The Girl Who Stayed

  Advance Praise for The Girl Who Stayed:

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  “A beautifully written, page-turning novel packed with emotion.”

  – #1 New York Times bestselling author Barbara Freethy

  “The Girl Who Stayed is a deeply moving story. I am fascinated by the concept and by Tanya Crosby’s stunning storytelling.”

  – Stella Cameron, New York Times bestselling author

  “The Girl Who Stayed defies type. Crosby’s tale is honest and sensitive, eerie and tragic. It’s a homecoming tale of a past ever with us and irrevocably lost forever. A haunting vision of that chasm between life and death we call ‘missing.’”

  – Pamela Morsi, bestselling author of Simple Jess

  “An intense, mesmerizing Southern drama about a young woman who returns to her coastal home to put to rest the haunting ghost of her sister’s tragic past. Told in the rich, lyrical style of Siddons and Conroy, The Girl Who Stayed is a woman’s story of discovery and acceptance, redefined by Tanya Anne Crosby’s dramatic storytelling, sharp characters, and well-defined plot. A must read for any woman who believes she can never go back home. Fabulous, rich and evocative!”

  – New York Times bestselling author Jill Barnett

  the

  girl

  who

  stayed

  tanya

  anne

  crosby

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Studio Digital CT, LLC

  P.O. Box 4331

  Stamford, CT 06907

  Copyright © 2015 by Tanya Anne Crosby

  Cover painting © 2015 by Tanya Anne Crosby

  Jacket design by Barbara Aronica Buck

  Story Plant Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-223-0

  Fiction Studio Books E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-943486-81-6

  Visit our website at www.TheStoryPlant.com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by U.S. Copyright Law. For information, address The Story Plant.

  First Story Plant hardcover printing: April 2016

  Printed in the United States of America

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  Dedication

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  This one I wrote for myself, with abiding thanks to all who inspired me, angels and demons both. No one more than my husband, Scott Thomas Straley, whose faith in me burns brighter than my own. And to my children—my daughter Alaina in particular, who listened to me go on and on about things like the complexities of pluff mud and, with her curiosity and insight, found ways to help me delve a little deeper into the muck.

  Prologue

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  Hannah’s Bike

  There was a feeling Zoe sometimes got . . . as though something were about to happen. She didn’t know what or when, but it clung to the day like a cold sweat—a blind intuition that originated somewhere else . . . not in the gut . . . deeper . . . in the bones.

  That’s how it started, then as now.

  They found Hannah’s bike in the dunes near Breach Inlet, the silver handlebar glinting hard against a waning sun. More to the point, Zoe found the bike.

  The pale-blue Schwinn lay twisted on its side, the black rubber of the left handlebar buried at least two inches deep so that sand spilled from the bar’s interior once Zoe lifted it to walk it home.

  Whether her sister dropped it there hard enough to drive the bar down into the sun-bleached sand, or whether it lay so long, undisturbed, that sand, driven by coastal winds, piled up and into the rubber hole was uncertain. Zoe only knew her sister worshipped the bike as much as Zoe did her first typewriter.

  A few weeks earlier, when the bike’s pristine blue paint was desecrated in a headlong collision with the fire hydrant on the corner of Middle Street and Station 26, her sister was devastated.

  “No!” Hannah had screamed. Half dazed, scrambling to her feet, she’d been far more concerned over the scratches on her bike than she ever was over her skinned and bloodied knees. With scrapes from her thighs to her ankles, she’d brushed herself off and hurried to right her fallen bike. “Stupid tourists,” she’d said, sounding like their dad.

  “You’re bleeding,” Zoe had said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “But it’s getting on your shoes.”

  “I don’t care,” her sister had said again, brushing her palm over the fender of her bike to test the finish.

  At home, Zoe found a Band-Aid and placed it on Hannah’s bleeding knee, worrying a bit because the edges wouldn’t stick over a wound still dripping with blood. Solemn and filled with purpose, Hannah had been too busy searching for something out in the garage to bother washing herself off. Blue metallic paint, Zoe realized after a while. Tight-lipped, her sister searched until she found what she needed on a high shelf, where their father kept the construction materials for his model planes.

  It seemed to Zoe that Hannah had felt much the same way about the scars on her bike as Zoe did after discovering the S on her typewriter showing signs of wear. Except that with those older model typewriters you couldn’t easily change the keys, and while it was possible to touch up bike paint, the marring of such perfect machines seemed in those last days of innocence like the death of an era—the same way it felt to get a C after years of As and Bs, or blood stains on a brand-new pair of white Converse sneakers. In retrospect, neither she nor Hannah ever truly understood the concept of loss until Zoe hauled Hannah’s bike up out of the dunes and wheeled it home.

  Alone.

  From that moment forward, Zoe understood only too well.

  Later that day, with her sister’s bike parked carefully in the driveway, Zoe sat at the kitchen table, tilting an empty saltshaker back and forth, wondering why her mom put rice in the salt, but never in the pepper. As her mother paced the kitchen, and her brother Nick rode shotgun in their dad’s red Ford pickup, probably yelling out the window for Hannah, Chief Hale wanted to know why Zoe had thought to check the beach when nobody else had.

