Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
EREZ
The painting of the puppy rolling around in wildflowers is probably one of my favorites.
It’s one of Alice’s last paintings, and I’m always amazed at the details I can make out, like the texture of the puppy’s tongue and the dew on the leaves of the flowers.
How the dew dots the puppy’s fur with damp spots—sometimes drops of water cling, and other times they soak in..
The individual strands of fur on the puppy.
The hundreds of different wildflower petals.
The angle of the sun even though you don’t see the sun itself.
The pads of the puppy’s paws and the way the tongue lolls out, a drop of drool gathering at the tip.
What kind of talent would Alice have now? She’d be painting living figures that would look as if they could walk out of the painting. You’d feel their heartbeats. Hear their laughter. The amount of raw, untrained talent Alice possessed always leaves me breathless.
“Couldn’t stay away.”
A smile touches the corner of my lips at my brother’s voice. “It’s been four days.”
“Mmm. It took you staying out for two and a half months to find something.”
“And then four months after that.” I glance up at him. Zephyr is standing in the door, shoulder leaning against the frame. “I found the paintings and her journal by accident.”
“Let’s be real.” He pushes off the door and enters the room.
As he sits beside me, he says, “Something pushed that wall door open. It’s been closed so long that no one remembered it was there.
I don’t believe for a second that you, me, Lan, and our parents, with as many times as we’ve been in here over the past ten years, would have overlooked the wall door being cracked open this entire time. ”
“One of Matty’s ghosts?” I ask.
Zephyr shrugs and shakes his head. “Maybe? I don’t think so, though. They rarely have the energy to actually move something. They’re more likely to tell Matty that there’s something there than try to show us themselves.”
My heart races as I stare at the now tightly closed wall door.
The walls around the room, right up to where the dormer wall meets the tilted ceiling, are made up of painted planks of wood standing vertically.
The door hidden in them blends in seamlessly because of the individual planks.
It’s easy to overlook and even easier to forget about.
It wasn’t a smooth opening either, nor did it latch with an easy click. The door fits snugly, and it takes a good amount of pressure to open and close it.
The chances that it was opened by a breeze that only pushed against this section of wall or the house shifting or any other stupid explanation someone wants to argue simply doesn’t make sense.
Something opened that door.
I stare at it for a long time, wondering if Alice is around but doesn’t make herself known to Matty. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk. Maybe she doesn’t want to be seen. Maybe she got tired of seeing me moping around because I can’t find a nonexistent note that she clearly didn’t leave me.
“You think there’s more to find?” Zephyr asks.
“No,” I answer quietly, eyes slowly scanning the room that I can still see clear as day when I close them.
“We’ve turned every single page in every single book.
We’ve tried to pull up all the floor planks and turned every drawer upside down.
We’ve searched the windows and all the walls and inspected every individual article of clothing.
At this point, I am satisfied that there’s nothing in this room that we haven’t found. ”
“But you’re not satisfied that you’ve found everything,” he guesses.
I sigh. “I think I want to find something else more than I think there’s something else here.”
“We can keep looking, Erez.”
“Look where? Where is there left to look?”
Zephyr shakes his head. He doesn’t have an answer because we have looked everywhere. We looked again once we uncovered the black paintings and her journal. Just in case.
“There’s a chance that maybe, if she did leave something, it’s long gone. We didn’t recognize it for what it was, and it was thrown out.”
“I really kinda hate that idea.”
I nod vaguely, eyes once more landing on the puppy painting.
“So you’re done looking?” Zephyr asks.
“I don’t know. For now, I guess.”
“Good.” I look at Zephyr, and he gently pushes his shoulder into mine so I rock a little. “She’d be pissed to see you’ve lived such a half-life for this long.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to argue, but I don’t. He’s right.
“You’ve been little more than a shell. I can’t say that any of us has been better. Except maybe Lanzo.”
“I have a tattoo shop,” I halfheartedly argue.
“You do. You’ve given maybe twenty percent of yourself to your art, and look at what you’ve accomplished. You’ve won awards for it, and you’re twenty-six. Imagine what you’d have accomplished if you’d given all of yourself to your art.”
