Wake the Hollow Page 18

  “Have it tested, and you’ll see.” I snap a few pictures of the shirt with my phone, just in case I never see it again. “Please call me if you learn anything else. You need my number?”

  “No,” he says, flipping up the note paper clipped to the file, the one I wrote on when I first visited this place. “Got it right here.”

  Outside the station, I let out a massive breath. Then I spot it—Dane’s blue Eclipse pulling into the station, not from Main Street, but through the back parking lot. What is he doing here, of all places? It’s the middle of school hours. Doesn’t he have a class to teach?

  Breaking into a jog, I hurry around the building, ignoring the gate bar that lifts whenever a police car enters the garage, ducking underneath it to get by. Is he following me? First the train station, then my mother’s house, then hanging out at the coffee shop, school, here…

  Anger blinds me, started by the news of my parents’ non-divorce, now fueled by the truths that are starting to make themselves evident before my very eyes. I approach his car and see him halfway into the backseat. I’m about to call him, when he withdraws his long body from the backseat, toting his phone, a manila folder, and a leather case in the shape of a—

  I stop cold.

  What is he doing with—

  He closes his car door and presses his key remote to lock it. He stops as well, surprised to see me. “Micaela,” he says calmly, holding out a hand to placate the approaching guard.

  I’m lost for words. Do teaching assistants usually go around with concealed weapons in holsters parking in authorized-only parking spaces? “Who are you?”

  “Micaela, let me explain.” He approaches me slowly.

  I gaze into his face. So stupid. I’ve been so stupid! Mr. Boracich, student teacher teaching the unit on nineteenth century authors, touring New England to learn more about them. Crud, crap, lies. “Just—who are you? Obviously not who you say you are, or are you professor by day, police officer by night?”

  “I’m not police.” His words should calm me, but I’ve never felt this angry in my life.

  “Then why are you here? This is a police station.” I gesture to the building then let my arm slap against my side in frustration. “And that is a gun. How am I supposed to believe anything you say? You’re not even who you say you are, so why shouldn’t I trust someone I grew up with instead of you?”

  Why does my heart feel like it’s going to rip in half?

  He blows out, cheeks puffing. “I didn’t say everyone you grew up with, just those with a vested interest in the journal, people who never cared about your mother to begin with.”

  “How do you know if they care or not?”

  “Aw, come on, Micaela, open your eyes! You know they don’t care. I heard the way Bram’s aunt spoke to you at Sunnyside. You’re in direct danger, which is my main concern.” His tilted head, his worried eyes, plead with me to understand. “I’m not police.” He struggles, like he can’t decide who to plead devotion to, me or whoever paid him to watch over me and stay hush about it. “I was hired.”

  I knew it.

  “To watch over you and protect you.”

  So, when he warned me I was being watched, he really meant by him?

  I clear my throat. “Hired by whom?” My father. This has to be my father’s doing, adding to my status as princess, following me around with an extra pair of eyes. “Who, Dane?” I yell, wondering for the very first time if his name is even Dane Boracich at all. I wait for him to say what I already know.

  “I can’t tell you that.” Carefully, he attaches his holster to a shoulder strap, so the weapon rests under his arm.

  “Why not?”

  “Because my task here is two-fold. Watching over you and looking into your mother’s case.” He flips up a palm. “That’s already more information than you’re supposed to know.”

  More than you’re supposed to know. So he’s a private investigator and bodyguard? Who can afford that but my father? “Well, if you can’t tell me who it was, then at least tell me if you’re aware that someone…” The words cling to my tongue, but I force them out. “Killed my mom.”

  He closes his eyes, almost like he’s trying to control his emotions. When he reopens them, I see the answer written all over his face. Yes, I know, I can almost hear his thoughts. He nods an affirmation.

  He’s known all along. Not only do I detect guilt on his face, but something else. I can’t quite figure it out. Is he mad that I’m mad, upset that I’m upset? Was he hoping I’d always be smiles and precariously close to flirting with him?

