The Last Dreamwalker, page 7
He reared back as if struck and stared at her, eyes narrowed. He pointed at the nearly healed bruise on her face. “Really? That’s nothing? And that in there, that’s nothing too?” he said sharply, jerking his arm in the direction of the house.
“No,” she yelled. “No, the dreams aren’t nothing. They’re…”
“Layla, I don’t care!” He held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t give a good goddamn what they are, okay? I don’t want to hear about your crazy dreams. Jesus Christ…!”
He slammed his fist down onto the garbage can, denting the top, and she gasped.
“I’m sick to death of it, okay? Sick of it! Aren’t you sick of it?” He glared at her, then seemed to deflate. “Jesus, Lay! This is just so seriously messed up. We’re not kids anymore.”
He stared at her in silence, his expression a mix of sadness and anger. Most of the time he pretended that her … problem … didn’t exist, but when he was forced to acknowledge it, when it smacked him full in the face …
“You need to see something,” she said, blinking back tears. He shook his head as she walked to the car and snatched the Aunts’ envelope from the front seat.
“Here,” she said, holding the envelope out toward him. “I dreamed about this woman. In my dream she was talking about Ainsli Green.”
“Who the hell is Ainsli Green?” He frowned at the envelope.
“I have no idea,” she admitted. “But, Will, there’s a picture in here of the woman who attacked me in my dream.” She pointed to her face. “And when I woke up Mom’s room was trashed.”
She shook the envelope at him.
“What is that?” asked Will, staring at it.
“The Aunts gave me this before they left.” She forced it into his hands.
Slumping back into the lounge chair, she crossed her arms and waited. Will held the envelope for a long moment, then, with an exasperated sigh, opened it. Layla watched as he pulled out the yellowing newspaper clipping and studied it.
“I don’t … what is all this?” he asked, frowning. “The Aunts gave you this? Why?”
She shrugged, chewing on a strand of hair.
“You didn’t read it?”
She shook her head. The shock of the photo still vibrated beneath her skin. She’d been too unnerved to examine the envelope’s contents further.
“It’s a place,” said her brother after a moment. “Ainsli Green is a place. The name of an old rice plantation. On Scotia Island.”
She squinted at him. “Where?”
“Scotia Island. It’s a Sea island. One of those islands off the Carolina and Georgia coasts.” He studied the piece of paper in his hand.
She’d heard of them, barely. “Like Hilton Head?”
“Like Hilton Head.” He smiled slightly. “Only smaller, I think, if I’m reading this right. Way smaller.”
She blinked. “O … kay. So?”
He pulled the rest of the papers from the envelope and spread them on the garage floor, kneeling as he arranged them in two rows. As he read, Layla watched his expressions cycle rapidly between disbelief, confusion, then back again.
“What?” she asked, finally. “What is it?”
“Oh my god!” he murmured. He rocked back on his heels, blinking up at her. “It’s yours!”
“What?” She frowned, confused. “What’s mine?”
“The island! The plantation! Or whatever’s left of it, belongs to you!” He held a wrinkled jumble of papers out toward her.
She want to take Ainsli Green? Not never!
She gave a sharp laugh. “I don’t … what? What are you talking about?”
“This!” Will was on his feet. He shook the papers in her face. “This is a deed. To the plantation. To the island.”
He dropped the documents in her lap. Dense lines of legalese blurred together, but there, near the bottom of one of the pages, was her name: Layla Elise Hurley, dated October 31, on the year she’d turned seven.
Aunt Jayne had said that the envelope contained her inheritance. “But why?” she asked. “Why would I have a deed to an island?”
“You remember Granny Bliss?” Will was quickly scanning the other documents on the floor.
“No.” She shook her head.
There was a picture of her mother’s mother in the living room: a handsome, older woman with a square face and open, friendly eyes. Her mother rarely spoke of her, but more than once Layla had caught her staring at the picture, hands clenched tight at her side.
“Oh, right,” he said. “Well, Granny Bliss had a twin sister named…” He shuffled through the papers on the garage floor. “Mercy. She had a twin sister named Mercy. They both inherited Scotia Island, which apparently has been passed down through the family for generations. Granny Bliss deeded her half to Mom. Mom deeded it to you. And voila! You own an island.”
“So, Granny Bliss had an island that she willed to Mom, who then willed it to me?” The words sounded ridiculous to her ears.
Will peered at another tattered document.
“Well, technically half a plantation and half an island. The other half is owned by Mercy’s daughter. A Charlotte Fortenberry. So, our second? Third cousin?”
He squinted as he did the calculations in his head, but Layla had stopped listening. She was staring at the photo of the woman on the garage floor. She bent to pick it up. Her brother leaned to look over her shoulder.
“Damn.” He gave a low whistle. “That sister looks like she eats glass for breakfast.”
Layla said nothing as she studied the picture. The same chocolate-brown face. The same piercing eyes and wide, unsmiling mouth from the dream.
Charlotte Fortenberry. Their distant cousin.
“You’re rich, Lay.”
She forced her gaze from the photo and peered up at her brother. “What are you talking about?”
