Burn Our Bodies Down(41)

One push and another. I hear the door creak, and the rust on the handle is flaking off under my skin. I haul back on it, take a deep breath and throw all my weight right where the dead bolt would be. A snap. A jolt. The door tumbles open. I stagger, catch my chin on the frame.

“Okay,” Tess says. “I was gonna go steal the keys from Connors’s desk, but we can do this too.”

I flush. Duck away from Tess and reach inside the room to flick on the lights. It’s long and cramped, reaching away from the hallway, stacked to the ceiling with boxes and boxes of files and evidence. I can’t imagine this is everything, but it’s a start.

I take a step inside, and then deeper, the shelves rising like Gram’s crops around me, edging in close. Shadows and dust, and a hundred lives in boxes. Sometimes it’s like you can feel it, a history spiraling away from you in every direction, and Phalene has been like that every second. Right now, I’m almost relieved, because this I can touch. This is a room I can open and shut.

The boxes are labeled with what must be case numbers, and some of them have names and dates, too. It looks like they move backward, year by year, as I get closer to the far wall. Tess follows me, reading me the names she recognizes, which is all of them.

Mom had me just after she left Phalene. That means the fire has to have been before 2002. I’ll start there, work back until I find what I need. I let my eyes unfocus, skim every date. The boxes begin to lose their shape, corners crumpling, duct tape peeling away. Ink running, paper curling.

Maybe it’s not here. Maybe we broke in for nothing. Maybe everything about this was a mistake.

“Is there another records room?” I ask, hoping Tess will go looking and leave me to do this alone. I don’t want her to see how nervous I am.

“Maybe.” I hear her shoes scuff against the floor as she heads back toward the door. “I’ll go check.”

As soon as she’s gone, I let my worry take hold of me. Let it send me to the very back of the room. I crouch in front of the lowest shelf, dust coating my fingers as I shove the front row of boxes to one side. There are more behind them, collapsed and mildewed. Something has leaked from the ceiling and dripped down to pool and dry here. But the dates are right. This could be it.

I check over my shoulder, make sure Tess is still gone. I can hear her meandering down the hallway, farther and farther. Good. I appreciate her help, I really do, and I know I’ll need more of it. But I want this to be just me.

With a groan I heave the boxes onto the floor. I can barely make out the writing on the labels in the dim light, but there: on both, a name, the N large and clear even though the rest has blurred with time. Nielsen—it has to be.

I lift the lid off the nearest box.

Stacks of paper. Handwriting spread across the top sheet. Not Gram’s. I’d recognize that now. These must be the old case notes. I spot another Anderson’s name at the top of the page—that must be my Anderson’s father.

Next I scan the few lines and Mom’s name jumps out. But it’s not the only one. The report mentions Vera, which I expected. And there’s a mention of the Millers—they would be Tess’s grandparents. There’s a Katherine, too. That’s new. Is that Mom? Maybe she changed her name to Josephine after she left Phalene. I wouldn’t blame her for wanting a new start.

I squint down at the handwriting and, when it doesn’t get clearer, sit back on my heels, hold the paper up to the light before tossing it aside. There must be a typed copy somewhere.

I find it in the next file folder. This one’s bursting with binder clips that are barely holding sheaves of paper together. The first page is the same report, and I skim it quickly, aware that Tess will be back any second. It’s not that I’ll keep this from her. She should know too. But I want that first step into the secret history of my family to be one I take on my own.

Josephine and Vera, over and over. So—Mom was herself, then. Katherine was somebody else. I keep reading.

Josephine and Vera in custody, the papers tell me. Held for questioning. Vera reports having seen Katherine set the fire. Offers no further information when pressed. Josephine Nielsen corroborates Vera’s account and reports having seen Katherine leave the house near midnight, around the time the fire is suspected to have started.

No body recovered. Katherine Nielsen presumed missing. All-points bulletin issued.

I sit back. Shock running through me.

Katherine Nielsen?

The paper falls from my hand. Lands on the floor next to my knee, but I don’t move. Katherine. A name I have never heard anyone say. Family kept even further away than Gram.

Gram had another daughter. Mom’s sister. My aunt.

And a part of me is saying, You already knew. The girl in that field, the body you found. You knew sister wasn’t right. Cousin, though. Katherine’s daughter. Try that on. But that doesn’t stop the questions. Doesn’t stop the panic, stretching and strong, fizzing in my fingertips, building behind my heart.

I’m used to not knowing; I’m used to building my life around empty spaces, around locked doors and unanswered questions. And now this. An answer I never asked for. Blowing through every wall I’ve ever put up, tearing apart every memory I’ve ever kept close.

“Well,” comes a voice from the doorway. I whip around. “If I wasn’t sure you were a Nielsen before, I am now.”