twin bed donated to a new mom from church, whose three-year-old had outgrown his crib.

There was something about the look in Nicky’s eyes that had made Zoe feel his life—all that he could be—hung in the balance.

It had been hot and humid that day, not unlike today. The hair had stuck to the back of Zoe’s neck. The inside door shut tight to keep the argument contained within, probably hadn’t improved either of her parents’ moods.

Staring into his glove, Nicky had continued dropping the ball, picking it up again, decisions being made . . .

“It’s my fault,” Zoe had reasoned. “I’m not very good, Nicky. Let’s just do it again.”

Her brother had seemed to consider this. His wavy, blond hair was sweaty at the ends, dark—as dark as his somber brown eyes. At nine years old, he was already becoming a crusty old man. Shifting uneasily from foot to foot, Zoe had pounded her fist into the oversized glove the way she’d watched them do on TV.

“Come on,” she’d coaxed. “I’m ready now. Come on, Nicky Boy!”

Nicky Boy. That was the name her dad would have used—mostly when he was in a good mood. But good moods had become few and far between.

A half smile had turned her brother’s lips then, a little gleam in his eyes that brought to mind Casey at the bat. He’d taken a ready stance, thinking, thinking, aiming . . .

Rearing back, he’d set the ball loose. It flew over Zoe’s head, powered by all the anger he’d had mustered up inside, ripping through the flimsy screen, and crashing into the inside window, shattering glass.

No longer contained, her parents’ voices had risen to a crescendo. Zoe’s brain had refused to recognize coherent words and phrases. She and Nicky had given each other wary glances, and then their father had exploded onto the screened porch—red face, tan khakis, silver keys. He’d flown out the screened door, toward his pickup, mouthing obscenities, and Zoe had pretended to be a statue until Robert Rutherford was safely inside his truck. And then, just to be certain, she hadn’t moved until after he’d peeled out of the driveway, kicking up gravel and shells in his wake.

And now, seated in her own car, with the windows rolled up, Zoe stared at the hole in the porch screen. The mesh was curled with age, never repaired. One month after Nick ripped the screen with his baseball, Hurricane Hugo had thrown more than baseballs at the house. It managed to stave off that assault as well, but as far as the will to set things right went, it pushed any remaining resolve over the edge, never to return.

Across the street, a brand-new triple-story house on stilts had gone up since Zoe left the island. Only because she was checking the housing market, she knew it was now in foreclosure. Sitting empty, with its lovely peach facade, it was a million-dollar oops for somebody. Somewhere near two dozen homes remained of the original dwellings that once complemented the old military base. A few of the island houses were as ancient as Fort Moultrie, but not included in the registry as original base housing.

Fort Moultrie was where Edgar Allan Poe was once stationed. All these years later, the man had a street, a library, and a pub named after him. In return, he had immortalized the island in his story “The Gold-Bug”—not Goldbug, as some dummy had named one of the back streets on the island. Only a writer would get the difference. And there, behind Goldbug Avenue, up against the salt marsh, was Raven Drive. Here, you see, was a going theme. Probably not because of it, though certainly not in spite of it, this pinprick of land on a splinter of sand was worth more than Zoe could walk away from. So here she was, at their “Kingdom by the Sea,” appropriately named by her great-grandmother in honor of Poe’s Annabel Lee. Clever.

Very clever, indeed.

The wooden sign out on the porch hung stock-still, despite the proximity to the beach, as though the world itself held its breath to see what Zoe would do.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

It’s just a house.

Zoe opened the car door, stepping out. Heavy and oppressive, the island heat smacked her full in the face. She moved through it, stepping through a time warp . . .

* * *

1986

“Where’s your sister?”

Sand crunched beneath Zoe’s sneakers as she sauntered into the kitchen. “I dunno.”

“Supper is ready soon.”

Technically, in the South, supper referred to a light evening meal while dinner was considered to be the main meal, whether or not it took place at noon or later in the evening. Lunch, on the other hand, was like a supper eaten at noon—a lighter, less formal affair. Her mother never seemed to get that straight, but Zoe learned the right way from her Nana. “What are we having for dinner?”

The scent of pot roast filled Zoe’s nostrils, an immediate answer to her question, although her question was far less a matter of inquiry and more a matter of deflection.

“Food,” her mother said, with just a hint of a German accent. It didn’t mesh all that well with the Southern words she tried to use. Nor was her diction and locution precisely correct. “What happened, you two? Y’all are peas in a pod, Zoe, fess up.”

