The Shadow Girl

14




When we get home, Mom’s up and sitting at the kitchen table in front of a plate of bacon and eggs that haven’t been touched. Addie stands at the sink washing dishes and chattering like a magpie. Mom responds to her questions with brief, quiet answers and downcast eyes.

I go upstairs and bring Cookie down. He’s not as spunky as he was yesterday, but at least his tail thumps the mattress when he sees me, and that gives me hope that he’s going to be okay.

After Addie and Wyatt leave, I go straight to the shower, and as the hot water sluices down my body, I cry until I’m numb. Wyatt didn’t believe me. Ty and my parents betrayed my trust.

Why didn’t you move on after you died? I ask Iris. What kept you here?

Jake, she says. And something unfinished. I have to watch over you.

When I ask, she’s unable to say what needs finishing, or why she feels I’m in need of her vigilant eye. She only knows that she has to see Jake.

I’ll try my best to find him. Maybe he can answer our questions, I say.

Her excitement soars through me like a shooting star, and I’m suddenly afraid of getting her hopes up. Iris hasn’t remembered Jake’s last name. I have no clue how to begin looking for him.

I step from the shower and wrap up in a towel. Downstairs, Cookie barks once, as if calling out a greeting, and I hear a car engine outside. Doubting Mom will answer the door, I dress quickly. But the doorbell never rings.

I’m heading for the stairs when Iris whispers, The window.

The urgency in her tone sends me hurrying to the window at the far side of my bed. I peer out at the meadow across the road where Mom and Ty stand facing each other in the pale spring grass. Mom leans on her cane, her posture rigid. She jabs a hand toward Ty and says something. He jams the hammer he’s holding into his tool belt and says something back.

Mom lifts her cane, takes a step toward Ty, and says something else that sends him walking past her, headed for the cabin. Mom stays in the meadow, watching him.

I exhale the breath I’ve been holding. Iris, what’s happening?

I don’t know.

Dad’s toolbox sits on the ground beneath my window. Ty reaches it, puts the tool belt inside, closes the box, and picks it up. Taking long strides, he starts around to the front of the house.

I run downstairs and throw open the door as he’s rounding the corner. “What’s going on?”

He glances down at the toolbox and mumbles, “I need to put this away.”

I wait in the yard, but when he returns from the storage shed, Ty passes by, heading for his car without uttering a word or even casting a look my way.

Starting after him, I say, “Why were you and Mom arguing? Where are you going?”

He opens the car door and moves to climb behind the wheel, then pauses. “Your mom asked me to leave.”

“She—why?” Anger flares in me. “Did you threaten her, too?”

He looks so sad that I almost regret my harsh question. “I shouldn’t have come back. I don’t want to upset you anymore,” Ty says.

I’m torn between wanting to hurt him, and wanting to throw my arms around him and tell him I’m sorry. “What’s going on, Ty?” I ask, unable to disguise my frustration. “I didn’t let you explain before. Now’s your chance.”

“I’d only make things worse between you and your mom,” he says, sounding miserable. “I hate to leave town like this, but maybe it’s best.”

“Leave Silver Lake? Right now?” He nods, and something hot and sharp explodes in my chest. “I won’t see you again?” I’m surprised that possibility upsets me so much after what he did.

“I should be with my family,” Ty says quietly. “I’m heading back tomorrow.”

“But you can’t! I mean, we haven’t—” My voice breaks. “I don’t even know why you came here.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You were right about the clothes in the chest,” I say quickly. “It turns out I had a sister who died before I was born. The violin was hers. Tell me the truth. Did you know about her?”

The sound of gravel crunching on the road draws our attention, and we both shift to see Mom making her way toward us. “Come inside, Lily,” she says.

I return my focus to Ty, lowering my voice so Mom won’t hear. “At least tell me if you got what you came for—whatever it was you wanted from us.”

He shakes his head. “No, but I found something else important. Something I’d never put at risk.” Getting into the car, Ty starts the engine, then lowers the window. In a thick voice he says, “’Bye, Lily.”