“This.” He shook the newspaper clipping in front of her face and pointed. “This says that developers have been trying to buy or find some way to take control of the island for years to build some sort of fishing or camping resort or something. Some luxury something or other. They’ve been offering millions. And half that island is yours now.”
Not never.
“And you are going to love this part.” He sounded amused.
“I doubt it,” she muttered.
“Part of the reason it hasn’t sold is that supposedly the island is cursed.”
She reared back. “It what?”
“Oh yeah, girl. That article? ‘The Mystery of Ainsli Green’? Well, seems that all kinds of wild, creepy stuff has been going on out there since … well, since forever. Folks disappearing, losing their minds. Every single time a developer even comes near to closing a deal on that island, some absolute craziness happens. Going back at least to the 1960s.” He grinned. “Man, this is awesome.”
She made a noise in the back of her throat and gripped the plastic arms of the lounge chair.
“Layla?”
She forced a smile through clenched teeth. “Yeah,” she managed to say. “Awesome.”
She stared at the smeary picture of the woman from her dreams. The woman that was her cousin.
6
Moonlight streamed through the living room window, bathing everything in a soft, milky light. The apartment smelled peculiar—yeasty and unpleasantly sweet—like something forgotten in the garbage pail. Layla screwed up her face. Whatever it was would be worse in the morning, but she was too exhausted to investigate, much less remedy the problem.
Without bothering to turn on any lights, she slogged toward the bedroom, grateful that during the morning’s cleaning frenzy she’d removed at least most of the obstacles on the floor. Sidestepping the basket of dirty laundry in the doorway, she flung herself facedown on the bed.
An island.
Her mother had bequeathed her an island.
Layla felt a pressure forming just above the bridge of her nose, signaling the onset of a headache. According to Will’s interpretation of the paperwork they’d read, she now shared ownership of this island with a distant cousin. The cousin she’d met in a dream a week ago and who had, for some unknown reason, attacked her.
“Jesus Christ, Mom,” she muttered, burying her face deep into her pillow. “Why couldn’t you just leave me your fur coat, or jewelry … like a normal person?”
An island.
Like so much else about her mother, it made absolutely no sense. Other than the fact that she’d grown up in South Carolina and was the youngest of three sisters, Layla knew next to nothing about her mother’s life before she’d left for college.
She often wondered what horrific thing could possibly have driven her mother to try so hard to erase that whole part of her life: her family, her past.
But an island.
Even in the face of her mother’s determination to obliterate her beginnings, it seemed incomprehensible that she would have never mentioned owning a whole island. And why, if she was so bent on severing ties with her past, had she even held on to it all this time? Why not sell it? Or give it to the Aunts?
Layla frowned. The Aunts. The deed had specified that the island had belonged to her mother, to be passed to her. There’d been no mention of the Aunts. Why would her grandmother pass the island to only Elinor, the one daughter that had turned her back on her home, her family? Why not give it to her older daughters, the ones who’d stayed and lived their whole lives in Port Royal?
And for that matter, there’d been no mention of Will or Evan in the deed. Nothing about this made any sense.
Layla rolled onto her back with a groan. The air in the apartment was warm and thick. Her skin felt sticky and damp. She could smell herself. The pressure in her head grew as the questions continued to swirl, bumping up against each other.
Why had the Aunts been so mysterious about all of this? Surely the island and who owned it was no secret. At least … she could think of no good reason why it should have been.
And what was all that talk about being the last? The last what? Remembering the look that had passed between the sisters as Aunt Therese pushed the packet into her hands, she felt a shiver of unease.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered.
She jerked upright on the bed and clutched her hair in her fists. It felt damp and gritty.
She and Will had spent the better part of an hour combing through the articles in the folder about the strange happenings surrounding the island. One told of a developer driving his car into the Port Royal Sound in the middle of the night and drowning. Two other developers had gone bankrupt, one after burning down half his company’s million-dollar properties on another high-end resort island. Most recently, five years before, the banker financing the buying of properties out on the Sea Islands had simply vanished, leaving a wife and four children.
“Jesus Christ!” she said again.
She shivered and blew out a frustrated breath. Aunt Therese had said there’d be questions. Well, she’d been right about that. Her head was near to exploding with questions. With effort, Layla forced herself to her feet and headed toward the shower.
* * *
She peered into the refrigerator. Nothing inside had changed since the last time she’d looked.
And the time before that.
And the half dozen times before that.
There was half of a salmon casserole, two bags of whole coffee beans, a pint of creamer, a partially eaten protein bar, and a container of expired cottage cheese. She closed the door again and drifted into the living room.
She paced the small apartment, picking up pen and sketch pad then putting them down again. She’d been on edge since leaving her mother’s the day before yesterday, restlessness chafing at her skin like a rash. Her brothers had been calling, but she let the calls drop into voicemail. She knew she would have to call them back eventually, unless she wanted Will or Chuck to show up and start pounding on her door.
But not today.
Probably not tomorrow.
But eventually.
She caught her ankle on the purple picnic chair and swore. What had she been thinking? She was never going to sketch it. It would never become anything beautiful or interesting. It was always going to be exactly what it was now, an ugly thing, useless and out of place. She kicked it, hard, watching as it bounced off the bookcase, then fell—in slow motion—onto its side.
