Teardrop

27 THE VISITOR

Eureka did not scream for help.

As the man climbed through her window, she felt as ready for death as she had when she’d swallowed the bottle of pills. She’d lost Brooks. Her mother was gone. Madame Blavatsky had been murdered. Eureka was the hapless thread connecting all of them.

When the black boot came through her window, she waited to see the rest of the person who might finally put her and those around her out of the misery she produced.

The black boots were connected to black jeans, which were connected to a black leather jacket, which was connected to a face she recognized.

Rain spat through the window, but Ander had stayed dry.

He looked paler than ever, as if the storm had washed the pigment from his skin. He seemed to glow as he stood against the window, towering over her. His measuring eyes made her bedroom smaller.

He closed the window, slid the bolt into place, and closed the shutters as if he lived there. He took off his jacket and draped it over her rocking chair. The definition of his chest was clear through his T-shirt. She wanted to touch him.

“You’re not wet,” she said.

Ander combed his fingers through his hair. “I tried to call you.” His tone sounded like arms reaching out.

“I lost my phone.”

“I know.” He nodded and she understood that somehow he really did know what had happened today. He took a long stride toward Eureka, so quickly she couldn’t see what was coming—and then she was in his arms. Her breath stuck in her throat. A hug was the last thing she’d expected. Even more surprising: it felt wonderful.

Ander’s hold on her had the kind of depth she’d felt with only a few people before. Diana, Dad, Brooks, Cat—Eureka could count them. It was a depth that suggested profound affection, a depth that bordered on love. She expected to want to pull away, but she leaned closer.

His open hands came to rest against her back. His shoulders spanned hers like a protective shield, which made her think of the thunderstone. He tilted his head to cradle hers against his chest. Through his T-shirt, she could hear his heart throbbing. She loved the sound it made.

She closed her eyes and knew that Ander’s eyes were closed, too. Their closed eyes cast a heavy silence on the room. Eureka suddenly felt she was in the safest place on earth and she knew she had been wrong about him.

She remembered what Cat always said about it feeling “easy” with some guys. Eureka had never understood that—her time with most boys had been halting, nervous, embarrassing—until now. Holding on to Ander was so easy that not holding on to him felt unthinkable.

The only thing awkward was her arms, pinned to her sides by his embrace. During their next inhalation, she drew them up and threaded them around Ander’s waist with a grace and a naturalness that surprised her. There.

He drew her in tighter, making every hug Eureka had ever witnessed in the hallways at Evangeline, every hug between Dad and Rhoda, seem a sad imitation.

“I’m so relieved you’re alive,” he said.

His earnestness made Eureka shudder. She remembered the first time he’d touched her, his fingertip dotting the damp corner of her eye. No more tears, he’d said.

Ander lifted her chin so that she was looking up at him. He gazed at the corners of her eyes, as if surprised to find them dry. He looked unbearably conflicted. “I brought you something.”

He reached behind him, pulling out a plastic-sheathed object that had been tucked inside the waist of his jeans. Eureka recognized it instantly. Her fingers latched onto The Book of Love in its sturdy waterproof pouch.

“How did you get this?”

“A little bird showed me where to find it,” he said with a complete lack of humor.

“Polaris,” Eureka said. “How did you—”

“It isn’t easy to explain.”

“I know.”

“Your translator’s insight was impressive. She had the sense to bury your book and her notebook under a willow tree by the bayou the night before she was—” Ander paused, his eyes downcast. “I’m sorry.”

“You know what happened to her?” Eureka whispered.

“Enough to be vengeful,” he muttered. His tone convinced Eureka that the gray people on the road had been the killers. “Take the books. Clearly, she wanted them returned to you.”

Eureka put both books on her bed. Her fingers ran over the worn green cover of The Book of Love, traced the three ridges on its spine. She touched the peculiar raised circle on the cover and wished she knew what it had looked like when the book was newly bound.

She felt the rough-cut pages of Madame Blavatsky’s old black journal. She didn’t want to violate the dead woman’s privacy. But any notes inside this book held all that Eureka might know of the legacy Diana had left her. Eureka needed answers.

Diana, Brooks, and Madame Blavatsky had each found The Book of Love fascinating. Eureka didn’t feel worthy of having it all to herself. She was afraid to open it, afraid it would make her more alone.

She thought of Diana, who believed Eureka to be tough and smart enough to find her way out of any foxhole. She thought of Madame Blavatsky, who hadn’t blinked when asking if she could inscribe Eureka’s name as the rightful owner of the text. She thought of Brooks, who said that her mother was one of the smartest people who’d ever lived—and if Diana thought there was something special about this book, Eureka owed it to her to understand its complexities.

