Summer Shadows

They found him in bed; or where his bed had been. He hadn’t even woken up, hadn’t realized what was going on. The smoke had gotten to him first, they think, the real cause of death, not the violent flames that had turned my home into nothing more than a pile of blackened wood and ashes.

I had clung to James Dreyton like a life raft as they delivered the news, a constant stream of tears pouring down my cheeks as I cried myself hoarse. All I could do was watch as the remains of my home was reduced to nothing but a smoldering pile of rubble. The source of the fire would take a little time to determine—if done so at all, they said.

I was set in the passenger seat of James’s car as the smoke billowed into the dark night sky while he and Officer Calton exchanged words, occasionally tossing glances towards the car. I could only stare at what had been my house, exhausted and wide awake at the same time, overflowing with a pain I had only recently let go of. No matter how many times I prayed for it to be a bad dream, closed my eyes and hoped to open them to the sun pouring in my room, it didn’t happen. It was a waking nightmare, this was life, crueler than I could have imagined.

Every time I closed my eyes it was a new wave of screaming pain. I saw my father’s face behind my eyes; I heard the cruel words I had never apologized for in my mind, taunting and tormenting.

Why me? Why him? Why is this happening? Why?

Katie was at the Dreyton estate when we arrived, eyes red-rimmed and glassy. Without a word she pulled me from the car and into her arms. I did the only thing I could; I cried. Katie held me like James had earlier when I first received the news. She shushed and patted my head as I squeezed her tightly. I calmed down enough for her and James to lead me inside, get me to a bedroom where she sat with me while he stood just beyond the doorway making quiet phone calls.

I couldn’t sleep, I could only wonder if it was some kind of horrible joke. It couldn’t be real; he was only in his mid-fifties, not near old enough to be gone. He was supposed to retired, travel the world like grandpa currently was. We were supposed to make-up, I needed to apologize. He had to know I was sorry; it couldn’t end like this, it just couldn’t.

The night rolled on and James appeared less frequently, Katie dozed off at my side, hand wrapped around my own. I sat with my knees pulled to my chest, not moving, hardly blinking as I stared into the darkness of the room. Everything I loved was gone, all I had left was guilt and a dying heart.

I knew what was going to happen, and as the hours slipped by and daylight colored the room I was back to the state I had been just after I realized Simon was gone. I wanted nothing, I hardly moved, and sleep, oh sleep was a distant dream. My existence consisted of tears and silence, maybe a brief doze into a fitful nap of horrible, sob inducing dreams. Eating was nearly impossible. Nothing was appealing, almost everything was nauseating. It was a fight between myself and James or Katie—whoever was there at the moment, and they always lost. The hunger was nothing. Not compared to the bitter, ever-present ache in my chest.

I couldn’t help but tie Simon into it, this fresh pain brought back his memories, the aching sensation doubled, now paired with the loss of my father. My eyes squeezed shut while tears fell on more than one occasion as I sat in the large chair, knees hugged to my chest, silently wishing, begging for Simon’s return. I needed him then, I needed him more than I ever had, and he wasn’t there, he never would be, not anymore. He had promised he would always be there for me just before he left. That promise was shattered into a thousand pieces. He wasn’t there, he wasn’t there when I needed him the most.

It was the third morning after the fire I was forced to move. It was the day of my father’s funeral. Katie showed up especially early that morning. Together, her and James came to the chair by the window that I had taken up residence in.

“Maggie, sweetie, I’m going to need you to get up today. We’ve gotta get you ready,” Katie said gently, tugging me from my seat.

“Why?” My voice was lifeless and hollow as I turned my gaze to her. Her green eyes resonated a biting amount of pain before she quickly looked away.

My reply came from James. “Because it’s the day of the burial.”

I could feel my throat tighten at those words, that was it, that was what I had been dreading. It meant, just like it had with my mother, that he was gone for good. I barely managed a nod, brushing past the two as I headed for the bathroom.

