Chapter 9
Vail
Dodie took forever to get dressed, and when she finally came downstairs, she was in a terrible mood. She was wearing baggy cotton pants, belted and rolled up at the ankles, a black tank top, and a cardigan she’d buttoned to the neck. She was carrying an ancient pair of brown boots.
I looked her up and down, amused at the tangle of her dark hair tied on top of her head and the scowl of her perfect brows. “Those are my pants,” I said.
“Shut up,” she snapped. “If I’m going to ruin clothes on this little errand, I’ll ruin yours instead of mine.”
I grinned. “Did you have fun going through my bag? I haven’t unpacked it yet. In order to get to those pants, you had to touch my underwear.”
“I did not touch your underwear.”
“You did. You so did.”
“Can we just get this over with, please?” Dodie dropped the boots forcefully to the floor, making a satisfying clatter, and shoved her feet, clad in wool socks, into them. “Ben isn’t back there. We both know he isn’t.”
“He isn’t,” I agreed. “But I want to know what is back there.”
“We’ve never wanted to know before. Because finding out entails walking through the muddy woods like a couple of lunatics.”
I shrugged. “We’re not kids anymore, Dodie. We came here for answers. We won’t get them if we don’t look. And I want to get out of this house.”
My little sister stopped arguing, because I knew that she agreed.
The house was oppressive, and it wasn’t just because of the Miss Havisham decor, the dust cloths, and the curtains drawn over the old windows.
It was the gloom of every minute of our miserable childhoods winding its way around our necks and down our throats, pulsing behind our eyes.
Just making breakfast in this kitchen, like I’d done so many times alone as a kid, brought back bad memories.
Dodie laced her boots, grabbed a banana from the kitchen counter, and followed me to the back door, making sure I could hear her loud, dramatic sigh.
We started across the lawn behind the house, heading for the bank of trees that were losing their leaves in balding splotches.
The air was heavy and damp, and my boots were already wet in the grass.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs. It was Fell air, but it was still fresh, familiar.
It carried the scent of rot and faraway gasoline. The aroma of my hometown.
Just behind my shoulder, Dodie took a bite of banana and spoke through a mouthful because she knew that would drive me crazy. “How did you get the phone hooked up?” she asked.
I gritted my teeth at the sound of her chewing. “I asked the phone company to do it.”
“So fast, though,” she said with deceptive calm. When Dodie bothered to notice things, she really noticed them. “Does one of your ex-girlfriends work there? Did you seduce her and break her heart? What did you promise her, Vail?”
She was, as usual, skating close to the truth. I’m not a good person. If I’d had to sleep with the woman at the phone company to get what I wanted, I would have. I’d never feel bad about it, even for a second. At least she’d get a bit of excitement for her end of the deal.
“I never promise women anything,” I said, which was the truest thing I’d ever spoken in my life.
Dodie laughed.
“What do you care about the phone anyway?” I asked her. “You don’t have anyone to call.”
“Just my agency,” Dodie agreed, tossing her banana peel into the bushes. “It’s for the best that they can’t reach me now. They’re furious that I canceled on the shampoo people at the last minute. I’m not in their good graces.”
We walked for a few minutes in silence, stepping through the thick underbrush and dodging low branches.
My body started to wake up, the old athlete in me stretching and roaring, ready for activity.
I never missed my old diving career, but my body liked to move, as if I was born to swing something heavy, like a hammer or a sword.
“I should have been born a medieval knight,” I said as we made our way forward.
“You would have made a good one,” Dodie agreed, as if this was a normal thing to say. “How is the UFO business?”
“Full of liars. Though, to be fair, some people are legitimately crazy, which spices things up a bit.”
Dodie laughed again, the sound ringing in the damp air. “You’ve just described New York City.”
I grunted. “So you plan to go back to the modeling thing?” When this is over, I didn’t add. Whatever this was.
“For now. Until I decide to buy a yacht, put on a caftan, and sail to Greece, where I will find a man as beautiful as a statue to wait on me hand and foot before giving me nightly ecstasy.”
“That’s an image I didn’t need in my head.” The trees had closed behind us and the house was no longer visible. We weren’t far from civilization, but if you turned in a circle, all you’d see was trees. I paused, feeling the light sweat on my skin under my layers, thinking about which way to go.
Dodie stood by my shoulder, hunched into her cardigan, looking vaguely miserable. “How did you sleep last night?” she asked me.
I looked at her more closely. She wasn’t just grumpy, she was tired. I should have noticed sooner. “Fine, I think,” I said slowly. “I don’t really remember. Didn’t you sleep?”
“Of course I did,” she said, a little too quickly.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’m just making conversation.”
“Want to trade bedrooms? You look tired.”
“I can manage. Thanks for the compliment.” She looked around. “The Thornhills are that way.” She pointed. “School was somewhere there. There was a house over there with an old lady in it. She’s probably dead now. That’s all I know.”
“Impressive,” I said.
She picked up on my sarcasm immediately. “Stuff it, Vail. I only learn what I need to learn, and nothing else. It’s how I save brain space for other things.”
