Burn Our Bodies Down(42)

fifteen





officer Connors is standing in the doorway, watching me with raised eyebrows. My heart thunders, breath catching. I knew this could happen. I broke the door down because I didn’t care. But he can’t take me away now. Not when I’ve finally figured out the right questions to ask. What happened to Katherine? Maybe she left a daughter behind, not Mom.

“Shit,” I say. “I…” There’s no way to get out of this, though. Papers are still scattered around me, one box still open.

“You’ve been in town two days and been in trouble as many times,” he says, coming farther in. “Should I expect Tess to jump out of the shadows?”

Tess. I forgot. She must be somewhere else in the basement. I hope she hears him, stays far away. There’s no reason for both of us to get caught.

“I just needed to check something,” I say, which sounds ridiculous. Connors obviously thinks so too. He huffs out a laugh and crouches next to me, picking up one of the stacks of paper and flipping through it. Over his shoulder, Tess peers around the doorframe. When she sees he isn’t looking, she meets my eyes and tiptoes past toward the stairwell door, holding up crossed fingers and mouthing “Good luck.”

She’ll sneak out the back and step into the sun and everything will be the same for her as it was when we got here. And I’m here sitting in a whole new set of ruins. A cousin, maybe, and an aunt, and both of them gone before I ever had a chance to know them. If Katherine’s anything like Mom, then nothing could bring her back here. Maybe that girl felt the same pull I did. Maybe she came looking, and Gram hasn’t been keeping her hidden at all.

“So,” Connors says. “This old chestnut.”

“What?” He sounds so casual about this, this thing that’s upending every part of me. More family than just the line from Gram to Mom to me. It could have been like those pictures at Fairhaven. Branches and roots both.

Connors ignores my surprise, and the flash of anger I can’t put out. “We’ve been looking at this too,” he says, and he starts piling everything back into the open box. Calmly, like it doesn’t matter that I forced my way into someplace I shouldn’t be. “Of course, most everybody from back then is already familiar to us. We don’t need all this to keep it fresh.”

I stand up with him and watch as he carefully slots both boxes back into place on the shelf.

“But a fire out at Fairhaven,” he says, turning to me. “And you. And that girl. History repeats itself, you know? Only this time we’ve got a body.”

This time. Me and that girl, history happening again, because we’re just like Mom and Katherine.

Everybody fucking knew, didn’t they?

It’s a harder hit to take. Everybody. Every single person in this town, I bet. They knew, and they must have thought I did too, because why would Gram and my mom keep this from me? What kind of family would do that? Not a secret at all—just something so obvious nobody ever thought to say it out loud.

The missing picture on the wall in Fairhaven. You look just like them, from the pharmacy clerk. Them, them, and every time I thought it meant Gram and Mom. But it meant Mom and someone else. I’m shaking, goose bumps dotting my arms, and the room around me feels like that shimmer of heat on the road, like it’ll disappear if I look closer. I’ve been careening through this town, breaking and oblivious, and I didn’t even realize it.

“I have to go,” I say. I have to talk to Gram. This is what she was protecting. Not my sister my mother left behind, but a whole other set of family. And there are still too many questions—how, how did nobody know that body when we pulled it from the fire?—but now that I know this part of the truth, there’s no reason for her to hide anything else.

“You have to what?” Connors says. He looks almost amused. And I remember where I am—in a police station, in a room I broke into, surrounded by records I am very much not supposed to be reading.

I shove my hands in my pockets. “Sorry.”

Connors settles back against the shelves and folds his arms across his chest. I remember that yesterday he was the nicer of the two. I think if Anderson had caught me here, I’d already be upstairs in the conference room being questioned.

“You’re curious,” Connors says. “I get it.”

“I just found out my mom had a sister,” I say. “So maybe you don’t actually get it at all.”

“Really?” Connors’s eyebrows tick up. “Just found out? Seems like keeping secrets is a hard habit for your grandmother to break.”

“She had her reasons,” I say. Defending her, even though she’s not here to reward me for it. My own habit, I guess.

“Whatever reasons those are, I’m not sure they’re good enough. Everybody here knows about the twins.”

Twins. Nothing new to him, but I see it in a flash. Mom and another, on the porch at Fairhaven with matching smiles. Of course. Of course it was twins. And Mom had me, and Katherine had her, that girl in the field. Another generation of Nielsen girls, and both of us strangers to Phalene. Both of us looking for family. Maybe Gram wasn’t keeping her at Fairhaven, but she was still keeping her a secret.

“There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense about this,” Connors continues, “if you don’t know what happened here. Hell, there’s a lot even if you do.”