James had gotten Katie to go buy me a dress for the service. It was laid out on the bed when I came back in the room. I had spent the past few days in a series of t-shirts and shorts that had belonged to one of the Dreyton boys. I had tried not to think about just which one. It only made the pain that much worse.

Oliver Dreyton had been nowhere to be seen during my stay; apparently he had taken up residence at the family’s beach house. In some ways it was a slight relief, others, a strange added pain.

By the time I was ready James was waiting by the room’s door. He escorted me through the house and down the stairs. It was larger than I had realized, clean and empty, far too big for one man alone.

Outside we got into his car, and I took notice of something that was missing. “Where’s Katie?”

“She had to go home. She was sorry, but there really wasn’t another option. She stayed as long as she could. Don’t worry, you’ll see her again soon,” He stated.

“How?” I asked bleakly, realizing how genuinely alone I was at his words. Katie was gone, back to Tennessee for the summer. Dad was ripped completely from my life, the only parent I had, stolen from me by a haze of smoke and flames. What was I supposed to do? A knot formed in my throat at the thought of Simon. I was truly, genuinely on my own.

“Well, you’re not staying here, considering you have no place to go and no relatives to turn to at this point. Your only living grandparent is on a tour of Europe for a few months, and despite my best efforts I can’t get in touch with him. Maggie, believe me, I’ve tried,” James sighed as he pulled a hand through his salt-and pepper hair.

My heart felt like stone as his words filled my ears. Orphaned, I was an orphan now.

The scenery rolled by, cast in the dull light of a steely gray sky. We weren’t going to the graveyard I visited so frequently during the past few months, no, this was the opposite direction. This was a graveyard I hadn’t seen in a while, the one in which my mother was buried in; and now the plot next to her would have an occupant and she at least would no longer be alone. My parents would be side-by-side again, where they belonged, where they were happiest. There was no stifling the next sob that filled my throat. Everything I had of them was now gone; every gift, every picture, every memento. The fire had consumed and destroyed it all. It had taken everything they ever gave me, save memories, and my name.

Blurred by my tears, the graveyard gates came into view. It as only then James Dreyton spoke again.

“After the service, we’ve got a short time before we need to be at the airport. Our flight leave two hours from the time it’s over.”

The car came to a halt as I found myself staring in a haze of confusion and tears towards the man with the startling blue eyes.

“What?” I croaked.

He undid his seatbelt. “I’ve arranged for you to stay at the summer home, with Oliver and myself. You’ve got nowhere else to go; besides I’m beginning to think if you stayed here it would slowly kill you. There’s too much pain, too much misery in the memories you’ve got here. You need to get away, you need to get better. How do you think my son would feel if he could see you right now?”

I didn’t have to think too hard, the image sprung forth nearly immediately; the crystal clear blue eyes focused on me with an immeasurable amount concern and fear. The cool sensation of his fingers in my hair; his voice telling me everything was going to be okay.

“You didn’t have to say that,” I stated quietly.

“Didn’t I? I don’t think you would have listened to me any other way.” He opened his car door, stepping out into the cemetery. I dropped my head back against the headrest, exhausted and overwhelmed. He was right, and I knew it.

It was also how I knew that for once, I was completely broken. Once I had fight, the will to stand up for myself, for what I wanted. Where was that now? Stuffed in a coffin to be lowered into the ground in less than an hour.

***

I took a sleeping pill on the way to the airport. Planes had never been something I handled too well. They made me nervous and highly uncomfortable. It wasn’t just that, though. And the funeral was something I wanted to forget, free from my mind. But I couldn’t just make it go away, so sleep seemed like the best alternative at the time, besides, nights of sleeplessness had left me slightly delirious, I decided. I hoped.

That was the only explanation I could offer for seeing things—or people—that should be there. Unisom’s promise of a dreamless sleep seemed too good to pass up.

I was trying not to doze as we boarded the plane, taking our seats in first class. I was also trying not to think of the burial, and the face I thought I had seen through the trees, or between the gaps in the crowd for quick, half-a-second flashes. Sometime after the shaky takeoff, I fell asleep; shutting out the image, shutting out my father’s burial, shutting out the pain that seemed so horribly inescapable.