I watch his car disappear down the road, trying not to cry and wondering what he meant. Was he talking about me? How could his being here put me at risk? I turn to my mother, and my tears slip free. “What were you two fighting about?”

“Forget him, Lily. It’s for the best.”

“For you, maybe, but not me! Dad knew Ty, didn’t he? Did the two of you live in Massachusetts before I was born? Did you come to Silver Lake after Iris died?”

“Lily . . . stop.” Her face crumbles. “I’m not going to discuss this. You’re upsetting me.”

“You! What about me? Do you think all your secrets and lies aren’t upsetting? It’s not fair! I have a right to know. Why did Ty come here? To find Dad? Does it have something to do with Iris?” I give her a minute to answer my rapidly fired questions, and when she doesn’t, I say, “What really happened to her, Mom? Was her boyfriend involved in it? Do you know Jake?”

Mom recoils at the mention of his name. I think she’s surprised at how much I’ve learned.

I wait another few seconds for her to answer, then stomp past her. “I hate you right now. I really do. I’ll just find out on my own.”

“You’ll only get hurt if you listen to what he says. You trust people too easily.”

“You’re right. I trusted you,” I shout, running up the cabin steps and onto the porch.

“Stay away from Ty,” she calls after me. “He used you. He used both of us.”

Pausing at the door, I look back at her. “How, Mom? What is going on?”

She opens her mouth and takes a step toward me. But just when I think she’s finally going to talk to me and give me some answers, she draws back. “I’m your mother,” she says. “You have to do what I say. I don’t want you talking to Ty Collier anymore, do you understand? Your father would agree with me about this.”

“No, I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything.” I walk into the cabin and slam the door.



Ty doesn’t answer any of my calls. I’m so upset that while Mom is napping, I take one of her sedatives from the medicine vial and gulp it down with a glass of water. Thirty minutes later, I understand why she loves them so much.

The fog is quiet. It absorbs all sensations. Weightless and numb, I curl into the vaporous mist and sleep for hours or maybe only minutes, until the haze parts and a guy’s face appears, hovering above me . . . a vision . . . a revelation . . . the answer to a thousand prayers. I’ve been waiting for him all of my life. Searching for his blue eyes in every person I’ve met since I was little, longing to touch his black hair and feel it brush my cheek.

Jake, I whisper to the wavering apparition. Jake Milano, I love you. Don’t let me go.

I wake up with a jerk, and sit straight up in bed, wide-awake now, stunned. The slant of sunbeams through my bedroom window tells me I haven’t slept long. “Milano,” I whisper, and Iris spins like a cyclone inside of me. “That’s Jake’s last name, isn’t it?”

Yes! she breathes. We thought we had forever . . .

Not only do I know Jake’s last name, I remember him. I know him. The sound of his laughter. The scratch of the rough calluses on his palms, the soft touch of his fingers. I know the press of his mouth and the warmth of his body. He loves to drive too fast and sing too loudly and push himself to the point of puking as he runs around a track. He’s afraid of failing, of not meeting his parents’ expectations. And he’s afraid of losing the girl he loves.

But he knows he’s going to.

“Oh my god,” I whisper. The memories seem to be as much mine as Iris’s. But how can that be? How can I know these things if Jake is from my sister’s past, not mine?

We have to find out what happened to you, Iris. It’s weird, but I feel like I’m a part of it somehow. What should we do?

Jake can help us, she says with certainty. Somehow, I know it.

“Someone else can help us, too,” I say aloud.

I can’t let Ty leave Silver Lake. Not until he tells me what he knows about my parents.



I call Silver Lake Studio Apartments’ office and ask the desk clerk if Ty checked out. When she says he hasn’t, I start making plans to slip away to see him. Mom doesn’t make it easy for me. She stays close all day, keeping an eye on me. In the evening, I lie and tell her I’m driving into town to meet Sylvie, and she insists on going along. I tell her no, and we have another argument that sizzles like the lightning splitting the sky outside.

