Chapter 22
Violet
It started raining after Bradley parked his car. We ended up at Springheel Park, in the small paved lot facing the trees. The clouds rolled overhead, and in the park, I could see a family packing up their things from a picnic table, hurrying to get out of the rain.
I rolled my window down and hooked my arms over the door, resting my head on my arms. The rain was cool and soft on my cheek and my hair, soothing me.
My forehead throbbed, though my clash with the bathroom counter had left only a small red mark.
For the first time since I’d come back to Fell—and despite what had just happened to me—I felt oddly, perfectly calm.
“Who was it?” Bradley asked from the driver’s seat. He had carried me all the way out of the hospital over his shoulder. No one had stopped him. He’d dropped me into his car and started driving, as if he wanted to get out of there just as much as I did. “Who came at you?”
“Martin,” I said without lifting my head. The cold, suffocating darkness when he had touched me made me shiver. That poor boy. What if Lisette felt that way and wasn’t telling me? I needed to call Lisette.
“Did he say anything?” Bradley asked.
“Lots of things,” I replied. “I don’t blame him. He didn’t want to do it. He just wants to sleep. What made you come in to get me?”
“You were gone too long,” Bradley replied. “No one else went in or out of the bathroom. Something wasn’t right about it. I got a feeling.”
Rain was trickling through my hair to my scalp. It felt good, as if it anchored me to the real world. The people at the picnic table were real, I knew. They were alive, trying not to get wet. They anchored me, too.
If it weren’t for Bradley, I’d still be on the floor of that bathroom, so I took a breath. “Thank you,” I said. “For coming with me. For coming to get me. For getting me out of there.”
I glanced up to find him looking at me. His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“How hard was that for you to say?” he asked.
“Very hard,” I admitted.
He cupped a hand around his ear. “I’m suddenly hard of hearing, Violet. Say it again.”
He had to make this difficult, but for once, I didn’t mind. “Thank you,” I repeated.
He leaned closer, his hand still cupped around his ear. “What was that? You’re saying it out the window.”
I lifted my head and pulled all the way back into the car. I raised my voice a notch louder, enunciating the words. “Thank you, Bradley.”
He lowered his hand, looking satisfied. “You should thank me. I had to go into a girls’ bathroom. Someone could have been shitting in there.”
“I’m aware,” I said. “Now tell me what Joan said. Because I assume you got an answer from her.”
Bradley lifted his hat, ran a hand through his hair, and lowered the hat again. The Snoopy tattoo flexed on his arm.
“Just say it,” I said. “I can take it.” I already knew what he would say.
“Violet, your mother gave birth three times in that hospital. You, your brother, and your little sister. That’s it.”
It was upsetting. I had questions. And at the same time, I felt several pieces deep inside me fall into place at last. Our mother hadn’t been pregnant with Ben.
She hadn’t given birth. She’d come home with a baby in her arms, and we’d gone to the attic to get the crib after he was already born. Those memories finally made sense.
Who was that baby? Who was the little boy we’d lived with for six years? What family had missed him, wondered where he was?
Thinking of that family made my head ache, so I said, “Tell me about your kids. How old are they? What are their names?”
He didn’t remark on my change of subject. “Guess,” he said.
“Timmy and Tommy,” I said immediately. “Twins. They call the kids in school with glasses Four Eyes. Their teachers hate them.”
“Not quite,” Bradley said. “Lance is nine.” He caught the look on my face and shrugged. “My ex chose that name. Lance is all right. We get along. I get him. It’s the younger one, Amy, that I don’t quite get.”
“Amy?” I asked.
“She’s five. I picked that name. My ex got to pick the first name, and I got to pick the second.”
“I like it.”
“So do I. Her head’s in the clouds, though.
She dreams all the time. Barely pays attention in school, just draws on the backs of her notebooks.
She tells bedtime stories to us instead of the other way around.
She makes up songs for her stuffed animals to sing and plays for them to put on.
She has a hat with unicorn ears and a horn on it, and she refuses to take it off. Wears it to school and everything.”
I leaned my head back against the seat, feeling myself smiling. “You’re telling me your daughter is cute?”
“The cutest. Divorce is shit. Your kids either live with a split, or they live with two parents who don’t belong together and fight all the time.
I don’t know what the answer is.” He looked away from me, at the rain out his window.
“I thought I would do it different when I grew up and got married, but it didn’t turn out that way.
I try to be friendly with their mother, though.
I try to be nice. I don’t know if it’s working.
All I know is that I don’t want to handle it the way Dad and Mom did. ”
We were quiet for a moment as the rain landed softly on the roof of the car. I thought of the storage unit, the petty things Gus kept there, the box of wedding photos that Bradley had kicked in frustration.
“We can do better than our parents,” I said. “I know we can. We don’t have to make the same mistakes they made.”
Bradley turned to look at me, his expression soft and honest for once. “Violet, we don’t have custody of our kids. I got kicked out, then got laid off, and I’m living at Dad’s. You’re even worse. You see dead people, and your mother stole someone’s baby.”
I cleared my throat. “When you put it like that.” I narrowed my eyes at him as he smirked. “It isn’t funny, Bradley.”
