Chapter 12
Violet
Bradley Pine ate half of his father’s sandwich like it belonged to him, then started on the french fries. There was a reason Gus had only eaten half of his lunch. He’d been saving the other half for his son, who he’d been expecting from the first.
“I believe you two went to high school together,” Gus said. “You should know each other.”
I struggled to come up with something to say.
Bradley looked the same as he had in high school, yet different.
He’d thickened, much of his teenage muscle turning to bulk, though he was still obviously strong.
The edge of a blurry, badly inked tattoo snaked over his biceps from under the sleeve of his T-shirt.
The handsome face I’d mooned pathetically over was still good-looking, though the cheekbones were less sharp and there were crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes.
He was clean-shaven, his dark blond hair cut short and neat under his baseball cap.
His brown eyes fixed on me with a complete absence of curiosity as he chewed.
“Hi, Bradley,” I said.
“Hey,” he replied, and put another fry into his mouth.
That seemed to be all he had to say, so I turned back to Gus. “You set this up,” I said.
Gus crossed his arms. “I don’t meet strangers in diners. So I brought my son.”
“And he just happened to be free?”
“Bradley is between jobs right now. He has a lot of spare time.”
“What did you think I would do? Mug you? You don’t even know me.”
“You’re damn right I don’t,” Gus shot back.
“Do you know how many people have showed up wanting to talk about the Ben Esmie case in the last twenty years? Zero. No one at all. It’s too weird that you showed up now, and I don’t trust anything in this town.
A good cop calls for backup before going into a situation he isn’t sure of, so that’s what I did.
And it was a smart thing to do, since you’ve been talking about ghosts. ”
Bradley seemed to have no problem being spoken of as if he wasn’t in the room. He also didn’t react to the ghost comment. He devoured the last fry on the plate and sat back, wiping his mouth with a napkin.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” I argued to Gus. “This is my business, my family’s business. I don’t want a babysitter.”
“Not a babysitter,” Gus said. “You might find him useful. Someone should. Ever since he moved back home from Vermont, I can’t find a single use for him. Until today.” His eyes twinkled with an evil gleam. “He’s between wives, too.”
That finally got a reaction from Bradley. “Dad.”
“I’m just saying.” Gus unlaced his arms and spread his hands in an innocent gesture.
“Oh my God.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. This was the last thing I needed.
“You take him with you, or you don’t read your brother’s file,” Gus said.
I turned to Bradley. “What do you think of all of this?”
Bradley dropped his napkin onto the plate. “I got lunch out of it.” Then he declared, as if he was doing me a favor, “I’ll help you out.”
I had a moment of double vision, in which I saw Bradley in high school, overlaid like a double exposure.
He’d been tall, built, good-looking—everything that was popular with high school girls.
If he’d declared, in his offhand way, I’ll help you out to my sixteen-year-old self, I would have been speechless with excitement.
I—the neglected and unseen girl whose only friend had died—would have lived on those four words for weeks, like a camel crossing an emotional desert.
I crossed my arms like Gus had just done and stared current-day Bradley down. “Do you know my name?”
“Sure.” His gaze darted away, uneasy.
“Do you? Say it, then.”
“Uh.” Bradley looked up at the ceiling, like my name would be written there. His father had just said my last name a few seconds ago, but apparently it hadn’t registered. Nothing about me had ever registered with him.
“Jesus, son,” Gus said, disgusted, when the silence went on too long.
“We went to high school together,” I said. “Do you remember that?”
Bradley shrugged. “I guess.”
“Name one thing you remember about me,” I snapped. “One.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, and I finally saw a glimmer of thought somewhere in his concrete skull. “You were weird,” he finally said.
“Everyone in Fell is weird,” I shot back. “You’ll have to be more specific. Try again.”
“You were weirder than the rest of them,” Bradley finally said. “You and your siblings. Everyone thought you were crazy. Your brother never talked. He was a swimmer.”
“A diver,” I corrected him. “And you beat him up twice.”
Bradley shrugged. “He probably deserved it.”
I looked to Gus. “You want me to work with this?”
He grinned back at me. “It isn’t about want, honey. It’s about choice. You don’t have one.”