He’s not wrong. I know that. That’s why I went into the shop this morning.
I took a single session, then left after I cleaned up.
I’m not sure why I ended up here. I haven’t been here in a handful of days.
Maybe that’s why? My routine is so embedded into my life that I always come back to Alice’s room.
“And you?”
Zephyr snorts. “Are you kidding? I’ve swept it under the proverbial rug and made myself emotionally unavailable to everyone. Covering it with laughter and jokes so no one looks too closely... I’ve dealt with it really well.”
“You’re right. Lanzo’s the only one who moved on.”
“We can’t even hold it against him. That’s the way he’s built. Sometimes, I’m jealous of that,” he admits.
“He’s enjoying hunting the pedophiles.”
“He is. I’m not sure if he’s convinced they all touched Alice or if he’s looking for the ones that did or… I don’t know. Maybe this is his way of finally dealing with something he hadn’t.”
“You going to forgive him yet?” I ask.
As I anticipated, Zephyr scowls. “I am over it. I just haven’t told him that. The longer he thinks I’m pissed at him, the greater the impact it has. It’s the only fucking way he understands consequences for his actions.”
“I think he’s received the message, Zeph.”
“Don’t big brother me.”
I chuckle and turn my attention back to the puppy as comfortable silence settles around us. “So… Do you feel like you’ve healed a little more now?”
Zephyr doesn’t answer right away. I’m not sure which painting he’s staring at, but he appears to be studying it closely. After a minute, he sighs.
“I think I finally allowed myself to heal a little when I acknowledged that I hadn’t dealt with the grief at all over the winter with Darwin.
I told him about Alice, and I think that was the first time I’ve spoken about her out loud to someone in…
like eight years? Not dealing with my sibling grief kind of shut me down from dealing with anything difficult. ”
I nod because I get that. Those words could have been my own. I can feel them heavy in my chest as if I’d spoken them.
“Other things happened,” Zeph says, “that forced me to man up and, you know, feel like a decent human being.”
“Matty?”
He glances in my direction, and a smile tugs at the corner of his lips.
“Yeah. Matty. He tore down the walls. Liam has a stupid amount of insight, even when I despise hearing him talk. Darwin shares some parallels that I think began to break down the walls I had built without me realizing. He made himself familiar by just… understanding without me having to explain.”
“Now you’re happy.”
Zephyr smiles. “I am. Happier than I imagined being. Happiness that isn’t a mask.”
“Good.”
“And you? Has this whole thing helped you heal?”
“This might sound weird, but I feel more awake,” I confess.
“I woke up the other morning, and it was as if I stepped out of a deep fog. I’m not going to go all cliché and say that the world was suddenly filled with color, but…
” I shrug. “I’m not sure if I’ve healed.
I knew she’d been abused. I saw it with my own eyes when I was six.
I never could have imagined the depth of the horror she went through before that. ”
Zephyr nods in understanding. “I get that.”
I think about Fade then, and a soft smile touches my lips. He was wearing a beautiful crop top when I left this morning. His nails were painted a pretty shade of lavender. His lips were shiny with lip gloss.
“Maybe it’s not discovering Alice’s secrets that’s helped to wake me up. I don’t think I’m the easiest person to be around because I’m so closed off. Discovering that my best friend is always in my corner has helped.”
“Your best friend,” Zephyr repeats, amused.
I nod. “I appreciate that he’s always there, supporting me, even when it’s difficult for him. Fade’s friendship gives me strength.”
Zephyr sighs. “Erez…” He’s shaking his head when I look in his direction.
“What?”
His laughter is quiet. “Nothing.”
I shove him gently, and he laughs.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Zephyr gets to his feet and holds his hand out for me. I stare at the puppy for another heartbeat before accepting his hand and allowing him to pull me up.
“You haven’t been hunting the pedos with Lan,” Zephyr says as he shuts Alice’s door behind us.
The black paintings are all in the studio now. They’re no longer lining the hall or the stairs. There aren’t any windows in the hall, yet it feels as if the sun finally broke through now that they’re contained somewhere else.