  “I left something with Officer Stanton that might be of interest to you,” I tell him.

  He approaches me and brushes my cheek with his fingertips. I was right—he has feelings for me. No normal detective would do that. I should draw away, but I don’t. I don’t know what to feel anymore.

  “I’ll take a look at what you brought. Just…let me do my job, okay?” he asks. “Try not to interfere.”

  My legs are unsteady. I do my best to appear in control as he caresses me. If I can get past my anger, I think I might prefer this new role of his. It suits him better.

  He withdraws his hand. “Now get out of here.” I press my lips together and nod. “And Micaela?”

  “Yes?” I watch him take a deep breath to regain his professional composure before walking off with a mission on his mind.

  “Pretend you never saw me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse, not that he had any thing to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents…”

  I should have come to Kingsland Point Park sooner, but I didn’t want to stir up memories of those dark days when my parents would argue and I’d come here to meet Bram. Now I remember why the park had been my refuge—it was beautiful, right on the river, with a lighthouse to boot. A glowing emerald in the summer and a mantle of golden leaves on days like today. Quiet and calm, as if a storm hadn’t just passed through here last night, or as if a tempest of my own wasn’t now churning inside my head.

  I pull out my phone and try my father, losing hope that he’ll ever return my calls. It goes to voicemail just as I expect. “Hi, Dad! I miss you so much,” I say, forcing a fake sweet tone, so he’ll call. Sugar catches flies more than vinegar. “Nothing urgent, just call me.” That should work.

  Down the river walk, a tour group checks out the lighthouse. In a minute, my peace and quiet will be disrupted.

  ...damn tourists...

  The dead. Their voices surround me day and night. Betty Anne is right. They won’t leave me alone once they know. I wonder how Dane dealt with this ability when he was a young boy.

  My phone rings, showing my dad’s smiling face on the screen. No way. It worked. I take a deep breath and answer. “Dad.”

  “How’s my beautiful girl?” his bubbly voice replies.

  “Your beautiful girl is pissed off as hell.” I’ve never spoken to him this way in my life, and it feels freakin’ fantastic.

  He clears his throat. “And why is that?” The effer-vescence in his voice fizzles out.

  “You know why.” There’s never been any reason to be pissed at him before. He’s been the perfect dad, the rock I’ve always depended on, not someone who would lie to me. But the last time I didn’t give one of my parents the benefit of the doubt, she died. I have to at least listen.

  “I’ll be there soon. Tell Nina I wired her some money. It should cover a car for now, and—”

  “Nina’s gone, Dad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gone. Hasn’t come back. Have you paid her? My card was declined, and the power and water are out, too. Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Quiet, except for the sound of his fear. “Is this because it’s taken me a while to call you back?”

  “No. This is because you’ve been lying to me!” I yell.

  “Lying to you,” he repeats.<
br />
  “Yes, lying to me.” I get up and begin pacing out my frustration. “Why have you never told me that you and Mami were still married?”

  Quiet, then a low sigh on the line. “You never asked. When you came to live with me, you never looked back, so why would there be any reason to talk about this?”

  A pang of guilt comes close to hitting me, but I don’t let it. “I never looked back?” I shout. “You never looked back, Dad! Even when my mom was trying to contact me. How is it that I got a note from her at Emily’s house three days before she died—Emily’s house, Dad—begging me to come home, yet she supposedly didn’t want to talk to me over the years? Isn’t that a little off?”

  “Mica…” His tone warns me. “Lower your voice, or we won’t be talking for much longer.”

  “You probably knew she wasn’t cremated, right? Or are you going to deny that, too?”

  “What are you insinuating? I didn’t know that. And you know damn well that your mom was distracted. I’m not going to say that she didn’t love you, because she did, but don’t you think if she’d cared just a scrap about anything else besides her research—about you, about me—that she would’ve eventually come back to us?”

