“Hazel Swan,” I concede.
His eyes sway briefly and his jawline tightens, and then he goes perfectly still, like he’s solidified into a statue right in front of me.
“I should have told you before. But I didn’t know how. And then when I found out why you came here, I knew you’d hate me. And I just couldn’t—”
“When?” he asks matter-of-factly.
“When?” I repeat, not sure what he means.
“When did you stop being Penny Talbot?”
I try to swallow, but my body rejects the motion. As if Penny’s body and mine are battling each other. Fighting for control. “The first night we met.” I brush a wet clump of hair away from my forehead. “After the Swan party on the beach, Penny brought you back to the island. That night, she woke from sleep and came down to the dock before sunrise. It was a dream to her. She waded into the water, and I took her body.”
“So that night on the beach, when we talked by the bonfire and you told me about the Swan sisters... that was Penny? Not you?”
I nod.
“But everything after that night... has been you?”
Again I nod.
“But you remembered talking to me on the beach, and things about Penny’s life.”
“I absorb the memories of the body I inhabit. I know everything about Penny.”
“That’s not the only reason,” Olivia chimes in, happy to fill in the holes I’d like to avoid.
I close my eyes then open them. Bo has turned fully away from Olivia and is now staring at me. I’m the threat now. I’ve hurt him. Lied to him. Made him trust me and even love me. “I’ve taken Penny’s body every summer for the last three years,” I confess.
A blast of wind barrels into us, sending a surge of rain against the windows of the lighthouse.
“Why?” Bo manages to ask, though his voice sounds strangled.
“I like her life,” I say, the first time I’ve admitted it aloud. “I like being here on the island.”
“Oh, Hazel, if you’re going to tell the truth, you might as well tell him everything,” Olivia interjects.
I shoot daggers at her, wishing she’d just shut up. I should have let Bo push her over the edge. I shouldn’t have stopped him. But now here she stands, bringing up every lurid detail of my past. And calling me by my real name.
“I used to come here when I was still—”
“Alive,” Olivia finishes for me, raising both eyebrows.
“You lived here before?” Bo asks.
“No.” I don’t want to tell him about Owen. About my life before. It doesn’t matter now. I’m not that girl anymore. That girl drowned in the harbor two centuries ago... and this girl is here, alive, right in front of him.
“The first lighthouse keeper had a son,” Olivia fills in for me. “His name was Owen Clement. He was handsome; I’ll give him that. But I never understood what she saw in him. He had no money, no estate, no lucrative future. Yet she loved him anyway. And she was going to marry him. That is, if his father hadn’t accused us of being witches and drowned us in the harbor.”
I cringe at her sharp account of Owen and me. As if it could be summed up so crisply. A single breath to tell our story.
“Now Owen is buried up on Alder Hill in the Sparrow Cemetery. That’s where she went this morning—to his grave.” She says it like an accusation, like I have betrayed Bo with this single act. And maybe I have. But it’s not the worst offense, not by a mile.
Bo looks stunned. He’s staring at me like I have ripped his heart from his chest, squeezed it between my clawed fingers, and crushed it until it stopped pumping.
Where he once saw a girl, he now sees a monster.
“It wasn’t like that,” I say. “I went to say good-bye to him.” But my words seem frail and ineffectual. They don’t mean anything anymore. Not to him.