She opened Blavatsky’s translation journal. She leafed through it slowly. Just before a block of blank pages was a single sheet scribbled in violet ink, titled The Book of Love, Fourth Salvo.

She glanced at Ander. “Have you read this?”

He tossed his head. “I know what it says. I grew up with a version of the story.”

Eureka read aloud:

“Sometime, somewhere, in the future’s remote nook, a girl will come into being and meet the conditions to commence the Rising Time. Only then will Atlantis return.”

Atlantis. So Blavatsky had been right. But did it mean the story was real?

“The girl must be born on a day that does not exist, as we Atlanteans ceased to exist when the maiden tear was shed.”

“How can a day not exist?” Eureka asked. “What does that mean?”

Ander watched her closely but didn’t say anything. He waited. Eureka considered her own birthday. It was February 29. Leap day. Three years out of four, it didn’t exist.

“Go on,” Ander coaxed, smoothing the page of Blavatsky’s translation.

“She must be a childless mother and a motherless child.”

Immediately, Eureka thought of Diana’s body in the ocean. “Motherless child” defined the shadowy identity she’d inhabited for months. She thought of the twins, for whom she’d risked everything that afternoon. She’d do it again tomorrow. Was she a childless mother, too?

“Finally, her emotions must be tempered, must brew like a storm too high in the atmosphere to be felt on earth. She must never cry until the moment her grief surpasses what any mortal being can bear. Then she will weep—and open up the fissure to our world.”

Eureka looked up at the painting of Saint Catherine of Siena hanging on her wall. She studied the saint’s single, picturesque tear. Was there a relationship between that tear and the fires from which the saint offered protection? Was there a relationship between Eureka’s tears and this book?

She thought of how lovely Maya Cayce looked when she cried, how naturally Rhoda wept at the sight of her kids. Eureka envied these direct displays of emotion. They felt antithetical to everything she was. The night Diana slapped her was the only time she remembered sobbing.

Never, ever cry again.

And the most recent tear she’d cried? Ander’s fingerprints had absorbed it.

There, now. No more tears.

Outside, the storm raged furiously. Inside, Eureka tempered her emotions, just as she’d been doing for years. Because she’d been told to. Because it was all she knew how to do.

Ander pointed at the page where, after a few lines of blank space, the violet ink resumed. “There’s one last part.”

Eureka took a deep breath and read the final words of Madame Blavatsky’s translation:

“One night into our voyage, a violent storm split our ship. I washed up upon a nearby shore. I never saw my prince again. I do not know if he survived. The witches’ prophecy is the only lasting remnant of our love.”

Diana knew this story contained in The Book of Love, but had she believed it? Eureka closed her eyes and knew that, yes, Diana had. She’d believed it so fervently she’d never breathed a word of it to her daughter. She’d meant to save it for a moment when Eureka might be able to believe it for herself. The moment had to be now.

Could Eureka go there? Allow herself to consider that The Book of Love had something to do with her? She expected to want to dismiss it as a fairy tale, something lovely based on what might have once been based on something true, but was now mere make-believe.…

But her inheritance, the thunderstone, the accidents and deaths and ghostly people, the way this storm’s rage felt too in tune with the storm inside of her …

It wasn’t a hurricane. It was Eureka.

Ander stood quietly at the edge of her bed, giving her time and space. His eyes revealed a desperation to hold her again. She wanted to hold him, too.

“Ander?”

“Eureka.”

She pointed to the last page of the translation, which laid out the conditions of the prophecy. “Is this me?”

His hesitation caused Eureka’s eyes to sting. He noticed and inhaled sharply, as if in pain. “You can’t cry, Eureka. Not now.”

He moved toward her swiftly and lowered his lips to her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered closed. He kissed her right eyelid, then her left. Then there was a quiet moment when Eureka could not move, could not open her eyes because it might interrupt the feeling that Ander was closer to her than anyone had ever been before.

When he pressed his lips to hers, she was not surprised. It happened the way the sun rose, the way a flower blossomed, the way rain fell from the sky, the way the dead stopped breathing. Naturally. Inevitably. His lips were firm, slightly salty. They made her body flush with heat.

Their noses touched and Eureka opened her mouth to take in more of his kiss. She touched his hair, her fingers tracing the path his fingers followed when he was nervous. He didn’t seem nervous now. He was kissing her as if he’d been wanting to for a very long time, as if he’d been born to do it. His hands caressed her back, pressed her against his chest. His mouth folded hungrily on hers. The heat of his tongue made her dizzy.

