“Boys have accidents, Constable.”
“I think the law says you are required to give them access to a toilet.”
“I do, sir.”
“Then why are they pissing themselves in here?”
He stood, smelling the tang of vomit too.
“It’s not uncommon during regression therapy that the child reverts to an infant-like state,” she said. “In fact, we encourage it. We want them to start over again. There is a lot of research to back my position.”
In truth, there was not, but she believed there was, and now so did he.
“You want them to feel like babies?”
“Yes, sir. Most of these boys, if not all, have experienced profound trauma. Many times before they can even remember. We take themback, get them to discharge all the rage. The maladaptive behaviors fall away. No more defenses. They are as open as—the wide blue sky.”
“Hmm.” He was gazing at a spot on her jacket. It looked like puke. She looked down, saw it, and wiped it hastily with a handkerchief pulled from her pocket.
“I want to see that boy again. The one I talked to last time. Dennis.”
“I truly hope that will conclude your business here, as I need to get back to work.”
They were in his room. Dennis was looking out the window. Constable Roberts stepped closer. He could not figure out what the boy was looking at. Finally, he saw it. There was a small rabbit crouched in the grass below.
“Dennis,” he began.
The boy had a hollow place at the base of his skull. The constable looked at this as he talked.
“I won’t lie to you, son. I know Martha King is respected in her field. But you look sad. Is it the holding time?”
Dennis turned to him. His eyes were empty. But storms threatened, deep inside.
“She told me I need to break,” Dennis said.
That’s what it’s really about, Constable Roberts thought. He thought of prisoners of war. He knew exactly what Martha King was doing to these kids. She was breaking them down.
“Can’t you just comply?” he asked.
Dennis looked away.
“I don’t know how, sir.”
After leaving the center, Constable Roberts drove into the town of Eagle Cove. He had never spent much time there—he had noreason to. Once or twice he had gone to talk to Gertrude about her husband, but talking to that woman was like talking to a brick wall—in her eyes, all he saw was the dreams she’d had of her husband, not the truth of the man. So he had stopped doing that, after watching the way Brett smirked from the shadows, like he had pulled a fast one on the constable, getting drunk and making trouble and having his missus defend him.
Still, the constable dropped in now. Brett was nowhere in sight. Gertrude had pulled her curly hair back into thick pigtails and put on pink lip gloss. She looked young—and worried, like he was there to ask about her husband.
She relaxed after he bought a sandwich and a drink. He tore into the sandwich, hungry, looking at the walls. On the bench, an old man cleared his throat. The constable waited for the blizzard of words, but they didn’t come. He walked outside, looking over the beach. It was fine weather, and through the trees, on the mountain behind him, lived a troubled boy, as neatly disappeared from the world as the card in a magician’s trick.
In the distance was the hotel. The constable walked over, admiring the work Charlie was doing on the place. It wasn’t well done, but at least it was work. The man had filled planters with potting soil and spindly roses that were already dying. The constable contemplated telling him what kind of plants grew well in the coastal mists but then decided not to. No one likes a know-it-all.
“Hello, Constable,” Charlie said from his front office.
The two had met recently when Charlie had bought the abandoned hotel. Like so many coastal refugees, Charlie had come with big dreams, soon chastened by sand. He had arrived holding a newspaper ad, in his case for the vacant hotel, where sand had piled up in the corners of the rooms. Charlie had swept it out and kept grinning, and he still kept grinning, even though the customers he had hoped for had yet to come.
“What can I do for ya?” Charlie asked, tinkering behind his counter.
“I was wondering, you ever have any contact with that center?”
