Burn Our Bodies Down(45)

“Margot?”

I draw in a deep breath. Force my eyes back to him. Yes, something’s wrong with Gram. Something’s wrong with my whole family. But whatever they’re hiding, it’s mine to unravel.

“Ask her yourself,” I say. “If you think she has something to do with this, then—”

“We did,” Connors interrupts. He’s frustrated now, and letting me know it. “We tried this morning. We’ve been trying to talk to her for years, since Katherine disappeared. We even had a warrant back then. Searched the whole place, which is how I know that a warrant’s only gonna show me what Vera wants me to see. I need you. If I’m gonna get anywhere, it’s gonna be with your help. And you need mine too,” he adds when I don’t say anything. “Breaking and entering back there? Trespassing? That kind of thing could get a girl like you sent to juvie. But we can call it a wash. Like I said, I get it—you wanted to know. But so do I.”

For a moment we just look at each other. I know he’s right. But I won’t help him. Nobody but you and me, that’s what Mom always said. She’s not here, but Gram is. And whatever secrets Gram is hiding, they’re for me, not him.

“I can’t,” I say. “I wish I could help. It’s not like I don’t want the same answers you do.”

“Not badly enough, I guess,” Connors says.

I flush with guilt, feel it settle hot and stinging in my gut. But it’s not enough to change my mind.

We leave then. Connors ahead of me, his expression grave and disappointed as he holds the door. It’s fine. It’s over. Nothing more to see. Just the memory of that girl’s eyes, hovering behind my own. The gleam of the metal drawers, one of them hers. Mothers and daughters, she whispers in the back of my mind. Mothers and daughters and me.





sixteen





connors doesn’t try to ask me any more questions. I can stay at the station, he says, if that’s what I want, and he can try to call my mom. But I say no. I say get me back to Fairhaven.

He takes me to his cruiser, loads me into the front seat with reluctance written on his face. I feel strange, like I’m melting. When we pass the scorched earth, the proof of the fire, I want to look away, but I can’t even blink. Every inch closer we get to Fairhaven, the closer Katherine gets to the surface. The harder she tests the lock of the door I put her behind. By the time we pull into Fairhaven’s driveway, I’m ready to throw up.

“Ask her,” Connors says, putting the cruiser in park. “You’re the only one she’ll tell.”

“Yeah,” I say, but I’m already halfway out of the car, and we both know I don’t really mean it. I have questions for her, but whatever answers I get, I’m keeping for myself.

I wait until Connors is gone before going inside, to make sure he’s really leaving. The door’s unlocked, the front hall dark and cool. It’s harder to hold on to myself now that I’m here. Here, where my mother and her sister grew up. Every room, every breath—they belonged to the girls, once. The twins.

There must be a reason Gram’s keeping me in the dark, I tell myself. Please, let there be a reason.

“Hello?” I call. My voice is hoarse, heavy. Like it knows the pain of this, even though I’m doing all I can to keep it at bay. “Gram?”

“Up here,” comes her voice from the second floor.

I go toward it. Step after step, my hand trailing along the banister. I’m awake, I know I am, but it doesn’t feel like it. I could still be there in that room, in the station, with the girl’s body out in front of me, her eyes liquid and black.

The landing is empty, no sign of Gram. “Marco,” I call, and I hear Gram’s chuckle before she says, “Polo.”

She’s in one of the rooms off the right-hand hallway, opposite the one leading to mine. I approach the open door, my heartbeat uneven, my breath coming quick. I hesitate before I go in. I have to be calm. Too much of me and I’m afraid Gram will shut down.

From here I can only see a slice of the room, but it’s pretty much what I expected for Gram’s bedroom. A flowered bedspread stretched neatly over a lumpy mattress, and a chest of drawers tucked against the wall.

“Can I come in?” I say, knocking gently. She’ll appreciate that, I think.

“Of course.”

When I step inside, Gram’s sitting at a vanity against the opposite wall, a pack of Band-Aids on the counter as she carefully tapes up a blister on her palm. For a moment I don’t say anything. Just watch her work, her expression calm in the mirror. She knows about the twins. About the girl. Right now. She knows she’s keeping these secrets from me and she doesn’t care. No guilt, no nothing.

“Did you have fun with Theresa?” she says, not looking up. Oh, she can pretend, but she’s pissed I left the Miller house without her. I can hear it. “You’re back quickly.”

I go farther into the room, the floorboards creaking underneath me. “I learned something,” I say.

Gram meets my eyes in the mirror. “Was it, perchance, something about manners?”

“No.”

She turns to face me, one hand cradled in the other. “Well?”

It hurts to look at her, but I make myself keep steady. Her face, passed on to her daughters. How many women have been in this room? How many has she kept from me?