Patrick holds out his hand to me. "Then let's just see what he can tell us today."
Nathaniel is on the top bunk, sorting his daddy's old collection of baseball cards into piles. He likes the feel of their frayed edges, and the way they smell gray. His dad says to be careful, that one day these could pay for college, but Nathaniel couldn't care less. Right now he likes touching them, staring at all the funny faces, and thinking that his dad used to do the same thing.
There's a knock, and his mom comes in with Patrick. Without hesitation, Patrick climbs up the ladder-all six-feet-two inches of him squashing into the small space between ceiling and mattress. It makes Nathaniel smile a little. "Hey, Weed." Patrick thumps the bed with a fist. "This is comfy. Gotta get me one of these." He sits up, pretends to crack his head on the ceiling. "What do you think? Should I ask your mom to buy me a bed like this too?"
Nathaniel shakes his head and hands Patrick a card. "Is this for me?" Patrick asks, then reads the name and smiles broadly. "Mike Schmidt, rookie. I'm sure your dad will be thrilled you've been so generous."
He tucks it into his pocket and takes out a pad and pen at the same time. "Nathaniel, you think it would be all right if I asked you some questions?"
Well. He is tired of questions. He is tired, period. But Patrick climbed all the way up here. Nathaniel jerks his head, yes.
Patrick touches the boy's knee, slowly, so slowly that it doesn't even make Nathaniel jump, although these days everything does. "Will you tell me the truth, Weed?" he asks softly.
Slower this time, Nathaniel nods.
"Did your daddy hurt you?"
Nathaniel looks at Patrick, then at his mother, and emphatically shakes his head. He feels something open up in his chest, making it easier to breathe.
"Did somebody else hurt you?"
Yes.
"Do you know who it was?"
Yes.
Patrick's gaze is locked with Nathaniel's. He won't let him turn away, no matter how badly Nathaniel wants to. "Was it a boy or a girl?"
Nathaniel is trying to remember-how is it said again? He looks at his mother, but Patrick shakes his head, and he knows that, now, it is all up to him. Tentatively, his hand comes up to his head. He touches his brow, as if there is a baseball cap there. "Boy," he hears his mother translate.
"Was it a grown-up, or a kid?"
Nathaniel blinks at him. He cannot sign those words.
"Well, was he big like me, or little like you?"
Nathaniel's hand hovers between his own body, and Patrick's. Then falls, deliberately, in the middle.
That makes Patrick grin. "Okay, it was a medium guy, and it was someone you know?"
Yes.
"Can you tell me who?"
Nathaniel feels his whole face tighten, muscles bunching. He squeezes his eyes shut. Please please please, he thinks. Let me. "Patrick," his mother says, and she takes a step forward, but Patrick holds out a hand and she stops.
"Nathaniel, if I brought you a bunch of pictures"-he points to the baseball cards-"like these ... do you think you could show me who this person was?"
Nathaniel's hands flutter over the piles, bumblebees choosing a place to light. He looks from one card to the other. He cannot read, he cannot speak, but he knows that Rollie Fingers had a handlebar moustache, Al Hrabosky looked like a grizzly bear. Once something sticks in his head, it stays there; it's just a matter of getting it back out again.
Nathaniel looks up at Patrick; and he nods. This, this he can do.
Monica has been in accommodations far worse than the efficiency suite where she finds Caleb Frost, but this is almost more jarring, and she thinks it is because she has seen the sort of home where he is supposed to be. The minute Caleb recognizes her face through the keyhole of the door, he throws it open. "What's the matter with Nathaniel?' he asks, true fear washing over his features.
"Nothing. Nothing at all. He's made another disclosure. A new ID."
"I don't understand."
