Katie left Virginia Cottingham’s house feeling strangely wired, like she’d had too many caffeine shots. Her head swirled with what she’d learned about Tessa and Peter Lupinski, things she’d never known, stuff Tessa would never have told her in a million years. But instead of getting all the answers she wanted, she ended up with more questions.
Like, who had saved Tessa from the fire? How far could someone with burns go without getting help? Had Peter killed Mrs. Cottingham’s cat and set it on her porch in a box tied with twine? It was so eerily similar to the box with the hand that Katie couldn’t shake the sense that the two were connected.
There was something else that kept nagging at the back of Katie’s brain about Tessa and The Box, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
The worst part of all was that Katie found herself wondering if her best friend might be involved with what had happened to Rose. Was that the reason Tessa was so determined to place the blame on Mark? Maybe it had nothing to do with being jealous and was all about saving herself.
Oh, God, what’s going on?
The more she dug, the more complicated everything got.
She stood on Mrs. Cottingham’s porch for a moment before calling Dr. Capello. There was one more place she needed to go before she went back to school. It wouldn’t take long. She hoped the school psychiatrist was busy with a session and wouldn’t try to stop her.
“Hey, Dr. C, it’s Katie,” she started to say when a voice answered, “Hello, this is Dr. Lisa Capello,” but it was only voice mail.
Katie took a deep breath and rambled on after the beep, “Yeah, I know you told me to stay put, but I need to visit the Lupinskis’ graves, and I’m only three blocks from the cemetery. Maybe you could pick me up there. I swear, I’ll be careful.”
She quickly hung up, her heart racing, expecting her phone to ring and Dr. Capello to bawl her out and tell her not to go anywhere. But when she didn’t hear anything within a few minutes, Katie took it as a sign and started walking.
It was a bright and mild April afternoon, and she didn’t feel the least bit nervous as she took the sidewalk toward the town center. An orange school bus rumbled by on the road, and she passed several dog walkers and a mother pushing her baby in a stroller.
When Katie got to the cemetery, she stopped outside the gates.
Even though the sun perched high in an impeccably blue sky, there was something ominous about the wrought-iron gates with the arched entry flanked by two solemn Victorian angels carved from stone and discolored by time and pollution; their hands were clasped in prayer, weathered faces tipped toward the clouds as though desperately seeking permission to depart their sooty pedestals and return to the sanctity of heaven.
It was very Gothic, Katie thought, kind of Twilight meets Jane Eyre, and creepy enough to make her shudder. After such a gloomy greeting, she appreciated the cheerful pots of marigolds inside the gates and yellow daffodils that speckled the lawn between burial plots.
She had to stop and ask the groundskeeper where the Lupinskis were buried, and he pointed her toward the pond, where dappled sunlight danced.
“Look for an elm tree with a concrete bench beneath it,” he told her, and Katie thanked him.
She could hear the occasional whoosh of cars beyond the fence and the squawk of ducks and geese. No one else was about, so the grounds seemed ungodly quiet save for the scrape of her shoes on the gravel road and the twitter of birds.
Katie paused as she came to a curve in the path, the duck pond just yards away.
Headstones and monuments rose from the grass, serenaded by chirping birds and shaded by trees, branches swaying in the breeze. She wended her way through family plots, squinting at unfamiliar names and moving on. She passed a dozen before she saw the one engraved JOHN HENRY LUPINSKI, BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER.
Beside it was the marker for Tanya Lupinski. The tombstone for Peter Mikhail Lupinski sat at least a dozen feet away. Maybe the space between was reserved for Tessa? Or maybe they just hadn’t wanted Peter so near even after they were gone.
Her phone rang, cutting through the quiet of the graveyard, and Katie felt relieved when she saw the number was Bea Lively’s.
“You found something?” she said, staring at the duck pond as she waited for Bea’s answer.
“That’s what’s weird,” Bea replied in a hushed voice. “I didn’t find anything. Nothing at all. Steve’s transcript for this past semester at Whitney and all his transferred records have no remarks regarding discipline.”
“None?”
“None. So either he’s a Boy Scout with a bad rap, or someone’s done a great job of scrubbing his records.”
“Nothing?” Katie croaked, unable to believe it.
“Nada, zip, zilch.” Bea sighed loudly. “I even poked into my own file and yours to make sure it wasn’t a glitch in the system. We both had disciplinary notes about that sit-in at the cafeteria last November, so it’s not like Big Brother wiped out everything.”
“Too bad.”
“Yeah, no kidding. I glanced at Tessa’s transcript, too, just to be sure,” Bea went on in the same hushed tone. “Even she had a blot on her record from way back when she first started at Whitney.”
“Really?” Katie couldn’t imagine what Tessa had done. Ever since she’d known her, Tessa had been all about “we scholly kids have to go by the book.”
“Apparently she stole some stuff.”
“From another student?”
“No, from the dorm kitchen,” Bea told her. “She took food. Tins of fruit and bags of bread. They found a hoard of it in the basement machine room. Maybe she had the opposite of anorexia, whatever that is.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Katie wondered if hoarding food was a hangover from Tessa’s days at the orphanage. The neighbor had said that Tessa and Peter had been malnourished.
“Anyway, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you nail that prick Steve, but his record’s a big, fat blank.”
“Thanks, Bea,” Katie said, and hung up.
She sank down on the grass, biting her cheek and screwing up her nerve before she pulled up the Whitney website on her phone, entered her password, and found what she needed in the school directory. Then she dialed Joelle Needham’s number.
“It’s Katie,” she said the second Joelle answered. “I wanted you to know I got into Steve’s records, but his transcripts don’t show he was ever disciplined for anything. There’s no proof that he ever hurt anyone. If you don’t step up and talk—”
Katie sighed and put her phone away. She’d tried, right? She’d done her best, but she didn’t know where else to look. She wasn’t a cop or a forensics expert. There wasn’t much else she could do.
For a long time, she just stared at Peter Lupinski’s gravestone, her thoughts so confused it made her head hurt.
I think it was a ghost … I wish he’d left me there … whoever got her out must’ve suffered for it …
What if—Katie’s exhausted brain began to wonder—what if Tessa’s brother had saved her from the fire, the same way he’d protected her in the orphanage? Was it possible he’d gotten Tessa out safely and then gone back into the house?
He brought riffraff home … kids who looked like they hadn’t washed in weeks … Tanya would find them in her kitchen, eating her food, sometimes sleeping in her sheets.
Or maybe he hadn’t gone back in at all. Could the charred bones buried in Peter’s grave belong to someone else? Was there any way—any chance—that Tessa’s brother could still be alive?
A chill crept up her spine despite the warm afternoon.
A twig snapped nearby, and Katie looked up as a shadow fell upon her, blotting out the sun. Before she could make out a face, she held her breath, her heart beating a million miles a minute, thinking it was Peter Lupinski, risen from the dead.