  “Maybe she wanted you to believe in her and her work. To stick by her through thick and thin. Isn’t that what married couples are supposed to do? You left. And I can’t believe I went with you.”

  “That’s why I never served her with papers, because I hoped that one day it’d hit her how much her family meant to her, and she’d join us. I loved her, I still do. Did I ever bring another woman into our life? No. Because I still had hope. I still believed in her. I waited until the very last day…” His voice trails off, and I hear muffled sounds of whimpering.

  So odd to hear my dad so weak.

  His words have always made perfect sense to me in the past. But that was before the dreams. Yes. Before the visions, the voices… Yes. Before Mami’s visit last night. She was trying…always trying to reach me…even in death.

  Yesss...

  No parent ever wants their child to know how defective they really are.

  I shake my head. “No, Dad. You’re lying. My mother wanted me. Loved me. I know she did.”

  “She never called.”

  “She called, I’m telling you!” I shout again, pounding the side of the bench, expecting to hear him demand that I quiet down, but for once, he relents.

  In the silence, I hear the tour guide explain to the group about the buzz around town, how it appears that Washington Irving had a secret journal, one that might be worth a lot of money, and how a lot of people are hoping to be the finders of the missing relic, and wouldn’t it be cool if one of them found it? The group twitters with excitement.

  “Mica?”

  “What.”

  “Say something.”

  “You have it all in storage. It belongs to me. And I know you’ve sent someone to follow me. He’s been doing a great job from the moment I arrived. You didn’t have to go to such lengths. I am eighteen. I can take care of myself.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I scoff. I don’t have any proof that it’s my dad, but who else would it be? “I don’t expect you to admit to it. Just know that it’s lame, and your lying about it is really sad, too.”

  “Mica, if someone’s following you, that makes me a little concerned. All the more reason you shouldn’t be in Sleepy Hollow, but you went to that damn forsaken place anyway. You never listen to me.”

  “I always listen to you! That has been the root of my goddamned problem!” I smack the bench so many times, my hands sting. “It’s a good thing I didn’t this time, or I still might not know anything about myself!” I come close to shouting, wanting to tell him about the family tree, the rich history on my mother’s side, that these were the reasons for Mami’s obsessed behavior. From the sidewalk by the water, a few people glance over. The tour guide ushers his group away.

  “Okay, you know what?” he says. “Your tone is upsetting me, so this conversation is over.”

  “And your denial is upsetting me, Dad! I know you were trying to paint this picture that everything was fine without Mami, that we were better off, but we weren’t. I needed her.” My eyes are glazed with tears. “I needed her.”

  My father’s voice is low. “You needed a mother.”

  “I had a mother!” Whether or not Mami was perfect, there every night, or around when I needed her is irrelevant. I break into tears, sob, then quietly suck it back up. Enough crying. “Just send me the keys.”

  “What keys?”

  “The house, the storage…the keys, Dad. You have them. Stop pretending like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Everything’s in your name, remember?” He’s playing the fool, but I’m ahead of him now. “You’re hiding things from me.”

  A burst of air escapes his lips.

  All these years, he’s vilified my mom. I can tell, from his huffing, that he’s preparing to launch some more. “Your mother was the one hiding things all the time. Every chance she got. Have you found a will since you’ve been there? Did she leave you anything of interest?” He sounds like he’s mocking me.

  My mouth opens to say yes. “No,” I whisper. There were papers, but no will.

  “Exactly why I didn’t want you going back. Because the truth hurts, because she probably left everything to that horse’s ass, Tanner,” he mumbles right at the end.

  “What?”

  His silence tells me he’s said too much. Dr. Tanner? What does he have to do with anything? “What I meant was…ah, forget it.”

  If he hired Dane to follow me around, then he has to know that Dr. Tanner is my English teacher, yet not once has he asked me about my classes. “You know him? Why do you talk about him like that?”