  Zoe didn’t know; she just had a feeling.

  What Zoe wanted to know was why Chief Hale was asking dumb questions, when he should be out there searching for her missing sister. From Zoe’s seat at the kitchen table, she could hear choppers hatcheting the air outside.

  Guilt did the same thing inside her brain.

  It was warm that day—warmer than most days in December. So of course no one bothered to check the beach. Who would think to swim so late in the year? Especially there, where everybody knew the currents were so deadly.

  In fact, there was a sign that read “Deadly Currents,” but no one who lived on the island needed any dumb sign to know it was a bad place to swim, no matter what time of year.

  And yet her sister had been drawn to people and to places that were less than prudent. There was a sort of fever in Hannah’s eyes whenever she pushed boundaries—something she did often, especially on her pale-blue Schwinn.

  For example, they weren’t supposed to cross the bridge onto the Isle of Palms, but sometimes Hannah did, stopping at the bait-shop gas station. Each time she would buy a Coke, pop the top, and stand outside, sipping victoriously until the time came to get back on the bike and head back home. Her sister had that certain middle-child lack of responsibility, with maybe a little something to
prove.

  But the one thing Hannah was never reckless about was her bike. That day out on the beach, the kickstand was up and the bike lay carelessly on its side. It wasn’t as though her sister had left it standing and the wind or some brat kid pushed it over and it fell. No, it was cast aside without any real thought for what lay beneath, ready to scratch the shimmering paint. The bike lay in one of those twisted death throes, like the ones portrayed on TV, with the body outlined in thick white chalk. Except, of course, they didn’t do that for bikes.

  To everyone else it made perfect sense that Hannah wouldn’t have bothered with a kickstand there in the shifting sand, but Zoe knew her sister better than that. Hannah would have found a spot where the sand was packed hard enough to support the weight of her precious bike and then she would have tested and retested the footing before walking away—slowly, like a mother with a teetering toddler.

  So why—why was Hannah’s bike lying twisted in the sand?

  That was something Zoe never discovered.

  Chapter One

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  “Ene, Mene, Muh”

  The cell phone on the passenger seat gave a rude squawk. It rang on and on but Zoe ignored it, as though the act of doing so might buy her more time.

  Compelled to look at every blond head she passed by—inside cars, along the bike ramp—it crossed her mind that Hannah would have loved biking over the new bridge—the third bridge to span the Cooper since the island’s colonization. Originally, there had been two, standing side by side.

  Zoe dated a guy once who’d claimed his grandfather helped build the first Cooper River Bridge. He was an oddball, talking incessantly about an ex-girlfriend, who just happened to look a lot like Zoe. Hearing this had made Zoe look at him differently, not the hunky guy he’d appeared to be, but the obsessive stalker beneath, who’d rather kill and stuff an ex-girlfriend than lose her. Regrettably, this image was further reinforced by his other favorite topic, which happened to be the family business, a mortuary. Not taxidermy, but close enough.

  So one night, while crossing the Cooper—about three miles worth of mindless chatter—he’d gone back and forth between telling Zoe about this look-alike ex, explaining the process of embalming, and regaling her with tales of his grandfather’s escapades during the building of the first bridge. Of course, at the time, both bridges had been past their prime, and even without stories about cadavers and look-alike exes, it was creepy enough driving over a swaying expanse of groaning, creaking metal—in the dark, mind you. Suffice it to say, the date hadn’t turned into a second and even now, Zoe couldn’t remember his name.

  Bart, maybe.

  The bridge Bart’s grandfather had worked on was built around 1929, the second in 1966. The Silas Pearman Bridge was constructed to relieve load limits on the Grace Memorial Bridge, but both had been narrow enough to make driving over them harrowing, especially after the lanes were opened to two-way traffic.

  It wasn’t like that anymore. The first two bridges were demolished and a third went up—the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, a cable-stayed, eight-lane overpass that included pedestrian and bike lanes. This bridge was named after a retired US Congressman, although if you asked anyone the name of any one of these three bridges, they’d give you the same answer: it was the Cooper River Bridge.

  The point being: on that old bridge, especially at night, you drove all the way across, shoulders tense, black skies overhead, black river below, ignoring the headlights that appeared as though they were coming straight into your lane. There was nowhere to swerve off to, nowhere to escape—unless you wanted to ram through thick sheets of metal and off into the river below.

  Once on the bridge, you were at the mercy of oncoming drivers and your choice—the only choice—was to stay the course, fists gripping the steering wheel, holding your breath, hoping today wasn’t your day to end up in the grill of an oncoming vehicle. And all the while, you could feel the bridge shuddering beneath you.

  That’s how Zoe felt right now: Tense. Expectant. No choice but to move forward. Hoping to avert impending disaster.