Maybe James was right; maybe I needed to get away. Maybe those shadows I saw from the corner of my eye would go away then.

James nudged me awake when we landed, and I looked out the window groggily, for the first time realizing I had no idea where exactly we were. He grabbed our bags from the overhead compartment, which consisted of his leather laptop tote and my purse. The latter of which held a dead cellphone, some makeup, nail polish, my tape recorder, and my keys. All I could truly lay claim to, and the keys if anything useless given my car was still back in Rhode Island.

I followed James off the plane and through the airport, half awake as he took off his coat and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt; I gave him a briefly puzzled glance before yawning, and focusing again on nothing in particular but the avoidance of painful thoughts.

“You’ll probably want to lose that sweater; the plane might have been chilly but the humidity around here isn’t very forgiving. You’ll be sweating before you’re three steps out the door,” He warned.

My eyebrows scrunched together as I hesitantly heeded his advice, peeling off the thin sweater, leaving my arms exposed by the sleeveless black dress. The glass doors slid open and we stepped outside; it didn’t take long before I felt just what he was referring to. The air was heavy, almost wet, sticky and hot. Almost immediately I felt the sweat forming on the back of my neck, pieces of hair sticking to my skin as I trailed behind James towards a line of black sedans. That was under a covered area; I didn’t want to think about how miserable it was in the actual sun. Wherever we were, I could already tell the weather and I weren’t going to get along.

James got us a ride with one of the few drivers of the pricy black cars, and before I knew it we were clambering in the backseat of the luxury car and on our way out of the airport.

“Where are we?” I asked drowsily, noting the high amount of old battered pick-up trucks that seemed to roll by as we hit the interstate.

“South Carolina. The family’s house is in Charleston on the Isle of Palms; trust me, once we get down to the coast the weather isn’t near as muggy. There’s a fantastic ocean breeze that helps keep things a bit fresher.”

The car lapsed back into silence as we continued our trek towards the destination, my eyes drifted shut again as I dozed off. The Unisom called for eight hours of sleep; I certainly hadn’t gotten near that much on the plane. James’ phone was abuzz with messages, mail, and calls as we drove on; he spoke quietly in attempts not to wake me I think, yet at that point I hovered in some strange in between, and I don’t think it could have been avoided. My mind was too alive, boiling with images and truths I didn’t want to deal with; my father’s death, the face in the window, what I had seen at the funeral. My stomach bottomed out as I tried to suppress the images from the graveyard.

It hadn’t been the condolences from friends, clients, and coworkers that hand upset me, I barely felt anything at their words, they seemed hollow, unable to fully comprehend just what it was I had lost, just what I was going through. I remembered Simon’s words the first time we met, how horribly true they seemed to ring right then. It was just a bunch of half-assed bullshit for appearance mostly; sure there was some pity in there, but what about concern? Aside from James and Katie, I honestly didn’t recall seeing genuine concern on a single face since my father’s death. But pity, oh, pity was everywhere. That was the only genuine feeling to come from a funeral by the hands of those not directly related to the deceased; pity for the dead; pity for who they left behind. I didn’t want their pity; in fact I didn’t want anything from them.

I wasn’t going to get any sleep in the car, and the realization finally sunk in when my nostrils where met with an atrocious smell I couldn’t block out. I was awake, and drowsily I opened my eyes to find that beyond the window lay a large bridge over a steady flow of water that led to the ocean. At the water’s side out my window were two tall white towers hovering over some kind of factory, white smoke billowed from both of them. I scrunched my nose in disgust. When being introduced to a new city, having the first smell to greet you be that of a paper mill doesn’t leave the area to seem very promising.

James cleared his throat. “Ah, that smell won’t last long.”

I found myself praying not as we began to cross the bridge; one that I found would seem never-ending. As we approached the far end of the bridge the waterway turned into a marsh, heavy with tall waving grass and pools of muddy, murky water. I assumed it must be low tide, given the ground showing appeared to be made entirely of brown mush that held the place of solid ground. It wasn’t pretty, and I imagined it didn’t smell much better than the paper mill.

