“Don’t ever cross me, Vail,” I said, but I just felt tired. My shoulders sagged.
“Mom’s and Dad’s hospital records,” Vail said. “You distracted him with all of that business about you being a suspect, you being angry about it.”
“I am angry about it.”
“But that doesn’t have any bearing on what you wanted,” Vail said.
I hesitated, and then I shrugged. “You read the file.” Our gazes met.
Mrs. Thornhill says she has never seen Ben Esmie in person.
Further down on the page, Gus had written more notes:
Parents can’t supply a photo of the missing boy. After much questioning, no photo of him seems to exist. At the age of six, the boy was not enrolled in school. There are no family photos in the house, no pictures of either parent or any of the children. We can find no one outside the family who can supply a detailed description, no teacher, doctor, dentist, or babysitter. We can find no one to describe Ben Esmie except for his parents and the three siblings who were present when he disappeared.
I knew what Ben looked like. He had brown eyes and light brown hair. When he disappeared, he was wearing a blue T-shirt, navy blue pants, and white socks. I knew because I’d helped dress him that morning. I’d tried to get him to wear shoes, but he’d refused. He didn’t like wearing shoes in the house, because they made too much noise and because he liked to play the game of sliding along the polished hardwood floors. I worried that he’d get splinters in his feet or step on a wayward nail.
When he hid from us that last time, he’d been so quiet I hadn’t even known in which direction he’d gone.
So we didn’t have pictures of him. So what? We weren’t a picture-taking family. None of us had owned a camera growing up. There were no family portraits on the wall, like normal families had, and if there had ever been a photo from their wedding, my parents would have thrown it in the garbage.
We can find no one to describe Ben Esmie.
Gus had said there was no hospital record for Ben. And he was right—Ben had never gone to school.
Why? Why hadn’t any of us questioned it? I must have known he was old enough to be enrolled. It must have crossed my mind—crossed all of our minds. Why hadn’t Mom and Dad sent him to school? Why hadn’t my siblings and I asked about that or enrolled him ourselves? Had we wanted him to ourselves so badly? Had we worried that if he left the house for the real world, he’d never come back again?
The thing about doctors, dentists—thathadto be wrong. Had Ben never seen a doctor? Had he never gotten his smallpox shot? I had the scar on my arm, and so did Dodie and Vail. Ben had never broken a bone or gotten an infection, but he was a rambunctious little boy. He had to have seensomeone.
My parents were selfish and secretive. They hadn’t told the police about Ben’s medical records for some reason that had died with them. But everyone had one record, so I would start there.
I wanted the record of the day Ben was born.
18
Dodie
Vail found me in the upstairs hallway, facing the closed door to our parents’ bedroom. “Want to watch cartoons?” he asked me. “Violet’s going out.”
I was tempted. Cartoons were my favorite—not in childhood but now. As a full-on grown-up in the year of our Lord 1989, they were my favorite TV, and Vail knew it. I wondered if that was why he’d gone to the trouble of setting up the TV. I hadn’t seen him watch anything yet.
“Not now,” I said reluctantly. “We have work to do.”
Vail looked at the bedroom door, and his voice was stony when he said, “I’d rather watch cartoons.”
“So would I. But Vail, there are words on the living room wall. That’s going to dampen the mood in there.”
A look crossed his face at the mention of the scrawled words, as if a thought snagged in his mind. Then he sighed.
“The detective’s report was right about the lack of photographs in this family,” I continued. “Of paperwork. I know our parents were neglectful, but the three of uswereborn, and we do exist.Ben existed, too. I already know there’s nothing in any of our bedrooms and nothing in Ben’s bedroom.” I had already looked in Ben’s room, which should have been upsetting but had instead made me numb. Ben’s room was completely empty, all of his furniture gone and his toys moved to the attic. It was a blank cube with nothing of my little brother in it anymore. We wouldn’t find answers there.
“There has to be a document somewhere,” I said, nodding toward our parents’ door. “That’s the only room I haven’t searched.”
“Which means,” Vail said, the words dragging, “we have to go in.”
“Correct.”
After last night, I should be a mess. I should be sobbing in a corner or—more likely—getting in my car and driving back to New York.
