A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(60)

It’s about time, I thought.

My father kept reading something about rescheduled finals, and incompletes, but I didn’t pay much attention because I didn’t care. There was too much else to think about. The letter said that, after the explosion, students had been evacuated to a nearby Days Inn under the supervision of the RAs and house mothers until their parents could come retrieve them. Tomorrow, Sherringford was bringing in a specialist team from Boston to sweep the campus for other possible “leaks,” and after they gave the all clear, students would be escorted, in roommate pairs, to get their things. They’d give us each ten minutes to pack. The schedule for each dorm had been attached.

My father put his smartphone away and looked me hard in the eye. “Charlotte is here. She’s safe. And I’ve been very patient. But now I need you to either give me an explanation for why you’ve fifteen vicious cuts and an exploded science building, or I’m taking you to the hospital.”

Abbie’s hands stilled in my hair.

I tried my best to sketch it out for him: my fight with Holmes, the bugged room and the broken mirror, the homemade bomb, our suspicions about Mr. Wheatley and Nurse Bryony and the Moriartys, what I’d said to Tom in our room.

My father had out his ever-present notebook, and he jotted things down as I spoke. When I came to the part about August Moriarty—how the records on him just stopped, what Milo had scrubbed from the Daily Mail, the thing Charlotte wouldn’t tell me—my father made a disgruntled sound. “Jamie. Number fifteen: if you wait for full disclosure from a Holmes, it might be years before you learn a damn thing.”

I threw up my hands. “Tabloids, Dad. The Daily Mail. Have they ever been an accurate source of information? And anyway, I couldn’t look it up even if I wanted to.”

“You,” my father said sadly, “still have rather a lot to learn. Don’t you remember the stories I used to tell you about Charlotte?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m not stupid.”

“Since you’re not stupid, you have, of course, reasoned from that information that I’ve kept tabs on her since she was a little girl. And that I most likely have a file or two up in my study that could fill you in on some of this.”

The answers had been there all this time.

All this time. In my childhood home.

I opened my mouth to ask him for the file when he looked at me and said, “You know, if you hadn’t been so unfairly angry with me, you might have gotten your hands on it weeks ago.”

That settled it. Because I might have had a burning need to know the truth about Charlotte Holmes, might have obsessed over it for an endless string of awful nights—but I still resented my father more.

“I don’t want it.”

He looked like I’d struck him. “What?”

“You heard me,” I told him. “This is between the two of us, and I trust her.”

“But—”

“I trust her, Dad.” It was true, after all.

“Of course. Of course you do.” My father sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Right. Anyway, that detective of yours has been calling me all night. Do you not have your mobile? No? That explains it. I’ll call him back and tell him what you told me”—he lifted his notebook—“if you’d like to go to bed.”

“Yes, more than anything.” I stood unsteadily. “No hospital, then?”

He gave a surprised laugh. “Are you mad? Someone’s trying to kill you. No, you’re staying right here.” Shaking his head, he disappeared into the hallway.

Abbie was putting away her first-aid kit, smiling to herself. Did she think all of this was fun? I subtracted a few of the points I’d given her.

“What exactly is so funny?”

“It’s like you’re his mini-me,” she said. “Oh, it’s awful, all of it, but it’s like a spy movie! I mean, how cool.”

Well, my father had married the right woman. She was just as insensitive as he was.

“My best friend almost died today,” I said to her. “It was a really close call. I don’t think that’s cool.”

She patted me on the shoulder. “If you hold on a sec, I’ll get a fitted sheet for that mattress.”

I stomped up the stairs with an armload of linens. In the guest room, Holmes was curled under the floral coverlet, sound asleep in her clothes. She’d scrubbed some of the dirt from her face, but not all of it, and she looked like a Dickensian orphan against the white sheets. I unfolded the blanket from the end of the bed and tucked it over her, standing for a long moment to watch the moon move across her hair. She was alive. She would wake up tomorrow to scheme and argue with me, to bring me terrible sandwiches, to push against me until I made myself a better partner. Her sad eyes and her sharp tongue and the way she touched my shoulder when she thought I wasn’t listening. I was always listening.

She was right there, and still I couldn’t believe it. I resisted the urge to brush her hair away from her forehead. She stirred, and I pulled my hand back.

“Watson, what is it?”

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“I shouldn’t,” she said, pushing herself up. “We need to work this case. Something terrible is about to happen.”

I gently pushed her back down. “Not tonight. Nothing will happen tonight. Go back to sleep.” I pulled my mattress up next to the bed and lay down; it sighed out a long breath of air.