MAY
Work boots on the stairs. He’s close. Closer. “Thea!”
“He was in Baxter,” I whisper. Nick folds the receipt, opens his wallet, and tucks the thin paper behind his license. Occam’s razor’s sharp edge cuts my brain in half. The logical answer is often the answer.
“Thea. Honey! You and Nick around?”
I don’t know if I fall into Nick or he hugs me; either way, our hearts gallop like they’re one thoroughbred rounding the last turn at the derby. Nick palms my skull and guides my cheek to his shoulder. I take fists of his T-shirt and as I do the collar strangles his neck; the cotton pulls halfway down his back. I bury myself in the details of him. He is sport deodorant. He is CK1 cologne. Rain and mud. “Do nothing for now,” he tells me.
And then Dad is here, and Nick offers an awkward “Hey, Mr. Delacroix,” and I’m all “Hey, we were checking out the towers,” even though we’re nowhere near the towers.
Dad’s hair is stringy and wet like he came from outside. We’re different complexions, me and him. He’s dark and tan where I’m fair and pale, but there’s no doubt I’m his when you put our eyes side by side. Between our noses and foreheads, we’re carbon copies. I’ve always been glad for that. Glad for his handsome face, kind eyes, and narrow frame. He’s rock hard. I once saw him lift a wheel-barrow of forty concrete bags. That’s four hundred pounds. On a wheel, sure, but four hundred pounds.
Chris Jenkins would weigh nothing in his arms.
“What do you think?” Dad stretches up on his tiptoes with a yawn.
“About what?”
He gives me a weird look because I’ve responded so defensively and says, “About the towers, you knucklehead.”
“They’re great. Awesome.”
“They’re gonna be even better after last night.”
“Dad?” I ask and Nick puts a fair amount of pressure on my shoulder, a warning. “I wanted to ask—”
The first set of lights clicks off, throwing us into partial grays. Dad moves to the second. Back to us, lamp still on, he asks, “You hear about the Gemini boy?”
When we don’t answer, Dad’s eyes widen. He abandons the light and hunches to face me. We also share the same worry wrinkles on our foreheads. “You okay, Thee?”
I shake my head.
Dad sighs. “Honey.” He sighs again. “I know you think that kid’s tied to Aulus, but he’s not, sweetheart. He’s really not. Nick, tell her I’m right.”
“Mr. Delacroix—” For a millisecond, Dad’s expression is an unfamiliar thorn. Animalistic. His eyes pierce Nick’s. We are each aware that Nick is supposed to tell me Chris Jenkins and Aulus have nothing to do with each other—and Nick is obedient. Well, mostly. “Are they sure it’s Chris Jenkins?” he asks casually.
“According to Warren,” Dad answers, and then laughs away the tension. “Don’t watch the news. Please. I want you to sleep tonight. Graduation is around the corner. Hang on to that.” He bends and coils the electric wire around the saw. Slowly, he figure-eights the extension cord. We watch, transfixed, as he sweeps dust into a pan and leaves the pan on the ground. He takes a drink of his hot Dr Pepper, grimaces, crushes the can with his boot. “Speaking of sleep, I’m gonna nap in the truck. I was up all night.”
Then he’s gone. Tromping down the steps like a horse.
I’m still working out whether I’m allowed to breathe when a phone rings. “Dana,” Nick whispers into my hair. He takes the call with me close enough to listen. From the first beat of her voice, she’s excited. “We got preliminary COD. Medical examiner says drowning. And . . . there’s evidence someone tried to resuscitate him. Hey, Nick, you there?”
“I’m here.” Pause. “Thea’s here too.” I don’t know if that cue was for her or me. “Are you thinking the flood’s involved?”
On the other side of the line, Dana’s windshield wipers work overtime. She raises her voice to a yell, which means I hear her perfectly. “Off the record, absolutely. On the record, they’ll test the water in his lungs.”
“You meet with the family yet?”
“Just left.”
“How are they?”
“How do you think?”
They sigh precisely the same way and I miss Aul all over again. You need people in your life who breathe the same way you do.
Dana says, “This could be a slipup. The break we need and didn’t want. I shouldn’t tell you any of this, but we think there’s blood on the collar. No way to know whose yet. But for the first time in ten years, we could have DN—”
“Hey, can I call you on my way to the dorm?”
“Thea tell you about the key chain? You said she’s there with you.”
Nick raises his neck away, creating slight distance between us. I lean, wanting to watch his answer. “Yeah,” he admits.
“Theory?” When Nick doesn’t answer, she comes at him harder. “Nick? Theory?”
All Nick says is “I’m gonna call you back on my way to the dorm” and hangs up.
Like a habit, we follow the staircase to the third floor. Nick wants to process this a long way from my dad and I want to be in my favorite place. We reach a room, a someday bedroom, and without speaking claim the covered semicircle balcony that offers a view of the rain-soaked valley. Nick leans over the parapet, his head stretched beyond the awning into the deluge. Goose pimples line the bare skin of his arms.
“Hey, remember when Dad lying to me for nearly ten years was the problem?” I try to laugh.
Nick slides along the parapet wall until he’s seated on the stone floor. His T-shirt sticks on the rough concrete, exposing his skin. He doesn’t right the fabric. In a hushed voice he asks, “Where do you think he is right now?”
I sit. The soles of our shoes don’t touch; the mud caked around them does. “Sleeping off his long night.”
“Not your dad. Aul.”
I rest my head against Nick’s shoulder and use my finger to deter a single stream of rain away from our clothes. Wherever Aul is, if he’s alive, he’s grieving the loss of Chris Jenkins.
Dad’s voice echoes in my head. He feels like one of those lift-the-flap books. You turn a page, see a story, and then realize it’s not the whole story. There’s more hidden beneath. “I don’t want you to be right,” I say. Nick works his hands, massaging each joint until it pops. “But that receipt . . .”
Nick reaches over and cups my ear and then my face. This is him sorry.
“Is your sister going to tell you that Dad’s already being investigated?”
Nick gives a grim acknowledgment. “She’s going to ask me to confirm those key chains are identical and that your dad is the purchaser. They’ll officially reinvestigate Aulus’s disappearance and reexamine the Thief’s actions. Your dad will be questioned. So will everyone else they questioned last time.”
“Are you going to tell her about the receipt?”
“I don’t know yet,” he says. “Do you want me to?”
He turns his head a quarter. Our temples touch, the sides of our noses; the hollow of his cheek and the line of his jaw nuzzle my face. I feel his mouth close around the corner of my bottom lip. We stay that way for a long time. Kissing, not kissing.
I work the case, this way, that way, flipped sideways, upside down, and run headlong into that foreign moment where my dad said, I know you think that kid’s tied to Aulus, but he’s not, sweetheart. He’s really not.
I say what I’m thinking to Nick. “Dad was in Baxter, the location of the body dump, early this morning. The key chain Dad gave Aulus ended up in Chris’s mouth. Dad was with Aulus the day he disappeared. My father hid building a castle from me for almost ten years.” How much harder would it be to hide thirteen boys? With all this land and the freedom in his schedule? Not that hard. I keep this last part to myself.
We are still. Completely still. Locked in our huddled position of touching hipbones and shoulders and muddy soles. Our breathing is the only noise other than the rain. Guilt chases me hound to fox.
“Tell Dana about the receipt.”