  Back when Zoe’s great-grandparents first purchased the house on Sullivan’s, they’d had to take a ferry. It was a short hop from the peninsula in plain view of Fort Sumter. Edgar Allan Poe once wrote that the island, little more than a splinter of land, was “separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime.” Zoe loved his description, unflattering as it was, because it was the way she saw the island too—full of secrets whispered through dense tangles of sweet myrtle . . . secrets kept, no matter how long or hard you searched.

  Leaving the bridge, shoulders tight, Zoe passed repurposed buildings and shopping centers that appeared as though they’d already lived out one commercial lifetime during her absence and now were preparing for a dubious rebirth, with freshly painted facades and empty parking spaces out in front. The hamburger joint she and her friends had satisfied munchies at was gone, converted into a ratty tire shop. But the Page’s Thieves Market was still there, with the vintage street clock still guarding the porch, like a shiny silver sentinel.

  They sold houses now as well—at least that’s what her brother said. Maybe she could enlist their help.

  The last few times Zoe had come to Charleston she’d stayed with her brother Nick, never bothering to check on the house. She left Sullivan’s on the day she turned eighteen and never looked back, except to return long enough to bury her mom. Her dad was already gone before she moved away, puffing on unfiltered cigarettes every minute of his miserable life, until the smoke cleared and he was no more. Throat cancer. But like she told Nick, Rob Rutherford was dead to her long before that.

  Of course, Nick led a Hallmark life, like the one they’d always believed they’d shared . . . back before that day in December, back when all the neighbors crowed about their perfect family. Beautiful children. Beautiful parents. A house with a foundation as old as Charleston. How lucky they were.

  How lucky they were.

  That house. It had weathered Hugo, withstood the sea, but never made it past Hannah Rutherford’s disappearance—or, more to the point, her family hadn’t survived. The house on the feral lot on Atlantic Avenue, with the screened-in porch was standing still . . .

  Zoe pulled into the familiar driveway, stopping the car where she remembered parking Hannah’s bike all those years before. The engine idled like an old man with hiccoughs. She pulled out the keys and palmed them, clutching the metal so hard the teeth cut into her skin. The scar on her forehead itched, but she tried to put it out of her mind. Seated in the driver’s seat, Zoe took a moment to survey the dirty white bungalow.

  It was older now, not so old as some. The wood and cinderblock siding needed a good coat of paint. The yard had returned to scrub. The native sweet myrtle had overtaken the lot. It clambered toward the house, clawing desperately at the siding. In one spot, it managed to stab meanly through the porch screen.

  Fifteen feet high in some places, the shrubbery on the right side of the lot obscured the neighbors’ house from Zoe’s vantage in the drive. On the other side, a six-foot-high row of red azaleas were in full bloom—blood-red blossoms dripping from every branch.

  On the front side of the screened-in porch remained a baseball-sized hole in the mesh. Zoe remembered when it happened. She and Nick had been throwing the baseball out in the yard, just the two of them. Wearing her dad’s stiff glove, she’d made a sad attempt to help her brother improve his game.

  Standing in the front yard, her brother had looked sullen, ready to give up. “Come on,” Zoe had said. “You’re so much better than me.”

  The comparison hadn’t cheered him. He was better than Zoe, but Zoe rather sucked. “I’m no good, Nicky. Why don’t you ask Kevin to come throw with you?”

  Kevin was Nick’s friend who’d lived over on Goldbug Avenue—a kid whose family still ate din
ner together and who sometimes went fishing with his dad.

  Her baby brother had given a half shake of his head, as though the effort might be more than he cared to make. He’d dropped the ball into his glove, then picked it up again, dropping it yet again, probably wondering why their dad was inside yelling at their mom. Again. Or maybe he’d simply been wishing he had a brother instead of a sister—one sister. That was key. By that time, Hannah was already gone, her twin bed donated to a new mom from church, whose three-year-old had outgrown his crib.

  There was something about the look in Nicky’s eyes that had made Zoe feel his life—all that he could be—hung in the balance.

  It had been hot and humid that day, not unlike today. The hair had stuck to the back of Zoe’s neck. The inside door shut tight to keep the argument contained within, probably hadn’t improved either of her parents’ moods.

  Staring into his glove, Nicky had continued dropping the ball, picking it up again, decisions being made . . .

  “It’s my fault,” Zoe had reasoned. “I’m not very good, Nicky. Let’s just do it again.”

  Her brother had seemed to consider this. His wavy, blond hair was sweaty at the ends, dark—as dark as his somber brown eyes. At nine years old, he was already becoming a crusty old man. Shifting uneasily from foot to foot, Zoe had pounded her fist into the oversized glove the way she’d watched them do on TV.

  “Come on,” she’d coaxed. “I’m ready now. Come on, Nicky Boy!”

  Nicky Boy. That was the name her dad would have used—mostly when he was in a good mood. But good moods had become few and far between.

  A half smile had turned her brother’s lips then, a little gleam in his eyes that brought to mind Casey at the bat. He’d taken a ready stance, thinking, thinking, aiming . . .

  Rearing back, he’d set the ball loose. It flew over Zoe’s head, powered by all the anger he’d had mustered up inside, ripping through the flimsy screen, and crashing into the inside window, shattering glass.