A strangled cry escaped Layla’s throat and she grabbed her car keys and purse; the only thought in her mind was to go … somewhere, anywhere. Halfway out the door, she pivoted and, reaching into the apartment, grabbed the purple chair. Hoisting it high on her waist, she headed for the car.
She drove aimlessly, weaving in and out of traffic on I-95, the chair bumping against the back of her seat whenever she braked. When she saw the sign for the Beltway leading into Washington, she was only slightly surprised. Rush hour traffic was just starting to congeal on the freeway as she took the exit for her mother’s house. By the time she pulled up, the sun was low in the sky, golds and oranges reflecting off the trees and rooftops.
In the two weeks since her mother’s funeral, she’d spent more time on this street than she had in the whole year before. She was tired. The pills seemed to be losing some of their magic. There’d been no sharp-edged, confusing dreams, but these past few nights, in the hours before dawn, she found herself wide awake, sweat soaked, heart racing, feeling as if there was something she needed to do, but not knowing what.
And now, here she was, sitting in her mother’s driveway. From the driver’s seat, she watched the house, feeling oddly safe there in the waning daylight, less lonely—in a way that she hadn’t in all the time she’d lived in this house.
A girl rode by on her bike, her long, blond hair streaming behind her from beneath her bicycle helmet. She gave a quick wave as she passed. Layla didn’t recognize her but waved back anyway.
Across the street, a teenager was driving a riding mower around the Pryors’ yard, carving concentric circles in the lush lawn. Layla laughed softly. Her brothers had mowed the lawn for their neighbor for years. Mr. Pryor was very particular about his grass. He wasn’t going to like those circles one bit.
Up and down the street, American flags fluttered from porches. Layla’d forgotten all about the upcoming holiday. The Hurleys had always put out a flag too. It was probably still in the basement in one of the boxes she and Will had yet to sort through. She wondered if it would be odd to hang it this year, now that no one lived here. She turned back to her mother’s house. It had always been her mother’s house, not her parents’ house, not her house, her mother’s house.
She pushed open the car door and strode up the drive, moving fast, before she could change her mind. This time, she went directly to the back door.
The last of the day’s sun poured into the kitchen through the window over the sink. Her mother’s scent still lingered in the air, and she wondered how long that would last. Maybe it would smell like her mother until the house was completely emptied out. Maybe even after that. Maybe forever.
“Mom?” she called softly. She held her breath, listening. “Mom?”
Tears pricked at her eyes, and she brushed them roughly away. Her mother would be so pissed off that she was dead. The thought made her laugh, though the sound came out as a choked sob. Jaw clenched, she walked slowly through the house, opening cabinets and drawers, peering into closets looking for …
She didn’t know what she was looking for. The muffled sound of the riding mower came to her from outside, mingling with the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer and the low hum of the refrigerator.
In front of her mother’s room, she came to a stop. The door was closed, and she pressed her face against it, the wood cool against her cheek. For a long moment she stood like that, then, steeling herself, opened it.
The jewelry box was once again on the dresser where it belonged, her mother’s clothes arranged neatly in the closet. The only sign that the room had ever been other than how her mother left it was a small crease in the bedside lampshade. She felt a hot stab of embarrassment at the realization that Will must have come back at some point and put the room back together. She tugged at her hair, found a loose strand, and began to twist it. He wouldn’t bring it up again, she was certain of that, but he would never forget either. It would become just one more thing for him to file away about her. To confirm for him that there really was something wrong with her.
Folded neatly in a basket at the foot of the bed was a red woolen shawl. She pulled it out and pressed it against her face. It was what her mother threw around her shoulders to run out to retrieve the newspaper from the end of the drive on damp days. What she wrapped herself in to watch television or sit at the kitchen table reading the paper on winter mornings. Layla wrapped it around her shoulders, then crawled into her mother’s bed. It wasn’t lost on her that the last time she’d curled up in this bed had been after her father died.
She was thirteen when the two policemen came to the front door to tell them there’d been an accident at the pharmacy her father owned: that her father wasn’t coming home ever again. Her mother had grabbed hold of the front door handle and hung on. It had taken Mrs. Calhoun and one of the policemen to pry her hands loose. That was when the front door lock began to stick.
If her mother said anything after that, Layla didn’t remember it. She’d turned away from the policeman and Mrs. Calhoun and grabbed Layla’s hand, dragging them both into her bed. She remembered her mother gripping her hand so hard that she could feel the bones grinding against each other, but she hadn’t pulled away. She lay there next to her mother, neither of them speaking, her mother hanging on to her hand the same way she’d hung on to that door handle.
When her brothers came home the next day, her mother hadn’t made her get up. Without a word, she climbed from the bed and wrapped her in Daddy’s cardigan—the ratty green one he wore all the time, the one her mother hated—then left her alone. For two days Layla lay there, seemingly forgotten by everyone. She lay, wrapped in her father’s sweater, sleeping, dreaming dreams of Daddy covered in sawdust, of the way his toffee brown skin burned at the beach, his deep belly laugh.