  The breeze shoots off the river, rustling the trees around me. With eyes closed, I can almost feel someone breathing near me. He lies.

  As an historian, Mami collaborated with teachers and professors in order to put together the most comprehensive presentations on Washington Irving for field trips at Sunnyside. Did one collaboration go too far? Is this what Dad’s jealous tirades were about? The reason he didn’t serve her with divorce papers?

  “I only know that I loved her, Mica,” he says. “But she didn’t love me back.”

  His voice, wronged and pained, centers me once again. So my parents weren’t perfect. So they were always blaming each other for their woes. But they’re my parents. And no matter what the truth is between them, I still love them.

  My father fills the silence with a resigned sigh. “I’ll overnight you the keys. So you’ll see I’m not hiding anything.”

  I listen to his breathing as he shuffles around his hotel room, zipping up his suitcase, mumbling about another call he’s getting. “Mica, you there? I have to go. I love you.”

  And then the line goes dead. I let the phone slide down until it lands in my lap. Then I stay at Kingsland Point Park, staring at the river until the chatter of tourists fades, the river walk is bathed in fiery orange light, and my heart sinks in time with the setting sun.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know.”

  What bothers me more than anything isn’t even the lies. It’s the fact that he won’t admit to them. By the next morning, I’m completely convinced of what my father did and how he did it. After hiring Dane Boracich, he filled him in on all Irving-secret-journal folklore he learned from Mami, prepping him to understand the case from an insider’s view, even training him for his role as Dr. Tanner’s teaching assistant.

  Amazing, the things people will do for truth.

  But why couldn’t Dane be an ugly old man who doesn’t make my stomach flip every time I see him? No, my bodyguard has to be young enough for me to date with icy cobalt eyes that melt to liquid topaz every time his gaze falls on me. Ugh.

  Being isolated at Betty Anne’s h
ouse isn’t helping the situation. She has no cable TV, and her army of knickknacks stares at me all day long. With as much as Betty Anne drives into town, I can’t leave the house. I can’t risk my dad’s package being left on the front porch unattended.

  I call the school, dialing Doc Tanner’s extension. I’m ready to leave a voicemail, but lo and behold, he answers. “Tanner here.”

  “Dr. Tanner, it’s Micaela Burgos. From your first hour literature class?”

  “Micaela, is everything okay? We’ve been worried about you.”

  “I’ve been sick…”

  He swallows softly. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Thanks. I, uh…can I meet with you so you can give me any work I’ve missed?” I know that teachers—real ones—are not supposed to meet students outside of school, but I need to speak with him in person, and this is the only way I know how to get him to agree.

  “How about I just email them to you? Let me have your email address.”

  “Actually, I need to ask you some questions, too, if you don’t mind. Can we meet somewhere?”

  He sounds hesitant but agrees to meet me at Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe tomorrow at four o’clock.

  All day, I sit on the front porch swing, waiting for the package, assuming my father even sent it. I push with my foot, chains rhythmically creaking back and forth. I imagine Dane bustling around the police station, examining the T-shirt I found, working on my mother’s case. Does he think of me in another way besides a young woman he’s been hired to watch? Secretly, I hope he does. I think of Bram, too, getting last-minute preparations ready for this weekend’s first day of HollowEve. I miss them both, but can’t trust either. How lame is that?

  My intuition must’ve been on track again, because suddenly, my phone rings. It’s Bram. I don’t know if I should answer or not. I’ll just hear him out. “Hello.”

  “Mica, where the hell are you? Please don’t tell me Miami.”

  “I’m still here.”

  He sighs. “Thank God. Okay, look, I’m sorry about the way I reacted the other night. I just—gah, I can’t explain it. Seeing you with Boracich in those pics after the way you gushed over him and how you asked me to watch over you…I know you said there’s nothing between you two, but…I don’t know…all I know is that I didn’t like it.”