“None. The door at this side of the house was partly open—that’s obviously how Henry got out—but I closed and locked it as I left.”
I nod. “What are you going to do next?”
“I’ll have to talk to my mom in the morning, explain why Henry’s not there anymore. But I feel a little weird bringing it up—it sounds like it was a sensitive conversation.”
“Marcus and Keira are staying in the main house. Maybe they overheard it, too, and can fill you in so you don’t have to ask your mom.”
“But they’re in the big guest room, all the way at the other end of the house, so I doubt they heard anything. I’ll just have to suck it up and be frank with my mother, I guess. Did Henry go to bed okay?”
“Yeah, he seemed pretty relieved to be here. Do you think it’s possible he dreamed the whole thing?”
Gabe scrunches his mouth in thought. “Or...” he says, lowering his voice, “what if it’s all the product of a nine-year-old’s overactive imagination—and he made it up as a way to get out of staying in the house without having to ask directly?”
“Possible. And he might not have fabricatedeverything. Maybe he heard something,and it got twisted in his mind.”
Gabe shrugs. “Right. Hopefully we’ll know more in the morning.”
We trudge up to our room and crawl back under the sheet. The room feels slightly more humid than earlier, but I don’t have the psychic energy to activate the air conditioning. From sheer fatigue, I drift off into a restless sleep.
I wake the next day to the sound of laughter coming from below. Gabe and Henry. I roll over on my side. It’s 7:04. Sleepily, I pull on shorts and a T-shirt.
Downstairs I find the two of them drinking orange juice at the kitchen table. Henry’s playing a game on Gabe’s phone and grinning so widely that I almost wonder if last night was somethingImust have dreamed.
“Hi, guys,” I say, my voice froggy still from sleep. “Everything good?”
“Yup, all good,” Gabe announces.
“Dad said I could playSubway Surfersfor fifteen minutes,” Henry tells me without looking up. “Then I have to stop.”
Sitting in front of Henry, I notice, is a plate scattered with toast crumbs, and there are strawberries and plums in a bowl, neither of which were in our kitchen here yesterday. I shoot Gabe a questioning look.
“Hey, Hen,” he says, “why don’t you take the phone upstairs while you get dressed? I left your duffel bag on the luggage rack in your room. And then when you’re ready, we’ll take the dogs for a long walk.”
“Gee says the dogs can’t go in the woods this week because of hunters,” Henry says.
“We’ll walk them on the road with their leashes, then,” Gabe assures him.
As soon as Henry’s scampered upstairs, Gabe eases the kitchen door shut with his foot.
“So you’ve been over to the house already?” I say.
“Yeah, I realized I’d better be there when my mom woke up so she wouldn’t go into Henry’s room and find him missing.”
“Did you learn anything?”
Using his foot again, Gabe shoves a chair away from the table for me to sit on.
“Turns out Henry was right,” he says. “Hedidhear my mom reading the riot act to someone outside his window.”
“Whowasit?”
“You know the girl who’s been working with Bonnie? The one with the pink hair? My mother caught her helping herself to a couple of bottles of wine on the way out last night and confronted her out on the patio.”
It takes a second for the answer to register since it’s not what I was expecting.
“You mean after we took Henry up to bed?”
“Yeah, though there were still people around in the house. My mom didn’t want to spoil the mood, so she kept it to herself. Henry obviouslydidfall asleep after hearing the conversation and only came over here after he woke up in the middle of the night.”
