Blue Moon Bay (28 page)

Maybe that was why I'd had the dream. I was worried about him.

Maybe my dream was a warning. If Clay was mixed up in something, he could be keeping Blaine in the dark, just like all the rest of us. . . .

Stop,
I told myself as I stumbled back to the door, my legs clumsy and uncooperative.
Stop letting your imagination get the best of you. Just go make sure everything's okay up at the house. It's probably fine.

While I was up there, I'd leave a note in my brother's room, tell him we needed to talk before he left in the morning. Period.

An icy, watery wind slipped in the door as I opened it, the sharp sensation slicing away the last remnants of sleep with one quick stroke. Roger was standing between the cottage and the barn. He remained motionless, silent as I walked out.

“Roger?” My voice was hoarse, but the sound rebounded against the buildings and the frost-tipped woods.

Roger glanced my way, growled, then walked toward the center of the yard, out of view. Tugging my coat tighter around myself, I crossed the porch, moved down the steps, and instantly felt the cold ground penetrating my shoes. “Roger?” I called again. “Roger?”

A chill pressed over me, but it had nothing to do with the temperature outside. A branch crackled in the woods, and I had that eerie feeling again—the one that told me someone was nearby, watching. Fine hairs rose on my skin as Roger's barking drew me around the end of the cottage, until I could see the lower half of the yard. Roger was waiting halfway down the hill, near the ring of light from a gas lamp. He looked at me, barked, then turned toward the big house, barking twice more. A gust of wind whipped off the lake, driving me backward a step before I moved into the open, checked the main house, and then began a slow, visual sweep of the yard. Nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe Roger had spotted a possum or a raccoon marauding in the trash cans or . . .

Near the center of the gas lamp's glow, I saw what Roger wanted me to see: Clay's truck was there in the yard, not more than a hundred feet from the lakeshore. It rested at an odd angle, high-centered on the fig tree, the driver's side door hanging slightly ajar, the dome light giving the branches an eerie luminosity. I looked back and forth toward the house, scanned the set of tire tracks in the frost.

No wonder Roger was barking. Apparently Clay's truck had somehow rolled off the edge of the driveway and gone rogue. It seemed to be empty, and there was no sign of activity around it—no tracks other than Roger's. Maybe the impact had caused the door to pop open on its own?

Roger followed me to the truck and around the back of it, stood waiting as I checked the cab, then leaned over to look underneath. The Ladybug was beached like a whale on a sand bar, and it didn't look like it was going any farther without the help of a tow truck or maybe a crane to extricate it from the remains of the scraggly fig tree. Closing the door, I looked up the hill again. The windows in the house were dark, everyone apparently having slept right through the Ladybug's midnight rampage. Really, it was pure luck that it hadn't ended up in the lake.

Catching Roger's collar, I rubbed between his ears, feeling like I owed him an apology. He'd actually had a good reason for rousing me. Nothing could be done about this mess tonight, but it would be quite the source of family conversation in the morning. The uncs would have an exciting tale to share with all their buddies at the Waterbird. “Good boy,” I told Roger. “You're a good boy. C'mon, let's go back inside now.” Giving the Ladybug one last perplexed glance, I started toward the cottage.

Roger twisted against my grip, pulling backward and shaking his head, trying to wiggle out of the collar.

“Roger, stop!” I dragged him a little farther.

He yipped and fought like an animal possessed, squealing and gagging when the collar twisted tight. The chain pinched my finger, and I let go out of reflex. Roger was gone in an instant, bolting through the dim circle of light and disappearing on the other side of the truck. His insistent barking beckoned me to follow, and as I circumvented the vehicle my mind flashed back to the dream, to the chapel steps, each one bringing me closer to knowing what was inside the coffin, to seeing something I didn't want to see.

In front of the truck, Roger was sniffing the ground, digging at a mound of dirt, or trash, or . . . something . . . No, not trash . . . clothing . . . a coat . . .

I squinted, trying to make out the mass in shadow. Someone was lying face down in the frosty grass. . . .

My heart flipped unevenly. “Clay?” I ran the last few steps. A soft moan stirred the frosty air as I dropped to my knees.

