THE ROOMS WERE not bedrooms. Even Jackson conceded that after a few minutes. They were too interconnected, with areas that could only be reached by passing through other rooms, which wouldn’t work for private patient quarters. There were more “closets” too. One room had two, side by side. Jackson still insisted that whatever the purpose of the larger rooms, someone had clearly constructed these small ones for storage.
Most rooms were empty. A few contained discarded furniture, piled up as if had been moved from elsewhere. There were a couple of old desks too, but riffling through the drawers didn’t yield any clues. Then they reached a locked room.
“You can open it, can’t you?” Tess asked as Jackson peered at the keyhole.
“It’ll take some work.” He crouched and said, with deliberate nonchalance, “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I have apples in my bag. Would you mind grabbing me one? Take one for yourself too. I’ll have this open before you get back.”
“I saw the lockpick earlier, Jackson.”
She expected him to protest, but he said, “I didn’t want to give you the wrong idea. Since you already seemed to have it.”
“What idea?”
“That I’m some kind of delinquent.”
“It was a first impression. You’re living in an abandoned house, carrying a knife, in need of a shower…”
“That was a mistake. I didn’t realize…” He trailed off and shook his head. “Can we drop the shower jabs? It wasn’t that bad, and I’m fine now.” He rubbed his cheek and then sighed at his dirt-streaked fingers. “The point is that you’d formed an early impression, and seeing me picking locks wasn’t going to help. I mentioned that my dad is a lawyer. He has clients with…special skills. When I was a kid, one of them stayed with us for a while and taught me some things.”
“How to pick locks?”
“It wasn’t like that. He was an activist.”
“A what?”
“Activist. Sometimes, to change the world, you need to break a few rules. Or locks. Not my dad’s point of view, but his clients can get themselves into trouble. For a good cause.”
“Oh.” She had no idea what he was talking about.
“One taught me to pick locks. I was ten and wanted to be a detective. Anyway…” He turned to the lock. “Just don’t get the wrong idea about me.”
“I won’t.”
He wasn’t an expert—it took a fair bit of effort and cursing to unlock the door, but finally he turned the knob. She pushed the door open and brushed past, flashlight in hand.
“Um, Thérèse…” he said.
She shone the light up, and he shielded his eyes. “I don’t need a boy to walk into danger ahead of me. I’m quite capable of doing it myself.”
“So I’ve seen. I mean that I think I should be first through since I got it open.”
“Oh. You’re right. Next time.”
She turned, flashlight beam crossing the room as he sighed behind her. When she stopped short, he bashed into her and cursed. Then he saw why she’d stopped, and he cursed again before cutting himself short and saying, “They’re for storage, Tess.”
Boxes. That’s what she saw. Not crates, but long wooden boxes exactly the dimensions of
“Coffins,” she said.
“Caskets,” he corrected. “A coffin has six sides, like in the Old West, and we don’t use them—” He caught her expression. “Okay. You don’t want the etymology lesson. But these aren’t caskets or coffins or any container designed to hold dead bodies.” He took the flashlight and walked to one. “They’re just for storage. Unfortunately shaped boxes.”
He lifted the lid on one. It was hinged. Like a casket. Inside, it was just a rough wooden box.
“See?” he said. “Not a casket.”
“It looks like—”
“No lining. No padding. Not a casket.”
“And that?”
She pointed at another box, in the corner, with the lid propped open. Its interior was padded. Jackson strode over and stuck his hand inside, smacking the padding hard as if expecting it to prove an optical illusion.
“It’s the wrong sort of padding. Caskets have satin linings. This is vinyl.”
“Let me guess. You have an uncle who’s a funeral director.”
His face darkened. “Of course not. I’ve been to funerals, and I pay attention. If you’re suggesting that I’m lying about my parents’ professions—”
“I’m suggesting you don’t know as much as you think you do. About a lot of things.”
Now his eyes chilled to gray steel. “I know caskets—”
“Then what is this?”
He hesitated.
“I’ll give you a minute,” she said. “That should be enough time for you to come up with an explanation that proves I’m an ignorant little country girl.”
“I’m not trying—”
“You do. Whether you mean to or not.”
His mouth opened, then closed. He stood there, lips pursed, before saying, “I’m not calling you ignorant, Thérèse. I’m pointing out that these cannot be caskets. It makes no sense.”
“Didn’t you say that sometimes mental patients commit suicide?”
“By the dozen?” He waved across the room.
“There are four boxes.”
“You know what I mean. Yes, occasionally, despite best efforts, a mental patient commits suicide. They’re not going to have four caskets in the basement, just in case. Even if they did, for some bizarre reason—maybe they treated suicidal patients and the rate of failure is higher—what are the caskets for? To bury them in the backyard? These people would have families.”
“Not everyone does.”
He dipped his chin in an unspoken acknowledgment. “True, but even if the hospital had to tend to the arrangements for a patient or two, they wouldn’t store the caskets here, Tess. You can’t bury bodies in your backyard.”
“Not legally,” she said. “But if you were trying to hide—”
“No.”
“I’m saying—”
“No.” Anger crept into his voice now. “That’s not the way a mental hospital works. If you’re going to say that it was a secret hospital, where people locked up their crazy relatives—”
“Then I’ve read too many books. Because that never happens. Never, ever, ever.” She stepped toward him. “Just because that’s not how a hospital is supposed to work, doesn’t mean it never does. I read an article a few years ago, by Pierre Berton, about a hospital in Orillia, not far from Hope. It was for the mentally challenged, and it said they were abused and drugged and held down in ice-water baths, and that was a legal hospital. The families of those kids were just happy someone else was taking care of them. You can’t tell me that couldn’t have happened here. That there couldn’t be illegal hospitals, if someone was willing to pay enough.”
“But these aren’t caskets, Tess. They just aren’t.”
“They’re padded, human-sized boxes. What else would they be for?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you know they absolutely could not possibly be caskets?”
He sunk onto one. “No, I don’t.”
He sat there, leaning forward, flashlight beam bouncing off the floor and illuminating his face, all sharp angles and shadows, curtained by his hair. He looked lost. A boy who wasn’t used to not having answers, lost in uncertainty and indecision, his eyes empty, as if his mind was whirring behind them, consuming all his energy as he searched for answers, digging into the darkest corners of a jam-packed brain but still finding nothing useful.
Tess watched him and felt…She wasn’t sure how she felt, only that she wanted to go and sit with him, brush his hair out of his face, tell him it was all right, that he didn’t need to have the answers. He’d jump like a scalded cat if she did, and then he’d scowl at her and give her that cold glare, as if by showing a moment’s tenderness she’d committed some grievous offense. He didn’t want that. Not from her. Maybe not from anyone, but she had a feeling it was mostly her.
She seemed to rub him the wrong way, as the matron used to say about girls who couldn’t get along. Their personalities clashed, and there was no getting past that. When Tess looked at Jackson, she wished there was a way past that.
So she settled for taking a slow step toward the box he was sitting on, preparing to lower herself beside him, not too close, not interfering. Just sitting with him. The moment she turned around to sit, though, he pushed up, flashlight rising.
“We should finish looking around,” he said. “It’ll be night soon.”
Which made no difference in a basement without windows. But she knew what he meant. Stop thinking. Start moving. So she did.