—
The files, apparently, were being kept in a storage unit that Gus rented. I probably shouldn’t have left my car behind, but I didn’t know where the storage unit was, and I had no patience for driving around Fell, following Bradley. I was sure he would drive off and abandon me, Gus or no Gus.
So I got into Bradley’s rusty blue Pinto. He got into the driver’s seat, his big bulk filling the space. As I fastened my seat belt, I noticed a baseball glove tossed on the back seat. It was way too small to fit Bradley’s giant hand.
“You have kids?” I asked him.
“Two,” he said as he started the car. He didn’t question why I was asking. “I see them every other weekend.”
“I know that feeling,” I said.
He didn’t answer, only drove out of the parking lot and made a turn on West Common Road. I didn’t even know why I’d tried to make conversation. I was invisible to him all over again. He seemed to have forgotten I was there.
I was in a time machine. A hellish, god-awful time machine that sent me back to high school.
I risked a glance at him as he drove. Old jeans, tee, baseball cap pulled low.
His belly was starting to thicken in a way I should probably find unattractive.
I informed my teenage self that we were driving in a car with Bradley Pine, but she had nothing to say about it for once. We might be over him.
Our route took us past Fell High, and I watched it go by out the window.
The building was over a century old and had originally been intended as a private hospital.
Its Gothic spikes and stonework were modeled on Notre Dame and looked like a terrifying birthday cake.
I’d been miserable there. No one at school had cared when my little brother disappeared.
I hadn’t graduated, because after Ben, my family had shredded like so much soggy cardboard.
No fireworks, no drama, just a mushy end to something that hadn’t been worth much in the first place.
We’d moved away two years after Ben vanished, when I was seventeen.
“That’s our high school,” Bradley said.
For God’s sake. “I’m glad you remember something,” I snapped.
He let out a heavy sigh. “Look, I don’t want to do this, okay? Let’s get this over with as quick as possible.”
“Bradley,” I said, “you are divorced, unemployed, and living at home with your father. What else did you have to do today?”
“I need to rake leaves,” he replied, as if I hadn’t insulted him.
I stared at him. “Fine, then. Give me the keys to the storage unit and go rake leaves. You’ll never hear from me again.”
He gave me a look like I was impenetrably stupid. “If I go home and rake leaves, Dad will see me. He’ll know I left.”
“Surely your superior intellect will find a way around this seemingly insurmountable problem.”
He frowned. “What?”
“You’ll figure it out,” I nearly shouted, exasperated.
“You seem mad,” he pointed out. “Why? Did we date in high school or something?”
I felt myself tipping over the edge. It was the sight of Fell High that had done it. The memory of going there every day with the pain of Ben an open wound, infected and blistering. Of no one noticing. The muffled, dark silence of it all, as if I was the ghost and not the people I unwillingly saw.
“You didn’t care,” I said, and I wasn’t talking about my old crush on him.
That had burned away like ashes. “You didn’t care about my brother.
No one did. He was six, and something really bad happened to him.
He was alone. You didn’t care then, and you don’t care now.
And you still think that makes you better than me.
” I picked up the baseball glove from the back seat and held it up.
“You have children, for fuck’s sake. What if it was this kid who died all alone?
” When he was silent, I continued. It felt good to take my anger out on him, like cleansing fire.
“You think you’re still a big deal. You’re not.
None of us are. I’m going to find my brother, and I’m not apologizing for it.
I don’t care that you don’t even know my name.
You can either help me or get out of my way.
Rake leaves if you want. Or don’t. I don’t need you. ”
I smacked the glove against the side of his head, because that felt good, too. Then I tossed it into the back seat again.
Bradley straightened his hat, which had fallen askew when I hit him. He kept his eyes on the road.
“Okay,” he said.
We were silent for the rest of the drive.
—
Bradley produced a ring of keys from his pocket when we parked in the gravel parking lot.
Gus had given him the ring, which had a few keys attached to it alongside a yellowed piece of paper fastened with Scotch tape.
Bradley thumbed through the keys with painful slowness.
I tried to take the ring from him, but he snatched it away from me, closing his big fist over it. “No way,” he said. “Dad’s orders.”