“I didn’t sign up for this,” I argued to Gus. “This is my business, my family’s business. I don’t want a babysitter.”
“Not a babysitter,” Gus said. “You might find him useful. Someone should. Ever since he moved back home from Vermont, I can’t find a single use for him. Until today.” His eyes twinkled with an evil gleam. “He’s between wives, too.”
That finally got a reaction from Bradley. “Dad.”
“I’m just saying.” Gus unlaced his arms and spread his hands in an innocent gesture.
“Oh my God.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. This was the last thing I needed.
“You take him with you, or you don’t read your brother’s file,” Gus said.
I turned to Bradley. “What do you think of all of this?”
Bradley dropped his napkin onto the plate. “I got lunch out of it.” Then he declared, as if he was doing me a favor, “I’ll help you out.”
I had a moment of double vision, in which I saw Bradley in high school, overlaid like a double exposure. He’d been tall, built, good-looking—everything that was popular with high school girls. If he’d declared, in his offhand way,I’ll help you outto my sixteen-year-old self, I would have been speechless with excitement. I—the neglected and unseen girl whose only friend had died—would have lived on those four words for weeks, like a camel crossing an emotional desert.
I crossed my arms like Gus had just done and stared current-day Bradley down. “Do you know my name?”
“Sure.” His gaze darted away, uneasy.
“Do you? Say it, then.”
“Uh.” Bradley looked up at the ceiling, like my name would be written there. His father had just said my last name a few seconds ago, but apparently it hadn’t registered. Nothing about me had ever registered with him.
“Jesus, son,” Gus said, disgusted, when the silence went on too long.
“We went to high school together,” I said. “Do you remember that?”
Bradley shrugged. “I guess.”
“Name one thing you remember about me,” I snapped. “One.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, and I finally saw a glimmer of thought somewhere in his concrete skull. “You were weird,” he finally said.
“Everyone in Fell is weird,” I shot back. “You’ll have to be more specific. Try again.”
“You were weirder than the rest of them,” Bradley finally said. “You and your siblings. Everyone thought you were crazy. Your brother never talked. He was a swimmer.”
“A diver,” I corrected him. “And you beat him up twice.”
Bradley shrugged. “He probably deserved it.”
I looked to Gus. “You want me to work with this?”
He grinned back at me. “It isn’t about want, honey. It’s about choice. You don’t have one.”
—
The files, apparently, were being kept in a storage unit that Gus rented. I probably shouldn’t have left my car behind, but I didn’t know where the storage unit was, and I had no patience for driving around Fell, following Bradley. I was sure he would drive off and abandon me, Gus or no Gus.
So I got into Bradley’s rusty blue Pinto. He got into the driver’s seat, his big bulk filling the space. As I fastened my seat belt, I noticed a baseball glove tossed on the back seat. It was way too small to fit Bradley’s giant hand.
“You have kids?” I asked him.
“Two,” he said as he started the car. He didn’t question why I was asking. “I see them every other weekend.”
“I know that feeling,” I said.