“Clay!” I gasped, rolling him over, supporting his head. My fingers touched something warm and wet . . . blood?

“Clay, what happened?” Leaning closer, I searched for answers, thinking of the day I'd found him on the settee in the parlor, crashed after his all-nighter with Amy. Maybe he wasn't just tired that day, either. Maybe he'd passed out. Had he come home tonight not fully within his faculties, passed out in his truck, and let it roll down the hill? Had he hit his head when the truck crashed, or afterward when he was trying to get out? “Oh, Clay,” I whispered. If not for the fig tree, he could have ended up in the lake. He
would
have ended up in the lake. I'd be calling the police right now, watching them pull my brother's body from the frigid water. . . .

“I'll go get help.” I moved the hood of his jacket so that I could lay his head on it. His hand flailed clumsily, catching my arm just above the wrist. His fingers were as cold as the frost-tipped grass, barely able to cling.

“Nnn-no,” he whispered, his face hidden in the shadow my body cast over him. “Just . . . the cot . . . cot-tage.”

“Clay, you need to be looked after. We need to call a doctor. You shouldn't try to get up until someone checks your neck.”

His grip tightened, and he shook violently. Rolling to the side, he pulled his knees under himself in an attempt to gain his feet. A violent cough racked his body, and his arms quivered inside his coat as he struggled to brace himself up.

“Unn-no, Hess . . . the cot . . . cot. . . tage. Just help . . . meeee . . .”

I understood his plea, even though I didn't want to. He was desperate to avoid having everyone else see him like this.

I knew it wasn't the best course of action, nor the safest, but I helped him up. Tremors wracked his body, and he swayed against me, leaning hard on my shoulders as we dragged trails in the frost, one unsteady, labored step, then another, across the hillside, the distance seeming an impossible barrier. In our wake, Roger followed quietly.

My lungs were burning by the time we reached the porch and climbed up. My knees buckled and shook under the strain of lifting Clay's weight up each step and then finally through the door. The night chill followed us inside, clinging to us, and I laid my brother on the couch, then went back and closed the door. Roger trailed me nervously as I opened the damper wide and grabbed the quilts from the bed, piling them on top of Clay. His face and hands were white, icy cold. Turning on the lights, I saw the blood-streaked hair on the side of his head and bent to check it. The cut wasn't that large, but it had bled quite a bit, and the flesh around it had swollen into a nasty lump. Roger sat beside Clay and watched with concern as I made an ice pack and wrapped it in a kitchen towel. Moaning, Clay rolled onto his side and curled into a ball, his body trembling when the towel touched his head.

“Shhh,” I soothed, looking under the towel, then carefully placing it back on my brother's hair. This wasn't an unfamiliar position for us. As a kid, Clay was always falling out of trees or having wrecks on his bike and coming home with injuries. “You've got a pretty good bump under there.” The blood in his hair was crusty and tipped with ice. How long had he been out there? How much longer would he have made it in the cold, if Roger hadn't come looking for me? Roger might have saved his life.

Clay could be gone right now. We could be one of those families, huddled together in some hospital in the middle of the night, telling a police officer that we didn't know Clay had a substance abuse problem.

Despite what Blaine had told me, what he'd promised, was there any other possible explanation for Clay's behavior, for what had happened tonight? I wanted to come up with one, but I couldn't. How could Clay do this? How could he be so irresponsible? How could my mother have let it go on? Clay could have killed someone on the road. He could have killed himself.

“What happened to you?” I leaned over to him, tried to pry his eyes open, to tell whether his pupils were dilated. “Where were you tonight? What were you doing?”

Groaning softly, he batted my hand out of the way, taking over holding the ice pack. “G-guess . . . I . . . uhhh . . .” His brows squeezed, and his lips drew back, his teeth clenching as he changed positions slightly. “I'm . . . so c-cold.” Another round of shivers racked his body.

“Clay, where were you tonight?” I sat on the coffee table, an ache spreading inside me but my voice surprisingly level, my mind still racing.
Should I call 9-1-1? Go wake up Mom and the uncs? Drive him to a hospital?
“What happened?”

