TWENTY

I’m still sitting at the piano in the living room as the light starts to change, day fading to night. The timer throws on our exterior Christmas lights and tiny white stars bounce around outside. They should be cheery, warm, full of nostalgia. Instead, a heavy sense of gloom settles in my bones the way dust and mites have settled into the folds of the velvet drapes that line the room. Twilight depresses me. It always has.

I don’t bother with the tree inside. It’s fake anyway.

I replay my earlier phone conversation with Cate. I should be used to her rage by now, but that doesn’t mean I have to like or accept it. Other people don’t act that way—totally irrational, without any thought to consequence or caution. Dr. Waverly told me once that while you can’t control having an emotional reaction to something, it’s always possible to control how you respond. I don’t think Cate gets that, though. Or else she doesn’t care.

As I get up from the piano bench and stretch my legs, it dawns on me that while I’m pretty sure Hector heard it from Danny, I still haven’t figured out how my own parents knew Cate was out. They said it wasn’t the courts that contacted them. So who was it? This question gnaws at me, like a dog at a bone. There are a couple of ways I could try and find out the answer, but since we’ve been studying Occam’s razor at school, I choose the simplest.

Sneaking into Angie’s second-floor office isn’t a difficult thing to do. It’s not like she locks the door or anything. What’s hard is swallowing my feelings of subversiveness. I mean, I’m not perfect, but most of the time, I go out of my way not to break rules. Why should I go looking for trouble?

Except when you do.

I ignore the voice inside my head, that little whisper of my guilt and shame, and I fire up the Mac. While waiting, I rifle through Angie’s desk a little, looking to see if maybe Cate sent a Hallmark card from juvie announcing her release and everyone just forgot to share the good news with me. But there’s nothing. I do find a picture of Madison, though, in a small gold frame. That’s sad to look at. She was a cute girl with brown hair and a silly grin, the kind of kid you want to buy stale cookies from or teach to ride a bike. Angie was there when they died, when the train clipped the back of her minivan. But sort of like when my mom got shot in front of her two small children, the train accident is something I’ve never asked or wondered about. Some horrors aren’t meant to be recalled.

The log-in screen appears on the monitor. It asks for a password.

I try the obvious things, like Madison and Graham and my own name and even Cate’s. Nothing works. Not the name of Angie’s Dutch Warmblood, Athena. Not her birthday or Malcolm’s. Not the date the four of us went to the county courthouse and finalized our adoption, nearly a full year after Cate and I moved to Danville.

Then an idea comes to me. I don’t like it … but what do I have to lose?

I take out my phone and navigate to the local news site. Here I search for Angie’s name. The train crash and following lawsuit were big stories at the time, unlike my mother’s death, which didn’t warrant anything more than a blip on the police blotter. Rich people dying, though: That’s another matter altogether. Especially when kids are involved.

I find the archived story. I look for the date of the accident.

04/12/2001

I type the eight digits into the password box.

The desktop loads.

I exhale.

Maybe some horrors aren’t meant to be recalled, but it’s clear Angie is nowhere close to forgetting.