She jumped to her feet, startling the plovers, who flew up, squawking. She ran from the beach into the woods. Tate ran after her, but as soon as he reached the trees, he stopped, looked around. She had already lost him.
But just in case she stood in earshot, he called out, “Kya, you can’t run from every whipstitch. Sometimes you have to discuss things. Face things.” Then with less patience, “Damn it, Kya. Damn it to hell!”
* * *
• • •
A WEEK LATER, Kya heard Tate’s boat whirring across her lagoon and hid behind a bush. As he eased through the channel, the heron lifted on slow silver wings. Some part of her wanted to run, but she stepped onto the shore, waiting.
“Hey,” he said. For once he didn’t wear a cap, and his wild blond curls wafted about his tanned face. It seemed that in the last few months, his shoulders had widened into those of a man.
“Hey.”
He stepped from the boat, took her hand, and led her to the reading-log, where they sat.
“Turns out I’m leaving sooner than I thought. I’m skipping the graduation ceremonies so I can start my job. Kya, I’ve come to say good-bye.” Even his voice seemed manlike, ready for a more serious world.
She didn’t answer, but sat looking away from him. Her throat pulled in tight. He placed two bags of school and library rejects, mostly science books, at her feet.
She wasn’t sure she could speak. She wanted him to take her again to the place of the white frog. In case he never came back, she wanted him to take her there now.
“I’m going to miss you, Kya. Every day, all day.”
“You might forget me. When you get busy with all that college stuff and see all those pretty girls.”
“I’ll never forget you. Ever. You take care of the marsh till I get back, you hear? And be careful.”
“I will.”
“I mean it now, Kya. Watch out for folks; don’t let strangers get near you.”
“I think I can hide or outrun anybody.”
“Yes, I believe you can. I’ll come home in about a month, I promise. For the Fourth of July. I’ll be back before you know it.”
She didn’t answer, and he stood, jammed his hands into his jeans pockets. She stood next to him, but they both looked away, into the trees.
He took her shoulders and kissed her for a long time.
“Good-bye, Kya.” For a moment she looked somewhere over his shoulder and then into his eyes. A chasm she knew to its greatest depths.
“Good-bye, Tate.”
Without another word, he got in his boat and motored across the lagoon. Just before entering the thick brambles of the channel, he turned and waved. She lifted her hand high above her head, and then touched it to her heart.
19.
Something Going On
1969
The morning after reading the second lab report, the eighth day since finding Chase Andrews’s body in the swamp, Deputy Purdue pushed open the door to the sheriff’s office with his foot and stepped inside. He carried two paper cups of coffee and a bag of hot donuts—just pulled from the fryer.
“Oh man, the smell of Parker’s,” Ed said as Joe placed the goods on the desk. Each man dug an enormous donut from the brown paper bag splotched with grease stains. Smacked loudly, licked glazed fingers.
Speaking over each other, both men announced, “Well, I got something.”
“Go ahead,” Ed said.
“I got it from several sources that Chase had something goin’ on in the marsh.”
“Going on? What do you mean?”
“Not sure, but some guys at the Dog-Gone say ’bout four years ago he started goin’ out to the marsh a lot by himself, was real secretive about it. He’d still go fishin’ or boatin’ with his friends, but made a lot of trips alone. I was thinkin’ maybe he got himself mixed up with some potheads or worse. Got over his head with some nasty drug thug. Ya lie down with dogs, ya get up with fleas. Or in this case, not get up at all.”
“I don’t know. He was such an athlete; hard to picture him getting mixed up in drugs,” the sheriff said.
“Former athlete. And anyhow, lots of ’em get tangled up in drugs. When the grand days of hero dry up, they gotta get a high from somewheres else. Or maybe he had a woman out there.”
“I just don’t know of any ladies out there that’d be his type. He only hung out with the so-called Barkley elite.