“Other things like shampoo.”
“Says the man whose area of expertise is how to jump into a body of water.”
Ouch. “Who owned the house across the street when we were kids?” I asked her.
“No one,” she replied. “It was empty.”
“Someone attempted a renovation sometime since we left, then gave up.”
She shrugged.
“The Thornhills aren’t home,” I said. “They haven’t been home for approximately ten days.” I knew this from the newspapers and mail I’d picked up from the porch.
Dodie’s eyes lit up, and our gazes locked.
“No,” I said. “Not today. We’re supposed to be looking for Ben.”
“Fine, you joyless drip. Where to now? It’s your expedition.”
“You’re the one with a map in your head, even though it’s faulty.”
“You’re the one that dragged me out of bed.”
We could bicker like this all day. We had done it all day, plenty of times. “The faster you pick a direction, the faster this is over with.”
“So pick a direction, then. I’m cold.”
I turned and took a step. Dodie’s heavy sigh behind me said I’d chosen wrong.
“For God’s sake, we’ll go the other way, then.”
“Well, you’ve picked. So I guess we’ll go this way, since apparently, that’s what we’re doing.”
I pushed branches out of our way, but I let them snap back a little hard, so she yelped behind me.
“You really slept normally?” Dodie asked after a minute.
“I told you, I don’t remember. I closed my eyes, and then I opened them. So I guess I slept.”
A pause. “I had dreams. The old ones, like I haven’t had since I left.”
The Fell house wasn’t a great place for sleeping.
I’d never again had dreams anywhere else like I had here.
I suspected my sisters had bad dreams, too—or maybe it was just Dodie who had dreams. What Violet saw was different and so, so much worse than a nightmare.
What she saw didn’t always end when daylight came.
“I haven’t had mine yet,” I said, “but I will.”
“I don’t want to hear about your dreams,” she snapped. “They’re probably filthy, you perv.”
“There’s only one perv walking in these woods today, and it isn’t me.”
“Oh, it’s definitely you. Do you think Violet will get anywhere?” Dodie asked.
“I think she’ll terrify whoever she has to terrify, yes.” I hadn’t missed Violet’s steely big-sister glare this morning, the kind that could wither your self-esteem with a single look. I’d learned early to dodge that glare.
“Can we turn around now? I’m hungry again.”
“Soon, you pathetic child.”
Behind me, I heard her snap a branch. “I’d rather be a pathetic child than a perv.”
Yes. We could do this all day.
Through a break in the trees, I caught a glimpse of a chain-link fence. We’d reached a property line, it seemed. “Was the fence there twenty years ago?” I asked Dodie.
“No. It doesn’t look old,” she replied.
We got closer, and through the diamonds of chain link I glimpsed more scrub, the gleam of sunlight in an empty lot. A soda can, a beer bottle, and a used condom. Dodie wrinkled her nose.
I wedged my boot into one of the chain-link diamonds and pulled myself up.
“Where are you going?” Dodie asked.
Instead of an answer, I swung a leg over the fence and wedged my boot in the other side.
“I’m not climbing that fence.” Her voice rose.
“It isn’t even high.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“Wait there, then. I’ll be right back.” I had swung my other leg over, and I jumped easily to the ground. I couldn’t see any buildings around me. I didn’t think I had ever been this far behind the house.
“Vail,” came Dodie’s voice when I took a step. “Don’t. Come back.”
I stopped. Damn it.
I knew that tone in Dodie’s voice. It meant she was scared. That was the kind of childhood we’d had, that I knew exactly what my little sister sounded like when she was scared.
Damn it.
I turned back and wedged my boot into the fence again. I paused at the top before I jumped down, looking around from the higher vantage point.
That day—that terrible day—there had been police everywhere.
Their footprints had cut swaths through the new snow, left deep holes in the drifts.
They’d gone through these woods, calling Ben’s name.
We could see by their tracks that they’d made lines, thatching the back woods with the marks of their heavy boots.
One of them had most likely stood in this very spot on that day, looking for my brother.
What had that long-ago policeman seen? He’d maybe thought that the white snow was an advantage. If the missing boy—or his body—was nearby, he had a chance of glimpsing Ben’s blue T-shirt.
I stared around me until my eyes watered and my hands went numb on the fence, searching for details. Any detail at all. Anything. Show yourself, I begged him. Show yourself.
Why did landscapers get to see my brother? Why them and not me?
Just for a second. The sight of him. I would have given anything. Anything.
Finally, I swung down, my feet thumping in the damp earth. Dodie moved next to my shoulder, so close that her arm brushed mine and I could hear her breath.
“What do you think he’s waiting for?” she asked.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, brushing the water from my eyes. This—these woods, this hill—this wasn’t the right place. Ben wasn’t here. This wasn’t where he wanted us, needed us, to go.
“We started in the wrong place,” I said. “The police search doesn’t matter. It was all over by then.”
For once, Dodie didn’t argue. Instead, she said, “Where do we start?”
I knew the answer now. “We have to go back,” I said. “To the beginning.”