Then she remembered Brooks was gone. This was the most insensitive moment to cash in on a crush. Only it didn’t feel like a crush. It felt life-altering and unstoppable.

She was out of breath but didn’t want to interrupt the kiss. Then she felt Ander’s breath inside her mouth. Her eyes shot open. She pulled away.

First kisses were about discovery, transformation, wonder.

Then why did his breath in her mouth feel familiar?

Somehow, Eureka remembered. After Diana’s accident, after the car was swept to the bottom of the Gulf and Eureka washed ashore, miraculous, alive—never before had she evoked this memory—someone had given her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

She closed her eyes and saw the halo of blond hair above her, blocking out the moon, and felt the life-giving air entering her lungs, the arms that carried her there.

Ander.

“I thought it was a dream,” she whispered.

Ander sighed heavily, as if he knew exactly what she meant. He took her hand. “It happened.”

“You pulled me out of the car. You swam me ashore. You saved me.”

“Yes.”

“But why? How would you even know I was there?”

“I was in the right place at the right time.”

It seemed as impossible as all the other things Eureka knew were real. She stumbled to her bed and sat down. Her mind was spinning.

“You saved me and let her die.”

Ander closed his eyes as if in pain. “If I could have saved you both, I would have. I had to choose. I chose you. If you can’t forgive me, I understand.” His hands were shaking when he ran them through his hair. “Eureka, I am so sorry.”

He had said those same words, just like that, on the first day they met. The sincerity of his apology had surprised her then. It had seemed inappropriate to apologize so passionately for something so slight, but now Eureka understood. She felt Ander’s grief about Diana. Regret filled the space around him like his own thunderstone shield.

Eureka had long resented the fact that she’d lived and Diana hadn’t. Now here was the person responsible. Ander had made that decision. She could hate him for it. She could blame him for her crazy sorrow and attempted suicide. He seemed to know it. He hovered over her, waiting to see which direction she’d take. She buried her face in her hands.

“I miss her so much.”

He fell to his knees before her, his elbows on her thighs. “I know.”

Eureka’s hand closed around her necklace. She opened her fist to expose the thunderstone, the lapis lazuli locket.

“You were right,” she said. “About the thunderstone and water. It does more than not get wet. It’s the only reason the twins and I are alive. It saved us, and I would never have known how to use it if you hadn’t told me.”

“The thunderstone is very powerful. It belongs to you, Eureka. Always remember that. You must protect it.”

“I wish Brooks …,” she started to say, but her chest felt like it was being crushed. “I was so afraid. I couldn’t think. I should have saved him, too.”

“That would have been impossible.” Ander’s voice was cold.

“You mean the way you saving both me and Diana would have been impossible?” she asked.

“No, I don’t mean that. Whatever happened to Brooks—you wouldn’t have been able to find him in that storm.”

“I don’t understand.”

Ander looked away. He didn’t elaborate.

“You know where Brooks is?” Eureka asked.

“No,” he said quickly. “It’s complicated. I’ve been trying to tell you, he’s not who you think he is anymore—”

“Please, don’t say anything bad about him.” Eureka waved Ander off. “We don’t even know if he’s alive.”

Ander nodded, but he seemed tense.

“After Diana died,” Eureka said, “it never occurred to me that I could lose anyone else.”

“Why do you call your mother Diana?” Ander seemed eager to steer the subject away from Brooks.

No one except Rhoda had asked Eureka that question, so she’d never had to voice a real answer. “When she was alive I called her Mom, like most kids do. But death turned Diana into someone else. She isn’t my mother anymore. She’s more than that”—Eureka clutched the locket—“and less.”

Slowly Ander’s hand cupped her hand cupping the two pendants. He squinted at the locket. His thumb rolled over the clasp.

“It doesn’t open,” she said. Her fingers curled around his to still them. “Diana said it was rusted shut when she bought it. She liked the design so much she didn’t care. She wore it every day.”

Ander rose on his knees. His fingers crept around the back of Eureka’s neck. She leaned into his addictive touch. “May I?”

When she nodded, he unclasped the chain, kissed her softly on the lips, then sat next to her on the bed. He touched the gold-flecked blue of the stone. He flipped the locket over and touched the raised intersecting rings on the underside. He examined the locket’s profile on either side, fingered the hinges, then the clasp.

“The oxidation is cosmetic. That shouldn’t prevent the locket from opening.”

“Then why doesn’t it open?” Eureka asked.

“Because Diana had it sealed.” Ander slid the locket off the chain, handed the chain and thunderstone back to Eureka. He held the locket with both hands. “I think I can unseal it. In fact, I know I can.”