All of me turns cold. I grip Henry’s hand. “Is she okay?”
He nods. “My mother threw him out, along with Leah, our cousin. She’s the one who can, apparently, relay what Ophelia sees.”
I pick up the discarded photograph, the one where Harry Darnelle and my mother look like movie stars from a bygone era.
“And she wanted them to see this.” I consider that. “Do you think Ophelia witnessed what happened all those years ago?”
“It’s a distinct possibility,” he says, but then shakes his head. “But we can’t know for certain. Ophelia wasn’t allowed to talk much about the research in its early stages. Unfortunately, I was constantly in the field, so I don’t know what, exactly, they were able to do.”
I point to the convertible. “For what it’s worth, the car’s still in the garage.”
Henry’s expression brightens a bit. “What?”
“Under a tarp. Hasn’t been driven for years, though.”
“It’s quite a specimen,” he says, his tone appreciative. “An Alfa Romeo Spider in good condition could probably net you a tidy sum.”
“Really?”
“My father knew a little bit about cars.” He shrugs, supremely cavalier. “It rubbed off.”
I’m beginning to suspect that for Henry, “a little bit” is everybody else’s definition of encyclopedic knowledge.
“So, what do we do now?” I mean, we’re hardly going to jump into that convertible and drive off into the sunset, although there’s a part of me that insists this would be an excellent idea.
Henry graces me with a warm smile that deepens the crinkles around his eyes and makes those flecks of gold positively glow. “First, we get you something to eat.”
“I’m really not—” I begin, but then my stomach growls.
“Like I said, we get something to eat. Besides, cooking helps me think. We’ll have to plan our next steps cautiously.” He glances around, gaze landing on the files and photos we’ve scattered around the basement. “Do you mind if I bring back some of these files?”
“No, not at all, and you can keep your father’s notes.”
“Technically, they belong to your mother?—”
“Technically, they belong to your father, which makes them yours, and I know my mother would want you to have them.”
“All right.” Henry nods, but instead of reaching for those file folders, his hand lands on the album with the prom photos. “You never did tell me what happened.”
Are you kidding me? “You really want to know?”
“Oh, I do.” And there’s an enthusiasm in his voice I can’t quite place.
So I give in and tell Henry about the ill-fated high school romance between Pansy Little and Daniel Lombardi.
I didn’t lie when I said Daniel’s a genius. He, and as far as I know, still is. At the start of our sophomore year, he was so smart—and by smart, I also mean bored—that the school and his parents agreed he should skip to his senior year. (And he was still bored, so he started knocking out his generals at King’s End Community College.)
His parents wanted him to have a “real” senior year of high school, but his friend group, including me, were all sophomores and a few freshies we adopted. So he brought us along. Since he was the golden boy of King’s End—perfect test scores, robotics team state championship, academic awards, and a slew of scholarships—everyone let him.
“I imagine that can be quite isolating,” Henry observes. “That level of intelligence.”
Daniel would get frustrated when the rest of us couldn’t keep up, but he was never cruel about it. He just wanted us all to understand. We just wanted him to have fun. We made it our mission. For most of the year, it worked. We all had the best senior year.
Then came the day after graduation. And the picnic, just me and Daniel. Strawberries, sparkling grape juice, and a red-and-white checked blanket. We liked to hike deep into the old part of the cemetery. At the crest of a hill sits a welcoming willow tree. It’s calm and comforting there, one of the few spots where I’m not constantly on alert for Screamers. That day, Daniel had tied back the sweeping branches with red ribbons. He created something that felt like a sanctuary.
And a trap.
“He wanted me to skip my ‘summer camp,’” I tell Henry, drawing quotation marks in the air. “He said I didn’t care that he was going away at the end of August, and how could I be so selfish? And this was our only chance to make things work.” I knew what he meant; when it came to high school romances, the statistics weren’t on our side. And Daniel was all about statistics.
