“Sure,” I said. “Anything you want.” Since I was bad at subtlety, I pointed away from the trees, in the direction of the road. “Something that way.”
“Oh, well. Okay?” She didn’t seem convinced that I was telling the truth. “I was walking, but I was thinking maybe I might ride my bike.”
“Bike riding sounds delightful,” I said with more force than was necessary. Something that took place on the road, complete with mode of transportation to escape whatever was in the trees? Yes, indeed. “What fun.”
The look on Terri’s face reminded me that I should never reproduce, something I was already fully convinced of. I was scaring her a little.
“Want to come?” she asked me. She must truly have a dearth of friends.
“I don’t have a bike, dear,” I replied.
“I have an extra,” Terri said. “I got a new bike for Christmas, but I don’t like it as much as my old bike. So now I have both.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I rode a bike. Vail had taught me to ride when I was six, watching and—of course—laughing every time I fell off. The only bike we owned was Vail’s, because Violet and I had no interest in physical activity. When Vail had started teaching Ben to ride on that same bike, he hadn’t laughed at him.
But my gaze flicked to the trees, where something was definitely moving. Something dark that I didn’t like at all. I’d have to make a sacrifice.
“All right, show me this bike of yours,” I said to Terri. “I’d love to take a ride.”
33
Vail
Charlotte took her time in the attic. In her briefcase, she carried the basic tools of her trade—a radio-wave scanner, a camera with flash, a portable tape recorder with microphone. She told me to sit in the corner in silence while she worked, not to speak, not to tell her anything else about Ben or his connection to the house. It was best if she worked blind.
The toys had been rearranged again. The bag of marbles was gone—Violet had brought it down with her—and the crayons were still scattered in the kitchen and the living room, but the rest of Ben’s toys were here. A teddy bear with black-button eyes sat on top of a Jack-in-the-box with its lid closed. The balsam wood airplane with the upside-down wings was on the floor in the corner, as if briefly played with and discarded. The board games and puzzles had been put back in their boxes, but the boxes lay on the floor. A left rubber boot and a right sneaker lay side by side. No matter how many times we reminded him to clean up, Ben was always a messy little boy.
I lowered myself to sit on the floor, my back to the wall, my knees bent, as Charlotte took items from her briefcase. She made nocomment on my little brother’s ghostly mess. I closed my eyes and imagined I could hear Ben, breathlessly telling me something scattered that was very important to him in the moment. I pulled the teddy bear into my lap.
“Don’t touch anything,” Charlotte scolded me softly.
“Too late,” I replied.
We weren’t going to talk about the kiss. She had never done that before, and I had never asked her to. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. I couldn’t have said why she did it. All I knew was that her lips had been cool and soft, and the memory of it soothed a small part of my jagged edges in this attic. Maybe that was why she had done it. Maybe a kiss doesn’t need any other reason than that the person receiving it simply needs it.
“Do you recognize all of these things?” Charlotte asked after another moment. “Is there anything here that strikes you as strange or out of place?”
The bag of marbles from 1899 wasn’t familiar to me, but I didn’t tell Charlotte about those. It was best if she wasn’t influenced by anything else that had already happened. “I recognize everything,” I said without opening my eyes, talking to the darkness behind my lids. “I know every piece in this attic. We had to box it up and put it up here when we started to understand that he wasn’t coming back.”
“The mismatched shoes?” Her voice was gentle but businesslike. The voice of a doctor who knows you’re scared of the answers to her questions.
“Definitely Ben,” I said.
“Has anything been moved or rearranged since you were here last?”
“Everything,” I replied. “Everything has moved around.”
“But nothing is destroyed.” I heard the click of her camera as the flash hit my closed eyelids. I hadn’t taken photos up here because in those first upset moments, Dodie had asked me not to. I was glad Ihad called Charlotte. Someone needed to take over this investigation.
“Ben didn’t destroy his toys,” I told her. “He played with them, but he didn’t wreck them.”
“These are well used.” Another click, another flash. “Did he ever play up here before?”
Before he died,she meant. “No. No one came up here until we had to store his things. We got rid of his other things eventually, but not the toys.”
“His bed?” she asked. “His clothes? His furniture?”
I choked the word out. “Gone.”
