Burn Our Bodies Down(21)

A noise—someone clearing their throat. I look up, startled, and instinctively hide my hands under my legs, the paper strips falling to the floor. I’d forgotten we were here for a moment. Forgotten what was waiting for me.

Officer Connors is waving me over to the conference room, a bright red first-aid kit in his hands, as Eli meanders back toward me.

“Come on in here,” Connors says. “You can fix yourself up while we talk.”





nine





at first we just watch each other, Anderson and Connors on one side of the long conference table, me on the other. The first-aid kit is lying open on the table in front of me. I haven’t touched it, even with the pain ripening my skin. I had nothing to do with this—with the fire, with the girl. Not even enough to be hurt by it.

“How old are you, Margot?” Connors says finally. He’s leaning forward, his hands folded together on the tabletop.

That seems safe enough. And it’ll be a reminder to them that there are rules to follow. “Seventeen,” I say.

“You have ID?” Anderson says.

I shake my head. “I left it at home.”

“And where’s that?” Connors says it idly, like maybe we’re just talking.

“Calhoun,” I say. “Southeast of here.”

Connors nods. “I know it. I’ve been a couple times.”

A lie. Nobody goes to Calhoun.

“You’re new to town, then?” he continues, like he’s the head of Phalene’s tourism board.

I try to keep my face relaxed. He can’t see that I’m nervous. He’ll think it’s guilt.

I saw someone out there. I went in. That’s all. It’s obviously not all to them, though. The fire, and a body they’ve never seen. A girl with my face. They think I did it. Or we did.

But she can’t be a stranger in this town. There’s no way. She has to belong to Gram, to Fairhaven. I just don’t understand how, yet.

“Sorry,” I say. “I just…Who do you think she is? You must have seen her before, or—”

Anderson frowns, holds up his hand to forestall me. “We’re the ones asking the questions right now, not you. And I’m asking you when you got here.”

There’s no way I can convince him I had nothing to do with the fire. Not until I’ve answered every question, proved I have nothing to hide.

“This morning,” I say. “I told you that before.”

“What time?”

I glance between the two officers, catch Connors watching me with a wariness. Like I’m the ghost of the girl who died out there in that fire. Maybe I am.

“I…” I don’t know. But I can’t say that, can I? And I don’t know when the fire started, and I don’t who that girl is, or how she got out there, and there are too many traps I could be walking into. I take a deep breath. I can try to answer this. At least we’re talking about the slice I understand, so small in the face of everything I don’t. “Midmorning, I guess. Maybe eleven?”

“And you were alone?”

Not technically. Mom taught me that even the smallest thing can be called a lie. “I got a ride in from—”

“Yes or no will do,” Anderson interrupts.

“Then yes. I arrived alone.”

“Anybody see you?”

I look out the conference room window to where Eli’s sitting at Anderson’s desk, Tess behind him, kneeling on a rolling chair and pushing herself down the aisle. They don’t care at all. This is nothing to them, no matter what Tess told me out there about being on my side.

“They did,” I say, nodding toward the window. “They were in the square when I got here.”

Anderson scoffs. “It’s not a good sign when you’re calling on Theresa Miller for an alibi.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I snap. I can hold on and hold on, but when the rope breaks, it goes all at once. “Why don’t you just ask me what you’re really asking?”

“And what’s that?”

“Whether I set that fire. Hell, whether I killed that girl.” I settle back, cross my arms. “By the time I got to the fire, it had already started, and by the time I got out into it, she was dead. Whoever she is and whatever happened, it has nothing to do with me.”

Anderson’s palm hits the table with a crack, and I jump. “Don’t bullshit me.”

I grit my teeth, meet Anderson’s gaze steadily. If this is Nielsen business, then it’s mine, not his. He can pry all he likes, but I’m not letting him in. Not before I’ve had a chance to find the family I’m after.

Connors pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jesus,” he says. “The apple doesn’t fall far, does it?”

I don’t know what he means, but I smile anyway, and I say, “No, it really doesn’t.”

Anderson gets up, his body blocking the light, blocking the window, and I reel back, before a voice comes from the lobby, muffled but still sharp enough to cut through the air between us.

“Excuse me,” I hear. “Where?”

I watch as the two officers make the same face—disgust, exhaustion and something else I don’t recognize. Something that comes with knowing a person.