The Winter Sister(59)

I felt him watching me through the beat of silence that followed. “What do you mean she trusted Tommy?” he asked. “Trusted him about what?”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s so stupid,” I scoffed, “but apparently he told her that he and Persephone—”

My shoulder bumped against the paper towel dispenser, and I stumbled a little, startled at how close I’d been to it.

Ben’s nearness in that small room made the space even tighter. Still, I couldn’t risk taking the conversation into the hallway where Mom might hear us. Her chair was close to the door; she might recognize my voice down the hall—or worse, recognize one that reminded her of a man she once knew.

“Apparently,” I tried again, “he told her that he and Persephone had been really good friends.”

Ben looked at me as if I’d just insulted him. “That’s insane,” he said. “I told you the other day—he was stalking her. He’d, like, wait outside his house for me to drop her off at night. He left her all these notes that were just—” He shook his head, as if trying to shake away the memory. “They were not friends.”

“I know that,” I said. “But my mom believed him for some reason.”

“That’s insane,” Ben repeated, rubbing the back of his neck. “But I don’t get it, why would he tell her that—besides the fact that he’s crazy.”

I shrugged wearily. “He wanted Persephone’s things.”

Ben stared at me blankly. “I’m sorry, I’m not following.”

“Me either,” I said. “All I know is that after Persephone died, Tommy visited my mom a bunch and fed her a story about how the two of them had been such good friends. He said he wanted to have some mementos of her—and somehow that worked, because my mom ended up giving him basically all of Persephone’s stuff.”

Ben paused. “She what?”

“Well,” I said, “technically she traded it.”

His eyes clouded, as if a fog had rolled in front of them. “Traded it for what?”

I tried to picture Mom’s body succumbing to the pills. Was it different from how she’d slump against the headboard after too many drinks? Did her nerve endings start to feel like beginnings, like she could float away from her skin and hover near the ceiling, watching, with only mild curiosity, the sad hollow woman below?

“She—had him do stuff around the house,” I said. “Cleaning, mowing, et cetera.”

Ben took his time absorbing my answer. “Tommy did chores for your mother. And in return, she gave him her daughter’s things? That can’t be it. There’s got to be more to it than that. Did you try asking her—”

“Look,” I interrupted. “My mom hasn’t been well for a really long time. After Persephone died, she fell apart. She wasn’t thinking clearly. But yeah, she gave him all of Persephone’s stuff. And I don’t know why he wanted it or what he planned to do with it, or if he even still has it, but that’s what happened.”

Ben was quiet for a while, staring at something just to the right of my head. When he finally spoke again, his voice sounded deeper than before. “Well,” he said, “we should find out.”

I waited for him to clarify, but he just kept staring into space.

“Find out what?” I asked.

He looked at me, briefly, as if he’d almost forgotten I was there, and then he returned his gaze to the wall. “Find out why he wanted her stuff,” he said. “Find out what he planned to do.”

“Oh yeah? And how do you expect to do that? You can’t exactly go back in time and spy on him.”

His brows knitted together. “No, not spy. Talk. I think we need to talk to Tommy Dent.”

A sound—not quite laughter, not quite breath—squeezed through my lips. “You mean, like, visit him? Go to his house?”

Ben nodded in a slow, unhurried way. “Yes.”

“No way,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere near Tommy Dent. Do you have any idea what kind of—how he—he raped a girl! He was in jail for eleven years.”

“I know,” Ben said coolly.

“He doesn’t even live on my street anymore.”

“I know. He lives in Hanover.”

I narrowed my eyes again. “How do you know that?”

He looked right at me, and beneath the fluorescent bathroom lighting, his irises seemed as dark and solid as coal. “It may be news to you, Sylvie—that he killed Persephone. But I’ve believed it was him from day one.”

The light above us flickered. I glanced at the sink, the door, the toilet, anywhere but his face. “Okay,” I said, “but—”

“And it’s weird, right? That he wanted Persephone’s things? I mean, it’s suspicious as hell. I could maybe see him wanting some kind of keepsake, given how obsessed he was with her, but all of it? No. I don’t think so. There’s something not right there.”

“There’s something not right with Tommy,” I said, and Ben nodded.

“I know. Which is why we should go see him. Maybe after all these years he’s got his guard down. He thinks he got away with it, that he’s untouchable. We can ask him about it and see if he slips up. Maybe he’ll tell us something we can take to the police.”