Calla

Dare pulls his shirt over his head.

For one disorienting second, the raven is the last thing I notice.

His back is broad and lean, muscle shifting beneath smooth skin as he lowers his arms. A faint scar curves over his ribs. His waist narrows above the gray sweatpants, and when he turns, my attention follows the hard planes of his stomach before I can stop it.

Then I look up.

The slant of his jaw is even sharper in profile. His mouth tilts at one corner.

His eyes meet mine.

Too late.

He knows exactly where I was looking. Worse, he knows that I know he knows.

Heat creeps into my face. I lift my camera because it is nearby and because a camera has always been the safest place for me to hide.

“Turn around again.”

Dare’s brow lifts. “Do you often photograph half-naked men in the middle of the night?”

“Only unidentified ones.”

Finn snorts beside me.

At least, I think it’s a snort. When I glance at him, he isn’t smiling. He is staring at the raven with an intensity that makes me forget my embarrassment.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.”

He has said that too often lately.

Dare turns his back to me again. The raven stretches from shoulder to shoulder, its wings fully extended. Beneath it, two words are worked into the design in heavy black letters.

LIVE FREE.

I take one photograph of the whole tattoo, then another close enough to capture the details in the feathers.

“For documentation,” I say.

“Naturally.”

“And image searches.”

“I didn’t question your methods.”

“Your face did.”

“You’ve been studying that too?”

I lower the camera.

His gaze holds mine over his shoulder, quiet and direct. Something passes between us that doesn’t feel new.

Which is impossible.

Everything about him is impossible.

He arrived in the sea without a name. He has no wallet, no shoes, no history, and no explanation for how he nearly died beneath our cliffs. He could be dangerous. He could be lying about the amnesia. He could be the reason strange things have been happening around this house.

My instincts should be screaming at me to step away.

But they aren’t.

They haven’t warned me about him once.

That frightens me more than if they had.

Dad clears his throat.

Dare pulls his shirt on.

The room begins moving again.

“We’ll deal with all of this in the morning,” Dad says. “The fender stays here. No one touches it.”

Finn looks down at the rusty water staining his jeans.

“That instruction might’ve been more useful before I carried it home.”

“Go to bed,” Dad tells him.

Finn gives him a crooked salute and heads for the door.

As he passes me, I catch his wrist.

“Finn…”

His smile is gentle and almost convincing.

“I know, Cal.”

He squeezes my hand and leaves.

Morning is gray and wet when it arrives.

I wake after four hours of sleep and lie still, listening to rain pelt the window. For a few seconds, everything feels normal.

Then I remember the page downstairs.

Finn’s handwriting.

The fender.

Dare’s bare back.

My brain, apparently, has priorities.

I dress and check the dark room first. The page remains exactly where I left it beneath the blotting paper, the four film canisters holding its corners flat. I don’t lift the covering. I only stand in the doorway long enough to reassure myself that it hasn’t moved.

As though paper moves by itself.

In the kitchen, Dad is pouring coffee into a travel mug. Dare sits at the table wearing yesterday’s clothes.

Mom is at the counter cutting strawberries into careful halves.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” I tell her.

“I rested.”

“For one night.”

“An entire night. Very indulgent.”

I kiss her temple. She smells like lavender shampoo and oil paints, so completely herself that the memory of her crumpled in the cave feels like something I dreamed.

“How do you feel?”

“Embarrassed.”

“Don’t be.”

Dad watches her over the rim of his mug.

She pretends not to notice.

“The sheriff called,” Dad says. “They’d like Dare to come into the office this morning.”

Dare looks up. “Do they?”

“They want to take your fingerprints.”

Mom’s knife stops against the cutting board.

“Why?” she asks.

“To identify him,” Dad says. “It’s voluntary. They can submit the prints through the state system and compare them with regional and federal records.”

“To see whether he’s a criminal?”

Dare’s expression remains neutral, but something closes behind his eyes.

Dad shakes his head. “To see whether he’s in the system.”

Mom looks at Dare. “Of course they aren’t.”

The warmth in her voice makes his expression soften.

“They’ll also check his physical description against missing-person reports,” Dad continues. “His age, height, accent, tattoo. Anything that might connect.”

“Perhaps someone has misplaced me,” Dare says.

He makes it sound careless. It isn’t.

“Someone is looking for you,” Mom says. “You’re not the kind of person people forget.”

Dare lowers his gaze to his coffee.

I want her to be right. I also hate the thought of someone finding him.

The realization is selfish and immediate.

I know nothing about him except that he reads Rebecca, rides a motorcycle, apologizes for bleeding on other people’s floors, and looks at me as though she knows me.

