Burn Our Bodies Down

by Rory Power

Well. Fuck that.

  Back in the kitchen Eli’s half-asleep, his chin propped up on his hand, and Tess is building a stack of pastries, biting her lip as she concentrates. Gram looks like she’d rather be anywhere else, and for a moment I feel bad for her. But then it’s there between us. Secrets kept and covered.

  “Tess,” I say, and she jumps, the pastry tower toppling over. “You ready to go?”

  A smile lifting the corners of her mouth. Ready for anything. That’s Tess, I think. Game, no matter what. “Remind me where?”

  I knew I could count on her. “Around town.”

  “Right.” She gets to her feet and steps around me, heading for the door, where a pair of absurdly white sneakers is waiting.

  “Do I have to come?” Eli grumbles without opening his eyes. “Actually, don’t answer that. I’m going back to sleep.”

  “Here?” Mr. Miller asks. He’s circled to the kitchen island and is busy toasting a bagel, ignoring all the food his wife laid out. “Have we officially adopted you yet, Eli? Your parents might have something to say about that.”

  Eli blinks, eyes bleary. “No, they’d be fine with it. I hear I’m expensive.”

  “Not as expensive as me,” Tess crows from the door. She’s got one shoe on and is halfway to falling over as she puts on the other. Mr. and Mrs. Miller laugh, so I guess that was a joke, but I don’t talk about money like that. From the look on Gram’s face, neither does she.

  “What are you going into town for?” she says, pursing her lips. “You haven’t seen enough of it?” Icy, and stiff, and nothing like the woman this morning who gave me a hug.

  “I’m gonna show her the pool,” Tess says. “Also the seedy underbelly. And the black market. The—”

  “Yes,” I cut in. “All that.” I just want to get out of here, away from the press of my grandmother’s gaze. Then I can find the gaps in the story, the ones I can get through.

  Gram lets out a short breath and gets to her feet. She moves so differently than Mom does. Deliberate and sure. Mom is quick and Mom is sudden, and I wonder if people look at her and me and think we’re as different from each other as she is from Gram.

  “I’d rather you just come home with me,” she says. She’s being polite—we’re in company—but I can hear the order she’s wrapping her words around.

  I put on my best smile. “I know,” I say. “But it’s my first time visiting. I want to see where my family’s from.”

  I can do it too. Pointed and razor-sweet. I will figure this out, whether she likes it or not. I mean, she says she’s being honest. If she is, she has nothing to worry about.

  “Margot,” she says, but Tess has the front door open.

  “See you later,” I say over my shoulder, just as Tess says, “I’ll have her home by eleven.”

  Gram must be seething. She calls my name again, but I don’t care anymore, because Tess is off ahead of me and she can help me figure this out. I don’t have to be on my own.

  The door shuts behind us. Bikes in Tess’s garage, both of us laughing, giddy with knowing that Gram could be coming after us. It’s barely a minute before the two of us are pedaling down her driveway. Fairhaven up ahead on the left, faded and yellowed against the bright sky. That’s Gram’s world, and my answers are there—I know they are—but I’ll never get them from her. I have to find another way in.

  Turn the corner onto the highway. Ash opening up on our left and the heat like cotton, like a clean sheet brushing my body, hotter and hotter, until there’s nothing else. A haze, a fog, a shimmer on the road. Tess weaving back and forth, dress fluttering in the wind, hair long and loose. Sometimes life looks exactly the way you think it should.

  And then we pass it and it doesn’t anymore. The crime scene tape. The place where Eli laid her body. The scene is clear now, no cruisers and no techs, no camera flashes, but it was barely a day ago. Like it or not, it’s easy to remember.

  Tess slows down, her path taking her right to the edge of the road, and for a moment I think she means to stop, to put us back there. But I stay steady, and she catches up. Slides her bike alongside mine, and for a minute we just coast.

  “Okay?” Tess calls to me over the rush of the breeze.

  And I have no idea, but I say, “Sure.”

