The dim awareness of waking pulled me from the dream of Iola’s letters. I felt the kiss of hot tears on my skin, draining into my hair. I wanted to take that young girl’s hands in mine, say, Don’t listen. Don’t let them tell you who you are. You’re just as worthy as Isabelle.
I blinked and blinked again, my eyes grainy and rough from sneaking away again to spend time in the boxes. Between working at Sandy’s, cleaning at Iola’s, and reading the letters at night, I was running on fumes, but things were finally taking shape. Satisfaction rested like a cool, soft sheet over me as I lay in my bed. The kitchen at Iola’s house looked so much better. I’d stored all the newspapers in a closet under the stairs.
So far I’d managed the work at Sandy’s. The old beadboard wainscoting had dried out nicely and gone back together more easily than I’d thought it would. The repairs on the drywall were progressing now.
Even things at home had settled down. Rowdy and Zoey were definitely history. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she was acting more like herself, looking after her little brother, spending long hours in the back room with him, playing video games and helping him with his homework.
Paul had stopped by to finish the weed eating, and he and J.T. had cooked a hot dog supper on the old stone grill behind the cottage. It was nice to have a friend who was just a friend, not a guy looking to get something out of it. J.T. liked him. They walked around the yard together, talked about arthropods and gastropods and other scientific things. With a few leads on future handywoman work already coming in, sea turtle camp this summer seemed like a possibility.
“Ma-maaah . . .”
The sound startled me, sitting me upright. Zoey’s voice.
“Zoey?” I whispered, throwing the covers aside and standing. The floor was salty-damp and cool as if someone had left the windows open last night.
“Ma-ma . . . ,” she whimpered again. I wondered if she might be dreaming. The voice had her little-girl sound to it —needy, sweet, afraid to make too many demands on anyone.
In the small room next to mine, she was lying atop her bed, fully clothed in jeans and a tank top, but curled into herself, her arms wrapped around her long, thin legs, her bare feet tucked tight. At first glance, it was obvious that something was very wrong.
The window was open, the air cold. Her hair wasn’t just damp but wet around her head. I touched the sheet, found it warm and wet despite the cool air. “Zoey.” Her skin was fiery hot beneath my fingers. “What happened? Where have you been?”
“Mmmmh-nowhere,” she moaned. “I was ummmh-gonna go . . . a party . . . Rowdy . . . at the beach, but I didn’t f-f-feel good. Ummmh-body hurts, Mama . . .”
“Zoey, you’re burning up.” A hint of frustration came out in the words, and I hoped she couldn’t hear it. Worries were racing already. We can’t afford a doctor visit. I can’t stay home today. How would we even go to a doctor? We don’t have any insurance. I had no idea how much a visit might cost these days. For six years, Trammel had taken care of us, prescribing everything we needed.
“Mmmm sor-ry,” Zoey sobbed miserably. Burying her face in the pillow, she tried to push my hand away.
“When did you start feeling bad? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I smoothed a tangle of hair away from her lips. “Why in the world were you trying to sneak out in the middle of the night to go to a party when you’re sick? Please tell me you weren’t chasing after Rowdy again.”
“I wanted to go see . . .” She rose from the pillow and tried to reach for a cell phone on the night table. I’d never seen it before. “I got . . . gotta . . . go.”
I pushed her shoulders gently back, then picked up the phone. The case looked new. I could only assume that Rowdy had bought it for her during one of their shopping sprees before they broke up. “Don’t worry about him. Are you hurting anywhere else? Are you sick to your stomach?” We went through a list of symptoms. It sounded like the flu. I gave her ibuprofen and waited, hoping she would sleep, hoping the fever would break.
By six o’clock in the morning, she was worse. I ran a bath to cool her down and helped her into the tub, then paced the house, trying to decide what to do next. What if it was really something serious? What if it was more than just the flu? I didn’t have the money for a doctor visit, much less an emergency room call. Would they even see Zoey if I couldn’t pay for it on the spot?