He could have a wife.

The thought lands unpleasantly.

Or a girlfriend. A family. An entire life waiting for him to come home.

“I’ll take you in after breakfast,” Dad says.

“What about the fender?” I ask.

“A deputy will come by later. They want it left where it is.”

“They’re checking for accidents?”

“Recent crashes, abandoned vehicles, missing drivers. There’s nothing obvious so far.”

Mom resumes cutting strawberries.

“Where exactly did Finn find it?”

“North of the beach stairs,” I say. “I thought I might look along the cliff above it. If a car went off the road, there could be damage in the forest.”

Her knife stops again.

“Not by the ribbons.”

The words are quiet.

Dad and I both look at her.

“What ribbons?” I ask.

Mom stares down at the strawberry beneath her fingers.

“I don’t know.”

“You just said—”

“I know. But I don’t know what I meant.” She smiles, but confusion trembles beneath it. “My mind is still foggy.”

Dad sets his mug down. “Maybe you should go back upstairs.”

“Phillip, I confused one word. I’m not getting back into bed for the rest of my natural life.”

The edge in her voice tells us to stop.

So we do.

But I remember.

Calla and Finn, walking to cove with flashlights .png

Mack calls while Dad and Dare are gone.

I’m in my dark room searching the tattoo photograph when her name appears on my phone. The image search has produced several hundred ravens, twelve motorcycle clubs, a regrettable quantity of inspirational merchandise, and one man who has tattooed LIVE LAUGH LOVE across his shoulder blades in Gothic script.

Humanity is vast and troubling.

I answer on video.

“You look terrible,” Mack says.

“Good morning to you too.”

“Did you sleep?”

“A little.”

“How’s Laura?”

“Upstairs pretending last night didn’t happen.”

“And Finn?”

The question comes quickly.

“He’s asleep, I think.” I glance toward the hallway. “He was out late.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“He was talking to me.”

I forgot. He took my phone with him.

“Did he say anything?” I ask.

“About what?”

Her expression is expertly blank. Mack only looks that innocent when she is editing the truth.

“The paper. Or the crow thing. Anything.”

“He made jokes until I wanted to smother him through the phone.”

“So, normal.”

“Not exactly.”

I wait.

She doesn’t elaborate.

“Keep an eye on him,” she says instead.

Something in her voice catches my attention, but before I can examine it, she brightens.

“Unrelated scheduling development.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Ricky needs to switch weekends. His sister’s getting married or baptized or divorced. I wasn’t listening very well.”

“Shocking.”

“The relevant part is that I’m off this weekend instead of next.”

“Okay.”

“That was the first half.”

I already know the second.

“You want to come Friday.”

“I’m touched that you understand me.”

I look around the dark room.

At the covered page.

At Dare’s raven filling my computer screen.

At the wet marks Finn left on the floor last night before carrying a piece of wreckage to an amnesiac

stranger.

I should tell her no. Nothing here is stable. Mom is pretending she didn’t follow a nonexistent song into a cave.

Finn is… being odd. Dare could remember tomorrow that he has a violent past and six outstanding warrants or a wife.

But instead, relief moves through me so quickly that my knees feel weak.

“Come,” I say.

Mack’s face softens. “Yeah?”

“Please.”

“I can leave after work Friday. I’ll be there late.”

“That’s fine.”

“Are you sure? You hesitated.”

“There’s a lot happening.”

“Which is why I should be there.”

Exactly.

Mack is motion and noise and incense smoke. She will fill the corners of this house. She’ll make Mom laugh.

She’ll tell me when I’m being irrational and Finn when he’s being an ass. She’ll help me hold everything together without making me admit that I’m losing my grip.

“I think it'd be good for Finn," I say.

Her expression changes.

Only slightly.

“I’m coming for both of you,” she says.

And that's that.

Dad and Dare return shortly before noon.

I meet them outside. Rain has faded to mist, clinging to Dare’s dark hair and the shoulders of his jacket.

“Well?” I ask.

“They took the prints,” Dad says. “Nothing came back immediately from Oregon. They’ll continue the search.”

Dare walks past us toward the Carriage House.

“That’s it?”

“For now.”

I watch him go.

“He thought they would know,” I say.

“So did I.” Dad sounds tired. “The deputy will be here this afternoon for the fender. Until then, leave it alone.”

“I know.”

He goes inside to check on Mom. I give him almost five minutes. Then I walk to the Carriage House.

Dare is standing at the window when I enter, looking toward the cliffs.

“Soooo, no identity yet,” I say, as casually as I can.