When she forbids me to leave, I get so angry that I bolt upstairs to my bedroom, determined to grab my keys and go anyway. But the sight of my open laptop in the middle of the bed stops me short. The Winterhaven Chamber of Commerce site is up on the screen. Not again. Did I pull up the site earlier today? Did Iris do it?

Don’t leave. Look for Jake first, she pleads.

A crash of thunder rattles the windows and rain taps the roof as I settle in front of the computer. A search for “Jake Milano, Winterhaven, Massachusetts” produces a link to a store called Milano Lawn & Garden Center. The contact information doesn’t include any names, only a phone number and an email address.

The rain falls harder, transforming the windowpanes into wavering dark pools. I place my fingers on the keyboard, ready to send an email, but I don’t know what to say. So instead, I type Iris Winston into the search box, realizing that if my sister was a child prodigy violinist, articles might’ve been written about her. Nothing relevant appears, so I type: child prodigy violinists in the 1990s. Links fill the screen about child prodigies in general, about savants and extreme precocity in children, but nothing specific to Iris. I skim past a Wikipedia entry about a little boy in France, and another about an American girl I once saw featured on the news. I’m about to give up when, at the very bottom of the screen, the name Iris jumps out at me in a link to a YouTube video.

EXTRAORDINARY 6-YEAR-OLD VIOLINIST IRIS MARSHALL.

Marshall, not Winston. Disappointment swells in my chest, but curiosity makes me move the mouse over the link and click.

A still image of Iris—my Iris—standing on a stage backed by a blue velvet curtain appears. Her violin is poised beneath her chin, the bow touching the strings, her face the definition of concentration. My pulse rushes to catch up with my stampeding thoughts as I start the video and Iris begins to play. And when the performance ends, I can hardly sit still.

Iris is bursting with excitement, too. That was me, she says.

I stare at the screen. But our last name isn’t Marshall, it’s Winston.

It wasn’t then.

The sound of water running in the bathroom downstairs drifts up to me. I could feel Mom’s fear when she insisted I stay away from Ty. What does he know about her past that she doesn’t want me to find out?

Determined to get some answers, I type “Adam Marshall” into the computer. The links containing that name fill two screens. The mouse shakes as I position it over the first link and click. A photograph of a sprawling campus of one-story buildings in a landscaped setting appears. The sign at the entrance reads CELL RESEARCH TECHNOLOGY. A scan of the text beneath the picture explains that the place is some sort of lab in Boston—a bio-tech firm. Adam Marshall is listed as a lead research scientist, on staff from 1986 until 1994.

Iris shudders. There were animals in cages, and a man. The animals didn’t like him.

An uneasy feeling drifts over me, light as a cobweb, tangling me in its delicate snare. What man, Iris?

I can’t remember his name. . . . He scared me.

Sitting straighter, I look for photographs of the scientists and staff, hoping Iris will be able to identify the man she mentioned, but there aren’t any pictures. Closing out the site, I open the next link to an article in a scientific journal written in 1987 by Adam Marshall, Ph.D. When I catch sight of a small picture of the author to the right of the text, a cold fist squeezes my throat. Thick, dark hair without a speck of gray. Pale skin, unlined. No beard. Only the dark brown eyes are the same. They’re the gentle, curious eyes that belonged to the father I loved and trusted.

I shift to the text:



Studies involving specialized DNA technology . . . in my attempts to produce multiple exact genetic duplicates of endangered species . . . the benefits of taking the next step would need to be weighed against possible moral and ethical consequences. . . .



I start again at the beginning, trying to comprehend the meaning of what I’m reading. It seems impossible that Dad headed up a team of scientists at that Boston lab before I was born. That he oversaw a project to try to save animals from extinction by reproducing them genetically. But as I study the picture again, I know without a doubt it’s Dad. The same man who couldn’t stand to pull a thorn out of Cookie’s paw because he was afraid of hurting him.

Exiting the website and closing my laptop, I scoot off the bed and look for my bag but can’t find it. Deciding I must’ve left it by the front door, I go downstairs and see it tucked into the corner of the couch. I grab it and quickly peek in on Mom. She’s completely knocked out.