  FOURTEEN

  Tess does take me past the pool, but I barely see more than the stretch of concrete and the flash of brightly patterned bathing suits before we’re into the thicket of the houses and breaking out onto the town square. I wonder if she’d be back there on any other day, watching her friends put on sunscreen and shrieking as Eli throws her into the water. But now I’m here, and I’m asking for her help. Never mind that she offered.

  She pulls over by the bike rack at the corner of the town green, and I follow. My mouth is dry from the ride, and I can still feel every place that yesterday’s heat touched, but away from Gram, away from Fairhaven, I’m more of the person I was two days ago, before any of this happened. Just Margot Nielsen.

  “So,” Tess says, getting off her bike. “I’m showing you around town?”

  She didn’t ask on the ride here, with the wind and the road ahead of us, and I didn’t explain. But I have to now.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Sorry about all that before.”

  “No, I should thank you,” she says. I watch her slot her bike into the rack, wait for her to lock it, although with what, I don’t know. Nothing to worry about for Tess, in Phalene. “You saved me from one of my dad’s ‘let’s talk about farming’ moods. Besides”—and the smile falls from her face, leaves the earnest girl I got a glimpse of yesterday and again this morning—“I saw what you saw. I’m not exactly fine about it, you know?”

  That’s one way to put it. I walk my borrowed bike up to the rack and settle it home. Yesterday it was her asking me what I knew. Now it’s my turn.

  “What I was trying to say before is that I found something,” I say. “My grandmother told me I was staying in a guest room—that no one ever really lived there. But my dresser was full of clothes just like the girl was wearing.”

  Tess follows me toward the rack, leaning against it.”Did you ask her about them?”

  “Yeah,” I say, clearing my throat. “She had an explanation. She always has an explanation, except they don’t make any sense. I think that girl must have been my sister. Maybe she was living at Fairhaven and I was with my mom.”

  Tess’s eyes go wide. “Like . . .” And I can see her try not to say it. It comes out anyway. “Like some kind of Parent Trap shit?”

  Jesus. “Sure,” I say. “If that’s how you want to think about it. But nobody’s seen anyone else at Fairhaven. You haven’t. The police obviously haven’t.”

  “I’m guessing Vera hasn’t had much to say about it.” Tess sweeps her hair over one shoulder, a breeze catching the swing of it. “What about your mom? You could ask her. It’s her shit too.”

  It is, but that doesn’t matter. “I think,” I say instead of answering, “that I need to figure out why she left.”

  “The fire,” Tess says immediately, and then she winces. “Well, the first one.”

  “Right.” That’s not enough. Luckily, I think I know where to find more.

  Anderson told Gram his father’s old case notes were in storage, and that, Tess says when I explain, means the police station. Which is how we end up at the station’s back door trying to pick the lock with a safety pin Tess found in the grass.

  “I swear I’ll get it,” she’s saying. “I saw this in a movie once.”

  I don’t exactly have a better idea, but I take a step back from her, press one hand to my stomach to settle the nausea there. I don’t like this part of her, don’t like how she can treat my life like it’s an adventure she’s on. No matter what attraction I can feel sparking sometimes, it’ll never be strong enough to burn that away.

  I step back, try to gather my thoughts. That’s when I realize we’re standing next to the parking lot, and it’s empty of cruisers. Anderson and Con
nors and whoever else are all out in town. “Look,” I say. “They’re not here. Can’t we just go through the front?” I have no doubt that Tess can talk her way past whatever receptionist is on duty.

  Tess straightens, one hand going up to shield her eyes from the sun. That’s not as fun, I can imagine her saying if I were looking at her with a little less frustration. Instead she says, “Sure. Hang back, though. Just in case.”

  I follow her around to the front and wait on the curb while Tess peers through the door to see who’s on duty. The station looks just as imposing today as it did yesterday when I got out of Anderson’s cruiser. The windows across the front of the lobby are dark, the blinds drawn, and through the door, over Tess’s head, I can see the receptionist’s desk, protected by a sheet of what must be bulletproof glass.

  “Perfect,” Tess says. “It’s Judy. She’s easy.”