“I remain a mystery.”

I lean against the wall beside him. “They’re still searching.”

“Yes.”

“And Mack is coming this weekend.”

He glances at me. “Should I know who Mack is?”

“My best friend.”

“The woman in Finn’s phone?”

“My phone, technically.”

“She and Finn seem close, too.”

“We’re all close.” I nod toward the forest. “Do you want to help me look for a crash?”

“Didn’t your father tell you to leave the fender alone?”

“We’re leaving the fender alone.”

“A masterful interpretation.”

“Are you coming?”

He reaches for a jacket.

The old access road follows the curve of the cliffs north before disappearing into the forest.

Wet ferns brush our legs. Moss softens the trunks of spruce and hemlock, swallowing bark, stones, and fallen branches beneath luminous green. The ocean appears occasionally through the trees, far below and gray enough to melt into the sky.

We walk until the beach stairs are hidden behind us.

“Finn said half a mile,” I tell Dare.

The ground steepens. I step over a fallen branch, and the mud shifts beneath my boot.

Dare’s hand closes around my waist.

He steadies me before I can fall.

“I’ve got it,” I say.

“I know.”

His hand remains where it is. Warm even through my jacket.

I turn my head.

He is close enough that I can see the darker ring around his irises. Close enough that his breath moves the damp hair near my temple.

Neither of us moves.

Then his gaze lowers to my mouth. My breath catches.

The attraction between us has suddenly stopped pretending to be anything else.

I step away first. Not because I want to.

But because wanting to stay feels like an answer to a question I’m not ready to ask.

“This way,” I say.

His mouth curves faintly. “Of course.”

We continue north.

After several minutes, Dare asks, “Why did you bring me?”

“The fender might be connected to you.”

“Your father thinks its been in the water longer than I’ve been here.”

“You heard that?”

“I have ears, Calla.”

“You also have amnesia. I’m still cataloguing what works.”

He almost smiles.

“You could have brought Finn.”

“He needs sleep.”

“And you trust me alone with you?”

The question stops me.

Rain gathers on his lashes. He isn’t flirting now.

I should say I don’t. I should tell him trust must be earned, that instincts are not evidence, that kind eyes can belong to dangerous men.

“Yes,” I say instead.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Something moves across his face. Relief, maybe.

“That makes two of us,” he says.

Before I can ask what he means, he looks past me.

“Look.”

At first, I only see trees. Then the pattern emerges.

Mature trunks rise on either side of a narrow corridor filled with younger, shorter growth. The difference is subtle, but once I see it, I cannot unsee it. Something interrupted the forest here. Something came through with enough force to clear a path, and bend trees.

Years ago. Maybe decades.

We move carefully downhill.

The slope is steeper than it looked from above. Blackberry vines catch at my sleeves. Beneath the ferns, loose stone slides toward the ravine.

“This is a bloody awful idea,” Dare says.

“You can go back.”

“And explain to your father that I left you climbing into a ravine alone?”

“He’d probably respect your survival instincts.”

“I rather doubt that.”

Near the bottom, we find the tree.

It lies at an angle across the slope, too large to have fallen recently. Its roots have torn free of the ground, and the trunk is twisted around a deep split. Moss covers almost everything.

Almost.

Something red shows beneath it.

I crouch and brush wet moss aside with a fallen twig. The color forms a narrow smear embedded in the damaged wood.

Paint.

Dare crouches beside me.

“That looks familiar,” he says.

I take out my phone and pull up the photograph of the fender.

The colors aren’t merely both red. They are the same deep, dark shade.

At least they appear to be.

“It could have been here for years,” Dare says.

“It has been.”

“Then it has nothing to do with me.”

I look down the ravine. Trees and brush conceal whatever lies below.

“No.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore. Whether this concerns you or not, its still strange.””

I photograph the paint, the broken trunk, and the unnatural corridor leading down from the old road.

As I step around the tree, something pale catches my eye.

A strip of frayed fabric disappears into the bark.

I pull away the moss surrounding it but don’t touch the material. Its ribbon—or it once was. The exposed end has faded nearly white, while the portion swallowed by the tree retains a trace of blue. A second strip rests against the ground.

My skin prickles.

“Someone marked this place,” Dare says.

“Maybe.”

“A trail?”

“There isn’t a trail here.”

I remember Mom’s knife stopping against the cutting board.

Not by the ribbons.

I take another photograph.

“We should go,” I say.

Dare studies my face. “You’ve seen that before.”

“No.”

“But you know something.”

“My mother mentioned ribbons this morning.”

He looks back at the fabric embedded in the tree.

