The boy turned to stare at the constable.
“The cook is nice,” he finally said.
On the way back to town, the constable thought about what hewould write in his report. The problem was he had nothing to report, and he wanted to do a good job. He decided he would call down to where Martha had had her last center. Maybe they had a sheriff or someone he could talk to.
Martha held a staff meeting the night after the constable visited. She asked the cook to make treats, knowing it would please her, and set an empty jar on the table so the other staff could give her a tip. The staff of Brightwood were not used to feeling appreciated: they stood around the dining room, eating the cook’s homemade donuts, and drinking the hot coffee she had brewed.
“Now,” Martha began. “I understand change is hard. Maybe some of you have questions about my methods.”
The staff looked confused. Ralph stood in the back. There was nothing on his face. At one time, Martha had made it so he could hide nothing from her. But years on the road had fixed that.
“Did something happen?” Ike said. He was already Martha’s biggest defender.
“Everything is fine,” she said, and smiled.
“I saw the constable’s car yesterday,” one of the staff ventured.
“He paid us a visit. I don’t mind. We have nothing to hide, do we? My concern is whether any of you have concerns. I want you to feel you can come to me. To talk.”
No one spoke. The night watchman yawned. The cook looked flustered, from a long day on her feet and the unfamiliar evening coffee.
Martha seemed disappointed. She and the staff made small talk after that, and she noted a few problems—there was too much bleach in the laundry; it made everything smell—and they all went home. The treatment room door was locked, the room empty. The isolation floor was empty, and the boys upstairs could have been invisible, as far as theirsilence went. The cook washed the dishes and left for her place outside Wheel Stone. Martha drove her nice car down the road. She had rented a place up the coast, in a newer development. She missed the desert. She had lost a lot, she thought. She’d had to leave her hometown and strike out to a new place, forfeiting friends, familiarity, and a climate she loved. Now she was all alone, in a cold and wet place where the sky never stopped raining. It was a terrible loss.
It made her, she thought, understand the boys.
13
Larry missed Amanda, more than he’d expected to. It was a sharp pang that reminded him of the hollow loss of his wife. Marjorie was gone, but Amanda was still alive, which meant maybe she would come back.
He returned to his world, which seemed even more limited than before. He walked up and down the beach. He browsed the market.
“He wasn’t the only one, you know,” Aspire said.
“The only what?” he asked, puzzled. He had been examining cans of beans and thinking about a dish his wife used to make, with white beans cooked with ham and pineapple. She called it Hawaiian Toot-Toot.
“The only boy who died.”
“What do you mean?” Larry turned to her.
Her mother had appeared behind the door.
“Aspire,” Gertrude said. “I need help with the dishes. Go on now.”
“Hold up,” Larry said. “What did you mean?”
Her mother sighed. “I told her not to tell tall tales.”
“I’m not telling tales, Ma. Dad wrote—”
“Your father.” The mother stopped her, shaking her head angrily. She looked away, and Larry saw a pain she tried to keep hidden fromher daughter. She didn’t want to bad-mouth a dead man, no matter how much he deserved it.
“Go on now,” she told Aspire. “Just go on.”
Aspire removed her apron, smiling.
“Come on,” she told Larry, who had put down the beans. “I want to show you something.”
Aspire opened the shed behind the market, and backed out an old beater car Larry had never seen before. He looked at it skeptically.