  We head in, Tess shoving twice to get the door to open all the way when it sticks in the frame. A woman with bottle-even brown hair and perfectly painted red fingernails is sitting primly behind the counter, frowning as she fusses with the collar of her starched flowered blouse. She looks up as Tess approaches, leaving me just inside the door, under the blast of the air-conditioning. I ignore the goose bumps rising on my skin and focus as Tess settles into one hip and swings her hair over her shoulder.

  “Hey, Judy,” she says. “Hardly working?”

  Judy’s laugh is nervous. “Working hard,” she says, but I catch an insistence in her voice, like she wants Tess to understand that she really is. She could be about Mrs. Miller’s age, or maybe a little older. It’s hard to tell from here.

  “Listen, I know this is a pain,” Tess says. It doesn’t escape me that she’s positioned herself between me and Judy, keeping our sight line from ever fully connecting. “But I left something in the bullpen yesterday when I was talking to Officer Connors. Can I go back and look for it?”

  Judy’s face twists, like she wants to frown but is too nervous. “I don’t know, honey,” she says. “I don’t think I’m supposed to let you back there alone.”

  “No, it’s okay.” I can’t see Tess’s face, but it’s not hard to imagine the winning smile she’s giving Judy. “He said I could just duck in and out and it wouldn’t be a bother.” And then she knocks it over the top. “He said for you to call if you want to double-check.”

  “No,” Judy says immediately. “No, of course. Go on back, and just give me a shout when you’re done.”

  “Great.” Tess looks over her shoulder at me and nods. I step up next to her as Judy presses a button under her desk and the door to the bullpen clicks open. Nobody had to let us through like that when Anderson brought me in from the fire. It must be just when nobody’s on duty inside. And that bodes well for us.

  “Oh,” Judy says when she sees me. “Who’s your friend?” But then her eyes go wide, and I know she recognizes me, just like everyone in this town does. “You must be—”

  “She’s here for the summer,” Tess cuts in. “We’ll only be a few minutes.” She takes hold of my arm and pulls me through the doorway before Judy can say anything else. “Thank you!”

  I give Judy my best approximation of a Tess smile as we pass. Judging from her stare, it wasn’t very good.

  “Okay,” Tess says once we’re in the bullpen and the door is shut behind us. “You wanted information, right?”

  Nobody’s in the conference room. Just a few scattered paper cups of coffee left over from a meeting and a whiteboard positioned at the front, my last name written across it in red marker. I look away.

  “Yeah.”

  “We need the records, then, but I don’t think they’ll be up here,” Tess says.

  We check anyway, opening what turns out to be a supply closet and rifling through the desks in the bullpen. Anderson’s got a file folder with Nielsen misspelled and crossed out, and there’s my name again, on that Post-it I saw on the file cabinet. But the folder’s empty and the cabinet’s locked.

  “Now what?” I say to Tess. She nods to the corner of the bullpen, where a door leads to some stairs.

  “The basement.”

  I follow her into the stairwell, down and down under flickering lights, one hand trailing against the wall. It’s only two flights but it feels like more, feels like the summer has disappeared, leaving the air heavy with cold and shadow. Our footsteps echo as we reach the basement door, and for a moment I panic, afraid that Judy will hear us somehow. Afraid that Connors is waiting on the other side of the door to catch us.

  I brace myself, but the stairwell door opens to no one. Just a hallway that runs barely a few yards before it corners sharply. The linoleum floor is water-stained and peeling, checkered in an unappealing teal and a gray that was probably white to begin with. Off the corridor is a handful of doors, all closed.

  “One of these should be what we’re looking for,” Tess says.

  She takes one side and I take the other, and soon enough we’ve found the door marked RECORDS and tried the handle. It’s locked, because of course it is, but I stop Tess before she pulls out that goddamn safety pin again and lever my body against the handle. A door this old, this forgotten—it’ll pop right out.

  “You’ll break it,” Tess says.

  I should care. But too many things have stood in my way, and this is something I can do, something I can take into my own hands. Tess talked us in, and she got me here, and I’m glad, but I have to do some of this myself. And so what if Connors and Anderson know it was me? I look guilty enough already. At least this time I’ll have done something to earn their suspicion.

  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 k
now 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.