Burn Our Bodies Down(22)

“Speak of the devil,” Connors says under his breath.

“Damn it.” Anderson steps away from the table and scrubs one hand over his buzz cut. “I didn’t want her yet.”

I twist around in my chair. Through the conference room window I can see Tess and Eli jump to their feet as a woman comes bursting through. She’s tall, as tall as Mom, dressed in pale blue jeans and a flowered button-down with the sleeves rolled up. Silver hair, long and swinging, and skin striped with wrinkles, with sunburn and tan.

“Theresa,” I think she says, and Tess nods back, pointing to the conference room, otherwise lost for words, which doesn’t seem like a thing that happens very often.

That’s when the woman turns. Looks at me through the window and smiles, smiles, smiles so wide it lifts me off my feet.

I know you, I think. And you know me.

When she comes in the door, she smells like smoke, and there’s dirt tracking behind her, clumped on her boots, staining the hem of her jeans. I can’t take my eyes off her, can’t help the slight reach of my hand as she steps into the conference room.

“Gentlemen,” she says. The voice from the phone. It’s her. “Just what the hell are you doing with my granddaughter?”

Seeing the body out on the highway was one thing. My face, still and empty and gone. Seeing my grandmother is another.

We look alike. Exactly alike. It shouldn’t be a surprise—Mom and I match each other just the same way—but after this morning, it is. To see life there, to see her muscles shift under her skin. Nielsen women, just like the clerk at the pharmacy said. You look just like them. He’s right. I do. This is how everybody knows what I am.

“Gram,” I say, barely more than a whisper. Her eyes flick to mine, with just a hint of the smile she gave me through the window.

It’s not enough. I don’t know what could be—a hug? A sigh of relief? Tears? I don’t get any of those. But there’s a certainty in her I’ve never seen in Mom. She’ll handle this. I don’t know her, but I trust that much.

Across the table, the officers are side by side, Connors pale and strained while Anderson puffs up with indignation.

“You can’t just barge in here, Vera,” he says, his fingers hooked in his belt loops, elbows sticking out.

“And you can’t just keep my granddaughter for no reason,” she replies easily, looking away from me at last. I hope she never calls me anything but that. Her granddaughter. Hers. “She’s a minor without an adult. You’re lucky I got here before either of you took this too far.”

“This is serious,” Anderson says. “There’s another fire on your land—”

“Yes, thank you,” Gram says. “Of that I’m aware.”

“And we’ve got two girls nobody can account for.”

“I only see one,” Gram says. “And I can account for her just fine.”

I start to smile before I remember where we are. Why I’m meeting her like this.

“That’s because the other’s dead,” Anderson says. “She’s one of yours. No getting around that. You really think we wouldn’t recognize her?”

I watch her for it, for a sign that he got it right. That the girl in the field belongs to her. It’s the simplest way to explain this—me with Mom, and my sister with Gram. There’s nothing, though. No guilt she has to bury, no surprise she has to cover. She just frowns and says, “It’s a shame someone died, certainly. But I don’t see why she has to be mine.”

“We found her on your land, Vera. You been keeping her to yourself?”

It’s bait, but Gram doesn’t take it. “You hear all sorts of stories about young girls these days,” she says smoothly. “Drifters. Runaways.”

Anderson scoffs, and for once, I agree with him. She has to be lying. There’s no way that girl came from anywhere but her house, on her land. “You’d know a thing or two about runaways, wouldn’t you?” he says. “About all of this. Good thing I’ve got all my dad’s old case notes in storage.”

He has to mean Mom, Mom and the first fire. Anderson’s dad must have worked that case, and now here we are again. Everything fits together—Anderson is right about that. I just wish I could see the picture it’s supposed to form.

“You’re more than welcome to get involved with all that again,” Gram says. “But it did your father very little good, as I’m sure it’ll do you.”

“Really?” Anderson says. “That’s the angle you’d like to take?”

“I don’t have an angle,” Gram says, as though she’s disappointed in him for even suggesting it. “I wish I could help you, but if you’re going to insist on speaking to me this way, I really don’t see how that’s possible.”

It brings me up short, how flat she sounds. How utterly untouched. I wish I could be like that. I wish I could take what I’ve seen, take my questions and lock them all away. But Gram has to know what’s going on. Sure, she’s lying to the police, but she’ll tell me the truth when we’re alone. Right?

“Look, there doesn’t have to be any fuss,” Connors says, making a half-hearted attempt at warmth. It seems a bit late for that. “If one of you would just tell us what happened, we could close this all up. But your granddaughter doesn’t seem to want to help us.”