“She knew this was here?”

“She said she didn’t know what she meant.”

Neither of us speaks for several seconds.

Then a branch cracks somewhere below us.

Dare stands and moves in front of me.

“Hello?” I call.

No answer.

Through the trees, something dark passes between two trunks.

A person.

Or a trick of shadow and rain.

“Did you see that?” I whisper.

“Yes.”

The answer should frighten me.

Instead, I’m relieved.

This time, at least, I am not imagining it alone.

Dad is furious.

Not loudly. Phillip Price becomes quieter when he is truly angry, each word clipped and precise enough to perform surgery.

“You climbed into a ravine where you believed a vehicle may have crashed.”

“Partway into a ravine.”

“That distinction does not improve the decision.”

We stand around the kitchen island. Dare is beside me, damp and muddy, accepting his share of Dad’s anger with irritating calm.

“We found something,” I say.

I show him the photographs.

The anger recedes as he scrolls through them.

“Did an accident happen there while Finn and I were away?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s our property. Emergency crews would have needed access through the estate. I would know.”

He enlarges the image of the broken tree.

“And this damage is older than the time you’ve been at college.”

“Then when did it happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“The paint looks like the fender.”

“It does.”

“There was something else.”

I swipe to the ribbons.

Dad’s face changes, but only because he recognizes what it is.

“You left them there?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Send all of these to me. I’ll forward them to the deputy. And neither of you goes back until the sheriff’s office has looked at the site.”

“Agreed,” Dare says.

Dad looks at me.

“Agreed,” I echo.

Mom enters the kitchen.

She has changed into a soft green sweater and pulled her hair into a loose knot. Color has returned to her face. She looks rested. Lucid. Normal.

“What did you two do?” she asks, looking at our clothes.

“Went for a walk,” I say. “In the forest.”

Mom comes around the island. “What are you looking at?”

I turn the phone toward myself too late.

She has already seen it.

The ribbon fills the screen, pale and frayed where it emerges from the moss-covered bark.

Mom goes still.

Every trace of color leaves her face.

“You found it.”

“Found what?” I ask.

Her fingertip touches the ribbon on the screen.

“The ribbons.”

The room goes silent.

“Laura, do you know something about these ribbons?” Dad asks.

Mom looks up.

Confusion passes over her face slowly, like a cloud crossing the sun.

“I don’t know.”

“Mom, you said something about ribbons this morning.”

“Did I?”

“You told me not to go near them.”

She pulls her hand away from the phone.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

No. It doesn’t.

But beneath the moss, caught in the dead tree’s splintered bark, the ribbons are still there

By evening, the rain has stopped.

The house is quiet as I climb the stairs. Finn’s door is partly open, and music slips through the gap, low enough that I can’t identify the song. I’m pretty sure it’s the Killers.

I knock once and push the door open.

He is stretched across his bed with one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His curtains are open, letting the last of the day spill across the room.

“You’re awake.”

He turns his head. “Your powers of observation are unparalleled.”

I lean against the doorframe.

He looks better. The color has returned to his face, and he doesn’t look so… worried.

Still, something about him feels off.

I know Finn’s silences, though. I know the difference between his comfortable ones and the ones he fills with jokes so no one notices what he’s not saying.

“How’s Mom?” he asks.

“She seems okay.”

“Seems?”

I hesitate.

His arm drops from behind his head.

“What happened?”

I enter the room and sit at the foot of his bed.

“Dare and I searched the forest above where you found the fender.”

Finn pushes himself upright. “You did what?”

“Dad already covered this.”

“I’m sure he did. I’m considering a supplemental lecture.”

“We found something.”

I show him the photographs on my phone.

His expression changes as he studies them.

“That’s the same color.”

“It looks like it.”

“And Dad says there wasn’t a crash?”

“Not while we were away. He thinks the damage is older than that.”

Finn swipes to the next image.

The two tattered ribbons emerge from the bark, faded nearly white except for the traces of blue preserved beneath the moss.

He goes still.

“Mom knew about them,” I say.

His eyes lift to mine. “What do you mean?”

I tell him about my conversation with mom regarding the ribbons.

He hands the phone back to me.

“What does Dad think?”

“That she was exhausted and confused.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

The admission sits heavily between us.

Finn turns his face toward the window. “How old was mom when it started?”

I don’t have to ask what he means.

“In her twenties. Maybe 28?”

“So not much older than us.”

“Finn—”

“Is it hereditary?”

There is no joke in his voice now.

I set the phone beside me.

“There can be a genetic component.”

He looks down at his hands.

“Sometimes I wonder whether it’s already here.”

