All the Dangerous Things(31)

I understand that, unlike the others—unlike the detectives and the neighbors and the true crime enthusiasts—this isn’t just business for him. It isn’t entertainment. It isn’t work.

For him, it’s personal.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


THEN

Our air conditioner died this morning. It was overworked, Mom said. It’s too hot.

For some reason, that reminded me of the horse-drawn carriages we sometimes see downtown, the horses’ thick bodies pulling the weight of a dozen people in oversized wagons. The heat of the sun on their necks, muscles bulging. Bits in their mouths, and the smell of manure baking on the concrete. We had seen one collapse once, stumble in the middle of the street and fall to its knees. The tourists had screamed as the coachman jumped down, pried open its jaws, and poured a bottle of water down its throat as blood oozed from a gash in its leg and pooled between the cobblestones.

“Is it dead?” Margaret had asked, looking up at my mother. The horse’s belly was moving, but just barely: slow, heaving breaths that made its nostrils flare.

“No, it’s not dead,” she had said, turning us around, hands on our necks as she led us in the opposite direction. “It’s just too hot. It’s overworked. It’s … tired.”

Margaret and I are sitting back-to-back on the hardwood floor of my mother’s studio now, hair pulled into ponytails, though I can feel my baby curls escaping the grip of the elastic and gluing themselves to my forehead, stuck to my skin with sweat. Mom put us up here earlier, setting out an assortment of paints and blank canvases, entertainment that she knew could last for hours. The morning stretched by in a warm, slow rhythm, and I can tell by the shifting sun that it’s late afternoon now, another day gone.

“I’m hot,” Margaret says, fanning herself with her hand. I turn around and see a bead of sweat drip down her chest, disappearing down the neck of her nightgown. We’re each wearing one of my father’s old work shirts on top of our pajamas, backward, sleeves rolled up to our elbows to create makeshift smocks.

“It’ll be fixed soon,” I say, feeling the tickle of a no-see-um on my leg, nipping at my skin with invisible teeth. I had swung the patio doors open earlier, letting in a warm marsh breeze that did nothing but bring the bugs in.

“How soon?”

“Tonight,” I say. “Maybe tomorrow. Once Dad gets home.”

“I can’t wait that long.”

I glace in her direction again and notice that her cheeks are flushed red, like she’s got a fever or something, but I know it’s just the heat: July in South Carolina is brutal. It can make you feel a little crazy, like you’re being cooked alive.

“Can we sleep outside?”

“No, we can’t sleep outside.”

Margaret nods, looking back down at her latest painting. It’s a mess of squiggles, childishly abstract, and I feel my chest squeeze a little, remembering her age again. Her innocence.

“You can sleep in my room,” I say, an apology for snapping at her. “We’ll open the window, get the breeze from the marsh. It’ll be cooler at night.”

She smiles at me, reassured, and begins to hoist herself up to get a clean canvas.

“I’ll get it,” I say, resting my hand on her arm and standing up myself. “Sit tight.”

I step over the milky water glasses and old paintbrushes strewn across the floor and walk across the studio to my mother’s easel. There are dozens of her paintings up here, almost all of them of us, like our own private gallery: Margaret sitting in a circle of statues outside, holding a teacup in the air; Dad smoking from my grandfather’s old pipe, clouds of smoke billowing out. The blank ones are in a stack by the wall, but before I can get there, something catches my eye.

I stop walking; there’s half of an in-progress painting peeking out behind the others. I move toward it and slide the top one to the side so I can see it more clearly, and when I do, I can barely breathe.

“Izzy?” Margaret says, sensing the sudden stillness in the air, my body rigid and unmoving on the other side of the room. “What is it?”

I don’t answer; I can’t answer. I’m staring at the painting, fully in view now, a worm of worry writhing in my stomach. It’s our backyard, that swath of green grass leading to the gentle hill that slopes into the creek. The long, wooden dock spooling out into the water and the oak trees on either side of it, their gnarled branches reaching out like wiggling fingers. It’s nighttime, the moon high in the sky, and in the very middle of it all is a girl: long brown hair, white nightgown, arms hanging heavy at her side as she stands ankle-deep in the marsh.

“Look,” Margaret says, and I jump at her sudden closeness. She’s standing right next to me now, though I didn’t even realize she had moved. She’s pointing at the painting, the girl. “Look, Izzy. It’s you.”





CHAPTER NINETEEN


NOW

The early morning fog is still burning off the blacktop, hovering over the ground like a ghost. I leave my house at the first hint of dawn, deciding to walk over to the old man’s house in the daylight. It only takes a few minutes now that I know where I’m going, and once I arrive, I size up it from the sidewalk, a little brick bungalow that would be easy to overlook. It’s smaller than the other ones on the street, partially covered in overgrown shrubs and wild magnolia trees in desperate need of a trim. The paint is chipping off the siding, mold growing on the concrete sidewalk that leads to the front door.