“It isn’t funny at all,” he agreed, forcing the smirk from his face.
“Maybe there was a legal adoption,” I tried. “Maybe there’s paperwork.”
“Sure, a legal adoption,” Bradley said. “That takes years, but your parents never said anything or told you about it, and they could have their own kids anyway. A legal adoption that left no paperwork in your mother’s belongings or anywhere else.
A legally adopted kid who was never taken to a doctor, never sent to school, and never had his picture taken. ”
So Bradley Pine was the clear-thinking one. How far I had fallen.
The people in the park had packed up and loaded their car. They started it and drove away, leaving us alone.
You have to go back to the beginning, Alice had said. The real beginning.
All we’d found since coming back to Fell were dead ends. Where was the real beginning? How could we find it?
“I’m going to pursue this,” I said to Bradley. “I’m going to find out who Ben was and what happened to him. I’m going to come clean to his real family, if I can. You’re off duty. Take me back to the hospital and drop me off at my car. Go back to your life and forget about all of this.”
“No way,” Bradley said. “I’m in it now. You’re seeing Martin Peabody and dealing with stolen babies, and I’m supposed to rake leaves? Fuck it.” He raised his hands from the wheel in a helpless gesture, and then he smirked at me again. “Besides, you need me, Violet. Admit it. You need me.”
“I don’t need you,” I shot back, mostly by reflex.
“Uh-huh, sure. Because you love napping on bathroom floors so much.”
“Okay, you were useful that one time.”
“And when you passed out in the storage locker, and I called the ambulance?”
“It isn’t going to happen again,” I lied. Something bad was definitely going to happen. Probably much worse than fainting in a bathroom. This was Fell, and I was who I was, and there was Sister.
I felt a pang at not having Bradley as a bodyguard anymore, but I didn’t want Bradley to encounter Sister, just as I had never wanted my siblings to encounter her. It was safest for the others if I dealt with Sister alone.
“Just tell me where to go next, and we’ll go,” Bradley said, obstinate as an ox.
“No.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose with a fingertip. “I’ve been thinking. If someone’s baby got stolen, they’d report it to the police, right? Which means Dad might know about it. Or he could find out.”
I felt the yawning pit of my fear of Sister, the inescapable trap of it. “Bradley, you don’t understand how dangerous this is.”
“You mean the ghost from your bedroom? The one that hates you? What are you gonna do, Violet? Are you gonna let her win?”
I swallowed, my dry throat flexing as I stared ahead.
Normal people didn’t understand this fear, the fear of Sister.
I had never told my parents about her. I had never told Vail or Dodie, because Sister had always appeared to me, not them.
If I didn’t tell my siblings, then Sister would stay focused on me.
Only me, and she would leave them alone.
In my head, that was the deal. Me for them. Come to my room, and in exchange for my silence, never go to theirs.
So my siblings didn’t know what she was capable of, how she could make you curl up in the dark, crying softly, trying not to wet yourself.
How I’d wake up and see her standing in my bedroom, her back to me, always her back to me.
Just the shape of her, with her hate and malevolence coming off of her in waves.
My bedroom door would be shut, even if I’d left it open when I went to sleep.
The curtains would drift where there was no breeze.
The closet door would creak as it moved.
The dresser would shuffle a few inches along the wall, making a soft scraping sound.
The lamp would flicker on, then off again.
There would be a hiss of breath, close, as if in my ear, even though I could see her across the room.
A clicking sound I couldn’t identify, cold and sharp.
And I would crouch in bed, trying not to make a sound, because if Sister noticed me—if she turned around—then she would—she would—
I closed my eyes. Was it Sister’s baby who had been stolen? Was that why she was so angry? No, I had seen Sister before Ben was born. Was Sister connected to Ben at all? How could she be?
Had she killed Ben? Had Sister taken my little brother from his hiding place that day?
“Violet?” Bradley asked.
The answer was close, so close. Alice had told me so. He’s been telling you and telling you, Alice had said.
And, Three of you went into the house. Only two of you will leave.
And, Violet, you can do anything.
“Violet?” Bradley asked again.
“Ask your father,” I said, my eyes still closed.
“Ben was born in 1963. We got him as either a newborn or very close to it. Our parents told us that Ben’s birthday was July 31, but that might not be true, since there’s no birth paperwork.
If they stole a baby, why would they tell us his real birthday? My parents were liars.”
Bradley was quiet.
“It was summer,” I continued. “July or August. He was still drinking formula and didn’t start on solid food until…
” I put a hand to my forehead. I could remember feeding Ben solid food, but the timeline was blurry.
The house always fogged my memories. “Thanksgiving? I don’t know.
I’ll try to remember. But if he wasn’t born on July 31, then the baby would have been born in June, July, or August of 1963. Not before and not after.”
“Okay,” Bradley said. “Dad and I will look into it. What will you do?”
I dropped my hand and opened my eyes. A headache was starting in my temples. If only two of us were going to leave the house, then something was after one of my siblings.
Unless the person who wouldn’t leave was me.
If the house wanted me, then so be it. But it wasn’t going to take Vail, and it wasn’t going to take Dodie.
“Take me back to my car,” I told Bradley. “I’m going home.”