I take my raincoat from the closet by the door, put it on, and slip outside, pulling the hood over my head. The storm has eased, but raindrops still plop onto the slick fabric of my coat, and cool night air chills my cheeks as I let myself into Mom’s Blazer. The door clicks shut.

Without turning on the overhead light, I dig inside my bag for my keys, dumping the contents onto the seat, riffling through gum wrappers, receipts, pens, a pad of paper, my wallet. The keys aren’t there. And Dad’s van keys are on the same ring.

I bang my palms against the steering wheel. Mom must have them. She knew I wouldn’t stay away from Ty.

I go back inside and look through her purse, but don’t find my set or hers, either. In spite of the fact that she’s sleeping only inches away, I check her jacket pockets and peek inside her nightstand drawers. Finally, I search the kitchen. But the keys are nowhere to be found.

I’m so mad at Mom, it’s hard not to slam the door as I leave the cabin and take off on foot down the road toward Wyatt and Addie’s. With any luck, Addie will be asleep; she’s an early-to-bed, early-to-rise sort of person.

The fresh scents of damp earth and rinsed air swirl up as I walk. Silky meadow grass swishes as the breeze combs through it, and my boots make a soft, measured thump as I make my way up the road. I’d normally be comforted by the familiar smells and noises, but not tonight. I half expect an invisible hand to lunge out of the shadows and grab me, yanking me down to some cold, dark place. Iris, I’m afraid. Why do you think Dad and Mom changed their last name?

The same reason they ran away and came here.

Yes, I say. And I’m starting to think that had something to do with you. But what?

I sense her mulling over the question as I round the bend, breathing a sigh of relief when Wyatt’s house appears ahead. All of the windows are dark except the one in his bedroom. Trotting the rest of the way, I jump up to tap the pane, hearing the chatter of a voice on his television inside. “Wyatt, it’s me.” I wait, and a few seconds later, the blinds raise and his face appears. “Come outside.”

He lowers the blinds, and I walk around to the front of the house. As I’m climbing the stairs, Wyatt steps onto the porch, propping the screen door open with his shoulder. Addie’s orange cat, Big Betty, meows as she creeps out between his bare feet. She comes toward me, weaves around my ankles, her coat as soft as fog.

“You cut your hair,” I say.

Lamplight from the living room casts a glow around Wyatt’s bare shoulders. He looks different somehow. Older. Maybe because he isn’t wearing his hat. Or maybe it’s his expression—the way he’s looking at me. Wyatt can grow sideburns. I never noticed before. My pulse kicks up and my focus lowers as if drawn by gravity. I’ve seen Wyatt’s skinny white chest too many times to count. We spent almost every day of last summer and the summers before that swimming in the pond or splashing around in the creek. But tonight his chest doesn’t seem skinny as the shadows flicker across his skin. I’m suddenly feeling insanely awkward yet drawn to Wyatt at the same time, with him standing half-naked only a couple of feet away. But now’s not the time to be thinking such thoughts.

He pushes the screen door wider. “You want to come in?”

I shake my head. “I can’t.”

“What’s up?”

“Where do you want me to start?” I pause, struggling to find the right words. “I wish everything could be like it was before Dad died. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Wyatt steps closer, easing the screen door shut behind him. “What’s wrong, Lil?”

“I need to go to Silver Lake, but Mom hid all the keys. Will you take me?”

“Why’d she hide the keys?”

“She doesn’t want me to see Ty.”

Wyatt scowls, and after a drawn-out silence, he asks, “Is that why you want to go to town? To see him?”

“Yes, but not for the reason you think. He knows about Mom and Dad’s past and what really happened to Iris. I’m sure of it.”

“I thought your sister died of leukemia.”

“That’s what Mom said.”

“And you don’t believe her?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

Wyatt exhales loudly. “I’m sorry, Lil, but I’m on your mom’s side. Why would you trust what Collier says over her? I mean, the guy threatened your dad. He’s up to something.”