Zoe furrowed her brow. Her sister was out on the beach searching for turtle eggs with her new best friend, despite that messing with turtle nests wasn’t allowed. There was no telling Hannah anything anymore. Unless Zoe wanted to sit on her sister to keep her out of trouble, there was nothing else for it. Gabi was a troublemaker. Zoe didn’t like her very much. “Don’t worry, Ma. Nothing happened.”

Her mother gave her a discerning glance, one that implied she didn’t quite believe Zoe, but Zoe knew instinctively she would drop it, and she did, returning her attention to peeling the onions for the roast. Her mother was all too often distracted.

“I’m hungry.” Zoe gave the kitchen a once over, searching for something to abscond with. A handful of carrots sat on the counter, near the stove, but they weren’t yet peeled. That wasn’t what she was in the mood for anyways, especially after watching Hannah scarf down a bag of Bugles she and Gabi had swiped from the bait-shop gas station. Both had been wearing Bugle claws when she’d found them, one over each finger, and growling and pawing at the air in front of Zoe like angry bears. Zoe was pretty sure Gabi had stolen the bag, but Hannah didn’t seem to care her friend was a “bad seed.” That’s what their Nana called ill-behaved folks, and Gabi was most certainly ill-behaved.

A few months before, Gabi Donovan had moved in next door with her “meemaw and papaw.” As far as Zoe could tell, the Donovans were too old to keep up with all their many cats, much less a “bad-seed” granddaughter and Zoe wished Gabi would just run away, like all the Donovan’s cats.

“Poor Gabi,” Mama would say, but that’s not the way Zoe saw it.

Poor Zoe. Poor Hannah. Even poor Gabi’s “Meemaw and Papaw”—cranky geezers that they were. But never, ever poor Gabi. Gabi was meaner than a junkyard dog—another saying her Nana had, coincidentally, often used in reference to Gabi’s grandparents. Like granddaughter, like grandmother, Zoe supposed.

“She’s with Gabi,” Zoe felt compelled to say. It wasn’t tattling, exactly. “I don’t know where they went. Maybe the beach.” Probably Hannah would tell Gabi all about their secret quest, and that possibility made Zoe’s stomach ache. She wasn’t hungry anymore.

Her mother sighed, apparently not liking Zoe’s answer but, as Zoe expected, her mother wasn’t willing to leave her kitchen long enough to do anything about it, so Zoe made a dash for the living room, hoping there would be something on TV besides the Iran-Iraq war. For months after the president bombed Libya, news interrupted all her favorite shows. “It’s close to dinner,” her mother said quickly. “Please go find your sister, Zoe.”

Zoe skidded to a halt as the pads of her feet hit the carpet her mom and dad argued over way too much. Her dad wanted to rip it out, return the floor to the original wood, as it was when he was a little boy. Her mother thought the carpet deadened the echo that made her feel as though she were walking through a mausoleum.

Zoe didn’t care one way or another, except that the carpet looked a lot like the matted hair on her troll doll. “Do I have to, Mama?”

“Yes, you have to. Go find Hannah, Zoe. Supper is ready soon.”

Zoe slid her mother an annoyed glance. It was supposed to be supper will be ready soon, not supper is ready soon. Zoe wouldn’t care so much that her mom didn’t talk like other moms if she weren’t always so distracted. Grumbling, she spun about and marched across the kitchen, toward the back door, resenting the task but too dutiful to disobey.

Hannah, on the other hand, she would have pretended to go. She wouldn’t have uttered a word in complaint, eager for the opportunity to jump on her new bike and go riding up and down the street without any aim at all. Her sister never had to do anything, ever. It was tough to toe the line, tougher yet to watch her sister never do anything she was told to do and never get in trouble for any of it.

That’s why Zoe sometimes had bad ideas. Sometimes she wanted to pull out all of Hannah’s hair. Sometimes she wished her sister would get on her bike and keep on riding and never, ever come back home. But mostly, when Gabi wasn’t around, Zoe didn’t know what she would do without her little sister. Her mother said they had a love-hate relationship and that was probably true because at the moment Zoe hated Hannah with all her heart. She wished her sister were never born. Nick wasn’t half the trouble her sister was.

* * *

Present

Of all the times Zoe had imagined her sister walking out the door and never coming home, not once did she ever truly expect it to happen.

Her gaze was drawn toward the house next door, where Gabi Donovan had arrived like a hurricane and less than a year later was hauled away, literally kicking and screaming. Zoe couldn’t remember where she’d gone, but thought Gabi’s grandparents had sent her to live with an uncle. Zoe never saw Gabi again, and that was soon enough for her . . . especially after what the little bitch had said. 