As we crossed into a place called Mount Pleasant I realized the family’s home would lie on one of the outer islands of the county. My logic was proven true as we approached another bridge that promised to take us to Sullivan’s Island.

“Is that where we’re going?” I nodded at the sign.

He looked up and over, light blue eyes barely glancing at the sign before they turned back to the phone in his hand.

“No, not quite. It’s the island after this, the Isle of Palms.”

Weren’t they just creative with their names.

“Ah,” I cleared my throat, groggily looking beyond James, towards the late afternoon sun and the glittering water that seemed to be flowing rapidly from the inlet. It was beautiful, and undoubtedly as swiftly as the water appeared to be moving from between the rocky shores of Sullivan’s Island and the calm sands of the Isle of Palms, quite dangerous.

The car took a right once over the bridge and into a small town-like area, adorned with palm trees, of course. Within thirty seconds it had taken a left down one of the smaller side-roads, and before long we hit the end of it, taking another right before swinging into the driveways of one of the beachfront homes. The car rolled to a halt as I stared out the window and up at the house before me.

“Welcome to your home for the summer, Maggie.” James said of the three stories of pure white before me. I slowly stepped out of the car, still tired, but utterly awed by the house. Huge; massive, strikingly beautiful as it towered a story over the two houses that bordered it. We ignored the garage doors, going for the stairs that led to a porch with eloquently designed glass double doors. We stepped through, and James motioned me from the parlor to the left.

We entered a room basked almost purely in beige; I slowly stepped through the doorway, unable to focus for too long on one thing alone. There was a pale couch pressed against the back wall, a low glass coffee table in front of it. White columns that doubled as decorative tables sat in the corner by the couch, next to a door through which I could see a black-and-white set kitchen. Further up in the room two more of the columns both held white orchids in tall glass vases on either side of a large double window draped in sheer off-white curtains. To it’s right was a door that could only lead outside. I was standing before the window before I had realized it.

Outside, beyond the glass framed by the crème draperies that bordered it the grass of the sand dunes waved in the ocean breeze. The sky was splotched with gray clouds, illuminated by the still sinking sun behind them, left the land faded tint; peaceful, hinting at an eerie delicacy, it gave of a feeling I had never associated with a summertime beach trip. Perhaps it was the circumstances under which it could be attributed to, though. The vague hollow feeling that had been a mere rip in my being pulled much more weight now, barely anything but emptiness seemed to register. My father’s death had certainly been the final straw. It had pulled any ability to feel positive emotions into a bottomless vortex of no return. Now it just seemed easier to be neutral, to null feelings without even trying.

“Maggie, if I may, before your father died, I actually had another pretense for bringing you here.” Those words pulled my eyes to James Dreyton. I waited.

“It wasn’t about you inheriting the company either,” He sighed, rubbing his forehead as he avoided my gaze. “Actually, there’s—“

“Dad, finally, took you long enough. Did you stop by the store on the way in and pick up some batteries? None of the remotes in this house work.” A voice haunting enough to linger in my dreams, a voice I hadn’t actually heard in months rang through the room with shocking clarity. The void that for the past few days had held control of my emotional capabilities wavered slightly; curiousity and anticipation springing to life as my head jerked in the direction it had come from; the archway of a hall I had yet to explore.

Enter a boy through the mahagony opening with tanning skin carrying himself into our presence with an assured stride. Crowning his head was a mop of curls, blonde to a point they were almost white dangling slightly in front a pair of rectangular, thin black-rimmed glasses. Behind them sat a pair of eyes that caused my heart to jump into my throat, vivid, icy baby blues, cold enough to freeze over the hottest depths of hell. Those eyes stopped moving suddenly, frozen on the spot where I stood next to the room’s ocean-facing window. My own were utterly fixated on him, not quite sure if what I was seeing was real. My deranged dreams of the past few months were nothing compared to that though. I could feel the beating of my heart quicken, beating so much I was certain it would bust right out of my chest.