Something tightens in my chest. “What is?”

“Whatever happened to Mom. Sitting inside my head, waiting for the right moment.”

“Mom has an illness. It isn’t something hiding inside her.”

“You know what I mean.”

I do.

He rubs his thumb across his palm.

“I don’t want Dad watching me the way he watches her.”

“He watches Mom because he loves her.”

“He watches her because he’s waiting for something to happen.”

I start to argue. I can’t.

Finn looks at me. The humor is gone from his face, leaving something younger and far more vulnerable beneath it.

“I don’t want you doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me and wondering whether I’m still me.”

The words hurt in a place I can’t name.

I move farther onto the bed and squeeze his hand.

“I would know you anywhere.”

His fingers close around mine.

“What if I don’t?” he asks.

I look at him.

“What if one day I can’t tell?” His voice is quiet. “What’s real. What isn’t. Whether something actually happened or I only think it did.”

“That isn’t happening.”

“You don’t know that.” His gaze drops.

“But if something is wrong, ever, we’ll deal with it.”

“We?”

“Obviously. I’m your twin. I inherited your terrible taste in music and your inability to return anything you

borrow. I’m entitled to the full package.”

A smile pulls faintly at his mouth.

“My taste in music is elite,” he says.

“Your favorite band has recorded the same sad song forty-seven times.”

“That’s deeply offensive.”

“It’s one man moaning because a woman doesn’t love him.”

“Sometimes she does love him. Sometimes, something else is making him miserable.”

“Versatility.”

He laughs. The sound loosens something inside me.

For one moment, he is Finn again. My brother. My first friend. My best friend. The person who shared a wall with me before either of us took our first breath.

I reach for the camera hanging from my shoulder.

Finn eyes it. “What are you doing?”

“The light is good.”

He looks toward the window. “The light is almost gone.”

“Exactly.”

I lift the camera.

“Absolutely not.”

The shutter clicks.

“Calla.”

“What?”

“I’m having an existential crisis.”

“You’re sitting near a window.”

“I confide in you, and this is what happens.”

“The camera is how I process intimacy.”

“That explains a lot about you, actually.”

I take another photograph as he reaches for a pillow.

He throws it.

I duck, laughing, and the pillow knocks against the wall behind me.

“You missed.”

I lift the camera again.

This time, he is laughing when the shutter clicks.

I lower it slowly.

The fading light catches one side of his face and leaves the other in shadow. He looks tired. Beautiful. Entirely himself.

I want to preserve him like this.

I don’t know why that thought makes me sad.

“Mack is coming tomorrow,” I tell him.

His smile disappears so quickly I almost think I imagined it.

“Tomorrow? Why?”

“Ricky needed to switch weekends.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“I’m delighted.”

“You look alarmed.”

“My face is complicated.”

“She’s worried about us.”

“God help us all.”

But I see it now, beneath the uneasiness.

He wants her here. Good. I did not misstep.

“She’ll get here late,” I say. “She’s leaving after she gets off work.”

He nods. “Okay.”

I stand and sling the camera strap over my shoulder.

“Try to sleep tonight.”

“I slept all day.”

“I know. But try anyway.”

At the door, I look back.

Finn has turned toward the window again. His reflection hovers faintly in the glass, suspended over the darkening lawn.

“I meant what I said,” I tell him.

He glances at me. “About my music?”

“I would know you anywhere.”

Something changes in his face. Before I can understand it, he smiles.

“I know, Cal.”

I leave him there.

In my room, I sit at my desk and scroll through the photographs from the forest again.

The paint.

The path through the younger trees.

The ribbons.

I send copies to Dad, then transfer the photographs from Finn’s room.

The first one appears on my screen.

Finn is glaring at the camera, one hand lifted in protest. Behind him, the lawn is empty.

I click to the second.

His pillow is blurred at the edge of the frame.

The third catches him laughing.

I stop.

There is something beyond the window.

At first, I think it is Finn’s reflection. The glass caught reflections strangely in the evening light. But Finn’s reflected face is visible near the edge of the pane.

This is farther away.

Outside.

A dark figure stands near the tree line.

I lean closer to the screen.

It appears to be a man, although the photograph is too dark to make out his face or clothes. He is simply a vertical shape where no shape should be, half-concealed between two trees.

Watching our house.

I enlarge the image until the edges begin to blur.

The figure breaks apart into shadow and grain and pixels.

I check the photograph before it.

Nothing.

Then the photograph after it.

Empty lawn.

Three images taken within seconds.

Empty.

Occupied.

Empty.

A cold uneasiness travels down my spine.