Sandy would help if I called her, but she had no idea what a shambles my life was in. Neither did any of the Seashell Shop women. If they knew, I would be a hard-luck story, a charity case. I wanted respect. I wanted to earn my own way. I wanted to build a life I could be proud of, one I could live in front of my kids without setting all the wrong examples. It was finally happening . . . and now this.
Zoey called for me, and I found her halfway out of the bathtub, dripping, shivering, clinging to the shower door. There was a faint rash on her stomach and back, the skin raw and red as she cowered in the towel, too exhausted to argue about my helping her into clean clothes.
She leaned on me, her head resting on my shoulder as I helped her into bed. “I th-th-think I f-f-feel better,” she chattered out, but her skin sizzled against mine. “I don’t need a d-d-doctor, ’kay? C-can I have some more M-M-Motrin yet? My b-b-body hurts.”
J.T. passed by in the hall, moving in a sleepy stupor as he cast a concerned look our way. “What’s wrong with Zoey?”
“She’s sick. You stay out of here, all right?” I crossed the room and stopped him at the door. Hopefully, whatever it was, he hadn’t caught it and wouldn’t. “Are you okay? You don’t feel sick or hot or anything?”
“Huh-uh.” He folded his arms behind his back, his collarbones poking out against the neck of his T-shirt. “She wasn’t sick last night when she was in my room.”
“When you two were playing Zago Wars, you mean? I think it started after that. Sometime during the night.” There was no point in telling J.T. that his sister had apparently been on her way out the window to chase after a boy who’d dumped her once already.
His lip curled, compacting the freckles on his nose. “Zoey doesn’t play Zago Wars.” He rolled his eyes as if I should surely know better than to have made that assumption. “She e-mails people.” He whispered the words, flicking a worried look that told me he’d been threatened with his life if he told.
“Who’s she e-mailing? I didn’t know you could e-mail on that thing.” Not that it would have mattered, even if I’d known. I probably would have been afraid to check my old account to see if there were any messages from the reporter I’d sent Trammel’s secret records to. I couldn’t get over the feeling that any form of contact with my old life could lead Trammel to us.
J.T. turtled his neck between his shoulders. “Ssshhh.”
We moved to the kitchen, and he folded his bare legs into a chair.
“Okay, now spill. Who’s Zoey been e-mailing? Do you know where she was headed last night? Who has she been talking to online?” I’d thought the story about Rowdy and a beach party hadn’t made sense.
Who had she been planning to meet?
“She . . . ummm . . . she . . . doesn’t tell.” J.T. was hedging. He always rolled his eyes upward and looked at the ceiling when he was pulling a story out of the air.
“You’d better tell me the truth, and you’d better tell me now.” I leaned close, made him look at me. “J.T., if you know anything about who your sister has been talking to or why, I need to know.”
“She wouldn’t tell me who. I tried to see the password, but she told me to quit snooping on her. She texted Rowdy last night. I looked at it when she was in the bathroom. He was mad at her because she wouldn’t give the cell phone back. She told him she was going on a road trip, and she needed it.”
“A road trip?” This got stranger by the minute . . . and more frightening. How did all the pieces fit together? What did they add up to?
There was only one person who knew for sure.
I left J.T. at the table and ran back to Zoey’s room. “Zoey, I want to know what’s going on with you. All of it.”
I leaned closer, touched her cheek. Felt the heat of her breath on my fingers, but Zoey wouldn’t answer.
CHAPTER 19
“WEST NILE VIRUS? How did she . . . ? How serious is . . . ?” The words were scrambled in my head.
The emergency room doctor pressed the clipboard to his chest, leaned forward sympathetically, and pulled the door closed, the sound echoing down the corridor where we’d been waiting for news.
Paul touched my arm, steadying me. Cords of muscle contracted, then relaxed inside the torn-off sleeve of a sweatshirt he must have thrown on after my frantic call this morning. When Zoey wouldn’t wake up, he was the first person I thought of.