“Mom’s lying, and I think he knows why. I’ve tried calling and texting him, but he won’t answer.”

“Why can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“He’s leaving in the morning.” I step closer. “Please, Wyatt? I’ve got to talk to him before he goes, or I may never figure this out.”

Scrubbing his hand through his hair, he says, “Come on, Lil. Don’t do this to me. Let me take you home. I’ll get my keys.”

As he’s turning toward the door, I place my hand on his arm to stop him. “If you think I want to see Ty for any other reason, you’re totally wrong.”

I wait for him to give in and say he’ll take me, but Wyatt doesn’t budge.

“Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked you. I’m sorry, Wyatt.” I turn and take the steps down into the yard.

“Wait up,” Wyatt calls after me. “I said I’d drive you home.”

“That’s okay,” I say in a matter-of-fact tone. “I’m not going home.”

“You’re walking into town? In the dark? That’s crazy! It’ll take over two hours.”

“I’ll be fine,” I say, then take off at a jog.



I slow my pace the second I’m out of sight of Wyatt’s house. An owl hoots from a nearby tree. A coyote howls in the distance and a second one answers the call. Frogs croak in the murky rain water in a gulley at the side of the road.

I press on for at least ten minutes before deciding Wyatt was right about walking to Silver Lake being insane.

Stopping in the middle of the road, I lean my head back and scream as loud as I can, hoping it’ll make me feel better. It doesn’t.

I spin on my heel and start toward home, crunching gravel beneath my boots. But, I’ve only taken a few steps when I hear the rumble of a motor moving closer, then the faint sound of music. Headlights glimmer in the trees beyond the bend, and then I recognize the old Kings of Leon song that’s playing. They used to be Wyatt’s favorite band before they “sold out and went commercial,” as he always says.

I move to the side of the road and wait. When Wyatt reaches me, he pulls to a stop and lowers the volume. “Okay, you win,” he calls out the window. “I’ll take you to town.”

Jogging around to the passenger door, I get in. Wyatt’s wearing his usual hat now, yet in so many ways he still doesn’t seem like the same guy I knew a month ago. Or even last week.

“Why do you have to make everything so difficult?” he says, clearly put out with me.

“I know. I’m sorry.” I cross my arms and settle in.

“Coyotes prowl after dark; you know that. There’ve been, like, thirty incidents of people getting attacked.”

“Thirty people have been attacked this year?” I say, sending him a startled glance.

Watching the road, he says through gritted teeth, “No, not this year. Period.”

“In the entire history of the world?” I smother a laugh. “Gee, that’s enough to scare the crap out of me.”

“That’s only reported attacks,” he says, sounding defensive.

I hide my smile. The cab of the truck smells like corn chips and dirty gym socks. Crushed fast-food wrappers litter the space on the floorboard around my feet. I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m happy to be sitting in the familiar mess alongside Wyatt, but I am.

“This better be really important,” he mutters.

“It is. Thanks for caring whether or not I’m eaten by a coyote.” On impulse, I reach across the seat for his hand.

Wyatt tenses and I pull my hand back, realizing my mistake. He’s still not over catching me with Ty. Eager to fill the silence, I tell him about everything I’ve learned since the last time we talked.

His eyes widen. “And you think Collier knows something about all this?”

“He must. I mean, there’s the confrontation he had with Dad, and then his argument with Mom today. Not to mention how desperate she seems to keep us apart. And the theories about Mom and Dad’s past he came up with when we were looking at the stuff in the chest . . . it almost seemed like he was trying to lead me toward something he already knew.”

Wyatt squints at the dark road with his lips pursed. It’s so quiet that I can almost imagine we’re hurtling through space, the last two people in the universe. The lights of Silver Lake appear ahead of us, twinkling like multicolored stars against the black canvas of night. “Where’s Collier staying?” he asks.

“In those pay-by-the-week apartments near the campus. I think they’re on Pine Street.”

“I know the place.”

I barely hear him over the pounding of my heartbeat.