“Maybe if I knew the creeps we picked up hurt Alice, I might be into it more. I don’t have any reservations about killing pedos in general—a dead pedophile cannot reoffend.
But… I don’t take any satisfaction in being a part of it.
I’m glad Lan and Dadaz have dedicated so much of themselves to this because it’s important.
I know they’re only involved because of Alice, but it’s still a good thing they’re doing. ”
“I want to be a part of Trumpstein’s torture and murder,” Zephyr says, and I agree.
“Why haven’t we found him yet?”
“He’s not a smart man, but he surrounds himself with smart people.
Aven loses his signal every few hours, as if he’s suddenly moving all around the globe.
It takes them a few hours to find him again.
It’s like someone knows that Trumpstein is being hunted, and they’re trying to keep him out of reach.
Aven has stopped looking to track him down digitally, though they’re keeping part of their attention there so they can monitor his phone calls and shit.
Instead, Aven is going through all of Trumpstein’s properties under his legal name and every single fake name they can find. ”
“Ah.”
“Yep. They promise they’ll have tracked him down by the end of the summer at the latest. In the meantime, we’ll watch his digital fingerprint, and whoever gets in touch to borrow a child gets hunted first.”
“He hasn’t caught on to the fact that we’re picking off everyone who calls him?”
“People like Trumpstein are delusional with a false sense of importance and immunity. He thinks he’s untouchable, so, no, he isn’t concerned.”
I shake my head. Idiot. “That’s one I definitely want to be a part of.”
Zephyr nods. “Same. What are we doing in here?”
I look around and realize I’ve brought us into my childhood bedroom. I laugh quietly and look around. “I can’t believe our parents haven’t done something with our rooms yet.”
“We always have a place to come back to if they’re here.”
“I guess.” I can’t remember the last time I set foot in this room, honestly. Not since I moved out, maybe. Has it been that long?
Looking at the dust on my desk, I think it has been. I only lived here for a little more than a year after Alice’s death. I needed to get away from the place she lived and died. I never used our bathroom again. I’m not sure my brothers have either.
I sit on the edge of my bed and look around.
There are half a dozen of Alice’s paintings on my walls.
Paintings she made for me. More times than not, she wouldn’t actually give me the painting.
I’d come home one day or come upstairs from watching TV or come into my room from taking a shower, and there would be a new painting on the wall.
Yes, I’ve examined all the paintings in my room. Many times. Thoroughly.
The one I love the most is the one she painted of us. The two of us. The photograph she turned into a painting is on the wall beside it. Slightly crooked because… It’s been crooked for years. Has it always been crooked?
I get up and straighten it. As soon as I move it, a folded sheet of paper falls to the ground from behind it and lands at my feet.
Chills break out all over my body as I stare. My vision blurs and darkens. My heart stutters and skips as my breathing gets labored.
“Seriously?” I mutter.
“What’s wrong?” Zephyr asks, coming up to stand at my side. His gaze follows mine. “What’s that?”
“I’m afraid to look at it.” Because it means getting my hopes up and maybe it’s nothing. Maybe I stuck it there and don’t remember.
“Want me to?”
I feel stiff and rubbery at the same time, like a gentle breath could topple me over and I’d fall like a board.
“You haven’t looked there before,” Zephyr guesses, his voice hushed.
“I had that picture on the wall for two years before the painting showed up beside it,” I answer. My voice sounds as if it’s coming from the other end of a tunnel. “I… no. I haven’t.”
Zephyr crouches and picks it up. He turns it over to see there’s nothing written on the outside then hands it to me.
My fingers shake as I accept it.
“I’m going to sit over here,” Zephyr says. He squeezes my wrist.
I’m left alone with this piece of paper. It’s not thick enough to be more than a single sheet. I feel sick. Maybe I don’t want to read it. I’ve spent ten years looking for what this might be, and I think, in that time, I’ve unconsciously come to find comfort in not having an explanation.
Now that I might have one, I’m not sure I want it.