His free hand dragged the quilts higher, then investigated the head wound, his fingertips quivering at the hairline, slipping under the ice pack slightly, then pulling back. “I bump . . . g-guess I bumped my head-d-d. . . .” He opened his eyes, then let them fall closed again.

“Clay!” I snapped, in the bossy, impatient big-sister voice from days gone by. “Clay, don't you dare go to sleep. You tell me what happened. Now. How did you end up out there?”

Slowly, he shook his head, the frosty tips of his hair melting into little round pools, some clear, some reddened with blood. Roger climbed onto the opposite end of the sofa and belly-crawled forward, resting his chin on Clay's leg. “Hey, bud-d-dy.” Clay reached for the dog, but then just let his hand fall and sighed. “Got home . . . from . . . from Amy's, I th-think. The truck . . . rolled down . . . maybe. What . . . what time is . . . ?”

I glanced at the clock by the stove. “It's four thirty-five in the morning. It's freezing. What were you doing, sitting out there in your car?” Had he come home, parked the car, and passed out, or had he arrived home so messed up that he'd driven right off the end of the driveway? Had he gone out there to maybe take a hit of something where he wouldn't be seen? What? “Clay, what were you doing sitting in your car in the middle of the night? When did you get home? What time?”

Dragging his eyelids upward again, he moved the ice pack away from his head, the white towel now pink with watery blood. “I'm not . . . don't remember . . . coming. Here . . . take this. It's-s-s cold.” He set the ice pack on the table and bunched the blankets under his chin. Roger looked at me, brows wrinkling, as if he were doing the same thing I was doing—trying to piece together the evening's events. Clay had been out on a date with Amy, come home and . . .

“You've been outside a long time, Clay. What were you doing in the truck? Why didn't you go in the house when you got home?”

“
Ummmph
 . . . don't remem . . . ber,” he muttered, turning his head away as if I were disturbing him. “Fell asleep . . . I guess. I was . . . listening . . .” His voice drifted off as he sank deeper into the pillows. “ . . . to a song . . . I think.”

“So you were listening to a song, and you fell asleep, and the truck rolled down the hill. Is that right?”

“Umm . . . maybe. Yeah-h-h. I g-guess.”

He shivered again, his knees curling upward. I wanted to grab him and shake him, yell at him,
You know what, if it weren't for the fig tree, you'd be in the lake right now! If Roger hadn't been outside, you might have frozen to death! What is wrong with you? What are you doing to yourself?
“All right, listen. I'm going to go wake up Mom and the uncs, and we're taking you to the hospital. You need an MRI or something to check for a concussion.”
And a toxicology scan, too.
We could kill two birds with one stone, and with a hospital report to back me up, we'd finally be able to face whatever Clay was dealing with. There would be no more room for denial, on anyone's part.

I put my hands on my knees to push to my feet. My legs were stiff and logy, like I'd just run a marathon.

Clay caught my wrist, holding me in place, his eyes opening, suddenly more alert. “No.”

“Clay, you need help.”

He blinked hard, pushed against the sofa, and lifted himself slightly, as if he intended to get up and stop me from leaving. “I just fell . . . asleep. I'm fine.”

I couldn't say why I gave in to the pull, but I sank onto the table again, weary, confused, drawn in by the sudden intensity in my brother's face. “You're not fine, Clay. People who are fine don't fall asleep in the car and almost end up in a frozen lake. People who are
fine
don't carry vials and ziplock bags in their pants pockets. They don't sneak around in alleys, making secret pickups through back doors. You're not
fine
. You're on something, and that's why you passed out in the truck tonight, isn't it?”

“On some . . . thing?” His lip curled, flashing an eyetooth, and he blinked again, seeming alert but genuinely confused.

“Drugs, Clay.” Finally, the chance to spell it out, to confront the problem at the source, and with evidence to back me up. “Drugs. How stupid do you think I am? How long have you been doing this? Does Mom know you're using? Do the uncs?”
Does Blaine? He promised me you were fine, that there was nothing to worry about. Was he fooled like everyone else? Would he lie for you?