Even now, all these years later, it made Zoe angry. Everyone claimed they hadn’t believed Gabi, but a seed of doubt had been planted just the same.

Moving cautiously up the front steps, Zoe examined the stairs. The wood was rotting and needed to be replaced. This close to the ocean, if you didn’t keep wood treated and painted, it didn’t last very long. On the top step, careful to avoid the rot, Zoe turned to survey the yard. From here she could see over the sweet myrtle and azaleas into the neighbors’ yards. On the one side, the house was newish, built sometime after Hurricane Hugo. The other house—Gabi’s house—was exactly as Zoe recalled. Like theirs, it was a relic of the island’s military past. Although well kept, it was nothing like the sprawling beach houses that had cropped up in recent years. It was a mishmash of styles—part cedar siding, part cinderblock, part board and batten.

At thirty-nine, Zoe had not yet lived long enough to forget the pain of standing here on this porch step, waiting for her dad’s pickup to pull into the driveway.

She pictured him now as she’d seen him that life-altering day, sliding out of the passenger seat, his expression full of confusion and fear. In the short time since he and Nicky had left the house, her dad had aged. He appeared years older as he emerged from his truck, his gaze somber, his lips thinner. His gaze had honed in on her mom, never on Zoe, as though to see her might have somehow broken his back.

Standing next to her, her mother had worried dry, cracked hands. “Did you check the Mound? You should check the Mound, Rob. I tell the kids never go there. But Hannah doesn’t listen.”

That day had been a first for many things. It was the first time her dad had looked past Zoe, as though both his daughters disappeared that day. It was also the first time Zoe recalled her mother ever acknowledging Hannah’s impetuosity. And it was the first time her father had ever snapped at her mother in front of the kids.

“Not now!” he’d said, storming past, into the house, slamming the door behind him. Marge had followed him inside.

Zoe had pulled Nicky into her arms as he’d ambled up the steps, partly because she’d needed a hug and partly because she’d sensed Nicky shouldn’t follow them inside. That day, as she and her brother had stood embracing on the front porch steps, the first threads of their family tapestry began to unravel.

Or maybe it began before that day? That probably wasn’t something a ten-year-old would know. Or a six-year-old for that matter. Hannah was only eight the day she’d disappeared.

Zoe examined the house next door. Like Kingdom’s, the paint job was faded, but not so much that it had become an eyesore. The low-pitched roof was in better shape than Kingdom’s, and the oaks were majestic enough to conceal any of the house’s imperfections. The patchy grass was cropped short, and the mailbox stood straight, painted with numbers that could easily be read. Above the house numbers, there used to be a sign with the house name, but Zoe could no longer remember what it was. The sign was no longer there. Crazy house. Loony bin. That’s how she thought of it now.

Not that “Kingdom” was any better.

For a while, she’d used a local firm to handle rentals for their property, but the broker seemed more inclined to rent it out to high school seniors. Considering the scars on the island house and their lack of incentive to fix the place up, Zoe was never overly concerned by the prospect of renting it out for much. But considering that the island had ordinances against overnight rentals, she had anticipated somewhat more thoughtful tenants. The condition of the house had suffered as a result.

It was unrentable in its current condition.

Of course, Nick couldn’t be bothered to care one way or the other. Her brother made it a point to stay clear of the house, and Zoe couldn’t decide whether his decision was driven by a sense of self-preservation or a desire to appear like something more than his tarnished roots. A spark of anger flared. He and his lovely wife lived in a cute little cottage in Summerville, with a perfectly manicured, chemically enhanced lawn that he saw to himself, just as far away from the salt spray of the ocean as he could manage. His wife looked like a model straight out of a Sears catalog—even after two kids, and she was a teacher so she could rush home to be with their little darlings every day after school.

Perfect.

Pristine.

Zoe was pretty sure Beth had no knowledge of the things that had transpired here in their Kingdom by the Sea. She ran her fingers across the stair rail. It was shedding years of bad paint jobs, like a molting snake, but, unlike the stairs, the rail was sturdy. Still it would probably have to come down since it was attached to the stairs. Flakes came away at her touch as she looked inside through the screen. Over the years, the blue ceiling of the porch had faded to a Confederate gray, as though rebelling from years of neglect. The house had an expectant aura—a ringing silence that felt more like a scream.

The furniture, what little remained, was familiar to Zoe: a sturdy white rocker that once belonged to her Nana. With ten years of tenants, it was surprising no one had stolen the damned thing. To begin with, they’d left the house fully furnished, hoping to appeal to vacationing families. It was never intended to be a year-round rental.

