My hands went cold. Was he saying that Ben’s file had been thrown out like so much trash?
“They destroy old files sometimes,” Gus was saying. “They’re not supposed to, but they do. Nothing I could do about it. But when I retired, I didn’t want them destroying the cases I worked. I can’t explain it except to say it felt like they were going to erase all my work. It wasn’t right. So I took a few of my old files with me when I left.”
“You took police files?” I was shocked, even though the only knowledge I had of police work was from TV. “Can you do that?”
“Technically, no, I absolutely cannot do that,” Gus replied, unperturbed. “But I did it years ago, and no one stopped me, and no one has brought it up since. So as far as crimes go, I’m gonna say it was a victimless one. Are you gonna argue with me?”
I had no answer to that. Who was I to argue with a detective about what a victimless crime was? If the Fell PD couldn’t keep track of their files, that was their problem.
“Fine,” I said. “Where are the files now?”
“In a secure location.”
“Is that cop-speak for something?”
“It’s a place known only by me.” Gus seemed annoyed now. “It’s locked up tight.”
“Okay. Can I go to this secure location?”
“Not alone, you can’t. I store some private things there. Valuable things.”
“Okay, then, come with me.”
Gus shook his head. “I won’t go. It’s too hard for me to look at that old stuff. Personal stuff. Too many memories.”
This was getting frustrating. Something about this was upsetting him, and it was keeping me from what I wanted. “So what’s the solution? Tell me what to do.”
“I won’t go with you, but someone I trust will.” Gus nodded to someone behind my shoulder, and a man entered the booth, dropping into the seat beside him. He was big, wearing a white tee and a worn baseball cap. He pulled Gus’s plate over and picked up the second half of the sandwich.
I stared at the man, who was suddenly horrifyingly familiar.
“You can go look at the file,” Gus said. “My son will take you.”
The man took a bite of the sandwich and spoke with his mouth full. “Hi,” said Bradley Pine.
11
Dodie
I took a shower after the hike through the woods, washing the mud, sweat, and chill from my skin. I used the hallway shower, because I couldn’t stand the idea of even entering my parents’ bedroom, let alone using their en suite. So I used the bathtub-shower I’d used through all of my childhood, standing naked under the spray.
I put my hand on the cool tiles, looking at their white-and-Tiffany-blue swirl pattern as a memory bubbled up. Me sitting in this bathtub, the warm water up to my chest, hugging my knees and crying as I stared at these same tiles. It had happened more than once. I hadn’t known I remembered it until now.
How old was I in this memory? Young. Possibly before Ben. Ben was a late baby—I was six when he was born, Vail eight, Violet nine. Our parents were strangers to each other by then, and Dad was rarely even home.
Looking back on it as an adult, it was surprising that my parents had stood each other’s company for long enough to create a final, unexpected child. Then again, based on my disappointing personal experience, such an act can take ten to fifteen minutes. Maybe theytolerated each other for a quarter of an hour and the result changed all of our lives.
In the memory, I was crying after a nightmare. I was tired, terrified. I’d escaped from my room. My childhood was harrowing, but not because of any human villains—evil teachers, neighbors, priests, or the other ghouls who preyed on children. The ghouls of my childhood were under my bed, under the water. That water smelled so terrible, and it was so cold. When I escaped it, I’d sit in the bath, crying as the hot water ran in the tub so no one could hear how scared I was.
I stared at my fingertips on the tiles. The water had come less frequently after Ben arrived, though it still came. It never came on the nights he crawled into bed next to me, warming me with his little body. Ben had changed everything.
We’d adored him, all of us, even Mother. It was so easy to do. As a baby, he’d bobble his bald head and blink at us with his wide brown eyes. His arms would fly up and he’d crow with pleasure when he recognized us. I still remembered the feel of him cradled in my arms, his little legs kicking in his pajamas as he made a happy chuffing sound. I remembered the feel of the trusting skin on the top of his head against my lips.
There was no question of caring for our little brother once Ben arrived. Mother only needed to care for him for the few hours a day that we were in school, and then we fought to look after him. For afternoons, weekends, holidays, and summers, Ben was ours. We looked after him together or separately. We fed him, changed him, bathed him, played with him, read to him. We held him all night when he had a fever and cleaned his vomit when he had the flu. We held his arms as he learned to walk and taught him the letters of the alphabet. He liked games, goofy songs, and bedtime stories. The sweetness and light of our little brother made the bad dreams as wispy as smoke.
I turned off the water and grabbed a towel. Ben had even had a good effect on our parents, at least for a while. Dad had come home more often. Mother had been sweet and affectionate with Ben, more so than she’d ever been with any of us, and we didn’t even resent him for it. We adored him too much. When Mother had drifted her attention away from him after a few years, distracted as she always was by something more interesting than her children, we were happy about it. It meant we got more of him to ourselves.
But at first, she’d been as in love as we were. I still remembered her holding him swaddled in a blanket, directing us as we put his room together. Vail had been sent to the attic to retrieve the old crib, which had been put away after I’d outgrown it. Violet had dug out the worn baby blankets we’d all used.