“No, sorry. I do need to go to the store though,” James replied with a calmness I knew I wouldn’t have been able to manage. “Oh, this is Maggie, son, since you haven’t met her, and Maggie, if you didn’t guess already, this is Oliver.”

Oliver.

That couldn’t have been the right name. It echoed in my mind, feeling more than a little incorrect. There was no way that was the right name, he meant Simon, didn’t he?

His eyes; it was something about his eyes. I wasn't even quite sure what. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe it was because he was a carbon copy of the boy who had followed me around for weeks on end; the one I had fallen for without meaning to. Of course he was gone; there was nothing that could be done about that. I still heard his voice in my sleep. I still saw his face in my dreams. He was inescapable; as were most things these days. But this, this was not Simon. I had to keep telling myself that as I watched him from beside the curtains. I watched him as he watched me. I hadn’t even noticed James had slipped quietly from the room, leaving the two of us alone in a silent stare-off.

"So you’re Maggie.” He stated. There was a prickle in my stomach at the tone of his voice. It was cautious, laced with something that wasn't friendly, or kind. It was distant, stand-offish. I nodded, fingers running along the gentle fabric of the curtains. This was the most I had felt in nearly a fortnight; and it was completely misplaced. I knew it was. But what could I do? It was like the ghost from my past was standing not three yards away; it was like a fantasy turned to real life. This wasn't who I wanted it to be. The boy with the pale curls dangling lightly in front of his glasses, the slightly tanned skin from the southern coastal sun. This wasn't Simon; this was Oliver. I had to remember that.

I also had to remember he probably held me accountable for the loss of at least his mother, perhaps his brother if James had told him, and he had believed the strange tale. I had led to the end of his mother, a woman who despite her bitter, horrifying cruelty had held a special place in her heart for him. I remembered the way she had spoken of Oliver, the favoritism that always had shone through. This was her boy; and I had lead to the death of his mother. The apparent distance and possible disdain seemed more plausible, yet still hard to process. Identical twins, the boy of the two who had lived, and reminded me so painfully of his dead, beloved brother.

“Sorry to hear about your father,” He said, tone of voice unreadable.

“It’s…” My voice trailed off. What? Fine? Was I going to say it’s fine? Because it wasn’t. It was so very far from it. At age nineteen I was now void of both parents, with nowhere to turn but a man whose life I had nearly destroyed months earlier. I couldn’t cling to James Dreyton forever, even though it was apparent he would support me while I trained to replace him. He wasn’t related to me. I had ended his wife; I had revealed what a horrible person she was to the world; I had shattered his family. He was down one son and a wife, because of me. Simon as gone, all because of me. I felt a knot forming in my chest; emotions I’d tried to bury for so long were bursting at the seams, trying to get out.

“Sorry, but I’ve got something to do. Dad should be back in a little while if you need anything. Kitchen and most everything else is free to use as you please.”

He turned without a smile, without even a second glance and left me standing alone in the bright living room. Shades of white and crème surrounded me. Outside the world seemed to match on a duller scale. Things were beginning to hurt again.

I moved lethargically towards the couch, curling up in a corner once I reached it and buried my head in my legs. Seeing Oliver was enough to rip the door off my closed emotions, brining flashes of everything I wanted so desperately to forget to the forefront of my mind. The phone call that changed my life a mere three days earlier; the last image of Simon’s eyes before he left me, before he saved me; my father’s coffin about to be lowered into the ground. It was all there, burning like hot coals in my chest, searing my heart and soul.

Somewhere in the house I heard a door close. I could feel the stinging tears welling up as I sat there, alone. My home was gone; and this wasn’t anything close. This was meant to be an escape, a place to heal. But I didn’t know just how well that would work, if it would work at all. How could I, with a boy who was the twin of the one I had lost kept in such close quarters? How could I forget any of the pain that had come crashing into me like a tidal wave over the past five months?