Next to the rocker sat an odd little octagonal table that had once shouldered a vase with roses from her mother’s garden. Even after Hannah, Marge had kept her resolve to fill that tulip-shaped vase. Old English roses were her favorite, complicated flowers that were perfect despite messy blooms.

Zoe knocked awkwardly on the screen door, not altogether certain why—maybe to ward away ghosts? Or maybe to alert the homeless who might have taken up residence inside? There was no one living here now, although some part of Zoe hoped leaving it empty would curry some favor with the Universe. The place had terrible karma. It bore an aura as dank and dark as one of Poe’s fetid tales. Although in reality, leaving the house empty was more a matter of avoidance than any sense of altruism, because Zoe wasn’t anyone’s savior, not even her own.

Searching for the door key at the bottom of her purse, Zoe thought about her car. It needed a tune up. Chris was the one who usually handled such things, but since he wasn’t going to be around anymore, she resolved to do it soon.

She didn’t need a man in her life.

The screen door wasn’t locked. There was a simple latch inside the door that couldn’t be hooked from the outside, but the lighting was better outside, so Zoe continued searching out on the steps. After just a few moments under the sweltering sun, she reconsidered the wisdom of placing the key on her keychain, although she probably wouldn’t do that. It was one thing to come back here to take care of business, yet another to incorporate the house into her life. Somehow, placing a key on her keychain implied a certain permanency she wasn’t willing to consider.

Finding the key beneath a pack of gum, Zoe pulled the door open, finally stepping into the shade of the screened-in porch. Without a breeze, the room wasn’t all that much cooler out of the sun, but that was the great thing about living near the sea: ocean breezes were godsends in the muggy May heat.

In the early days, before Hannah went missing, her mom would have been at this door before the three of them ever started up the drive, waiting to usher them inside, with promises of cold lemonade or cookies. Sometimes both.

A vision of the three of them—Nicky, Hannah, and Zoe—accosted her now. Hannah laughing over something—always something—Nicky elbowing his way past Zoe to see what treat their mother had in store, and Zoe meeting her mother’s fragile gaze, as though to issue an unspoken apology: I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help today. I’m sorry you look so sad whenever we leave. I’m sorry mom, because it seems you lose your world every morning at 7:00 a.m., each time we walk out the door.

Zoe had sensed the loneliness her mother felt, sending the last of her brood off to school. And Zoe, being the eldest child, had been careful to be sure Nicky always held her hand when crossing the street. The two of them looked both ways, while Hannah barreled ahead, heedless of oncoming traffic. Luckily, there hadn’t been all that many cars around back then. Even now, the island was mostly locals, while nearby Isle of Palms catered to tourists and folks who thought it was funny to brave a swim at Breach Inlet.

“Dead tourist!” her dad used to exclaim whenever he’d spied the orange-bellied Coast Guard choppers overhead. Nearly always it had been because someone thought the rules of nature didn’t apply to him—usually some strapping military dude, head shaved, tattoo on one bicep. Her father had never seemed overly aggrieved by the prospect, but Zoe had always felt solemn, thinking of somebody’s mother crying into her hands. Of course, after Hannah, her dad never cracked that joke again—or any joke for that matter.

Absently reaching into her purse, Zoe plucked out the pack of chewing gum, prying one out of the pack. Dropping the rest back into her purse, she unwrapped the piece of gum in her hand, put it into her mouth, and crumbled the silver wrapper, dropping it back into her purse.

“Can I have a piece?”

“Where’s yours?”

“I gave it to Gabi.”

“Then no. You can’t have one.”

The memory eddied like a vapor, ready to be swept away. It was easier not to remember. Except that, like the heat of jalapenos on a burger, even after you’d plucked them all away, it left Zoe with a smoldering sadness.

Despite the stagnant air, the porch was aerated enough not to smell closed up. Still, she detected a hint of mustiness in the air—only a hint. It would be worse inside, but Zoe went for the door anyway, determined to get this over with. The sooner it was over, the sooner she could get on with her life. Even now, she sensed the ghost of Hannah’s bike parked out on the driveway. The somber weight of her grief was still heavy in this island clime.

The master key slid into the lock easier than she expected. You’d think by now the keys were old enough to warrant a little wriggling, but without any effort, it seemed to Zoe that the house was so anxious to see her it removed all barriers to her entry.

So here we are . . .

Zoe pulled the door open and stepped inside.