All That's Bright and Gone

by Eliza Nellums

  That’s how come I know Hannah and I will have a chance to go to the Secret Place.

  Sure enough, she takes a blanket out of her basket and spreads it out on the grass, and then sits facing away from us. “Don’t play too near the creek,” she says. “And stay within earshot, okay?”

  “We will,” I say.

  “Cool.” She takes her book out of her bag and flips it open. I can read the title: The High. Way. Man’s. Lady.

  “What’s a high-way-man?” I ask.

  “Go play,” says Stephanie without looking up.

  Hannah kicks the back of my foot so I know she’s about to start the investigation. She stands very straight and plays with the edge of her T-shirt, tugging it down. She’s trying to act like an adult, I guess. “Hey Stephanie?”

  Stephanie turns a page of her book. “Mm-hmm?”

  Hannah bumps me with her elbow. “Um,” I say. I look at her and she makes her eyes round, and nods. Teddy is next to me, nodding with his whole body, too.

  “I was—” My voice comes out too loud. “I was hoping you could tell us about my brother. About Theo.”

  Stephanie looks at me over the top of her book. “About Theo,” she says.

  I swallow. “Yes,” I say. “Please. I want to know.”

  Stephanie frowns, and I don’t think she’s going to answer. She’s going to do exactly what Mama and Uncle Donny always do, and say that it’s not a good idea to talk about Theo.

  “Did you ever meet him?” I ask.

  “Well, obviously I knew who he was,” she tells me. “He was a year below me in school.”

  That doesn’t make sense, because Stephanie doesn’t go to Sacred Heart. She goes to regular school. Mama says Father Paul got me special money from the diocese. Maybe they didn’t know Theo needed it too?

  “What was he like?” Hannah says at the same time.

  “I’ve got to be honest, I thought he was kind of a little creep. Him and his nerdy friend always tried to peek into the pool locker room to spy on the girls.” She rolls her eyes. “But … he was just a twerp. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

  “Do you know what did happen to him?” Hannah jumps in. “Nobody else will talk about it!”

  I’m too busy trying to understand that Theo was almost the same age as Stephanie, once. But she kept getting older and he didn’t. Stephanie is practically a grown-up, but Theo is still thirteen forever, in the photo over the stairs.

  “I only know what people said at the time,” says Stephanie, picking up her book again. “And that is nothing I’m going to talk to little kids about. I like this job just fine, thanks.”

  “Just tell us one thing,” Hannah begs. “Please, please, please?” She looks over and elbows me, giving me a look and jerking her head towards Stephanie.

  “Please, please, please?” I say.

  “She’s his grieving sister,” says Hannah, her voice high-pitched. “Can’t you please just answer a few tiny little questions? We already know the murder is unsolved so we just want to find out the how and the why!”

  She got that from her Junior Detective Guidebook, I know. Who, What, When, Where, Why. All we know so far is Who.

  Stephanie pinches up her mouth like Mama when she hears about someone saying the Lord’s name in vain. “No way,” she says. “You guys shouldn’t even be thinking about murders and stuff. A kid died, okay? It’s not a game.” She holds up her hands in front of her before Hannah can say anything else. “No. I don’t know why you want to dig it up now, but you’re not going to find out anything you want to know. Trust me.”

  But I have to know. Because otherwise Mama’s never coming home.

  “Now, you two—scram,” she says, picking up her book again. “And stop messing around with this.”

  Hannah and I both know she isn’t going to say anything more. It’s almost impossible to make Stephanie change her mind, which we prove every time we try to get her to buy us ice cream.

  She waves her hands like she’s shooing off flies. “Am-scray,” she says, which means leave.

  “Let’s go, Aoife,” says Hannah.

  As soon as we are out of Stephanie’s earshot, Hannah pulls me down in the grass. “Even though our material witness isn’t cooperating, we still confirmed the murder is unsolved,” she says, her voice high-pitched with excitement. “I can’t believe something like this happened right here in my own neighborhood!”

  I’m not as excited as Hannah. It was too weird hearing Stephanie talk about Theo like he was a real person. I kind of got used to thinking of him as a photograph, forever.

  “And we learned that Theo had a friend. That’s a clue, too. Maybe we can find him and he would know what happened.”

  She starts a new page on her notebook. On the top she writes, TO FIND OUT. #1. MACK’S LAST NAME. #2. THEO’S FRIEND. “The investigation is under way,” she says seriously.

  “Great,” I say.

  “Come on, let’s go to the creek and make a plan,” says Hannah, taking my hand.

  When we’re sure Stephanie isn’t going to look up from her book (Hannah says a highwayman is like a construction worker), we sneak after Teddy towards the Secret Place. It’s all the way at the edge of the park, which is thick with the bushes Mama says are called honeysuckle.

  The park is made up mostly of a grassy lawn. There’s a playground with a blue metal slide and a set of monkey bars. I used to be able to go all the way across the monkey bars last year, no problem, but this summer I grew an inch and got heavier, and now I can’t do it anymore. There’s also a painted pony on a big spring so you can ride it and rock back and forth like you’re riding a real horse. Then there’s a wooded area around the creek. It’s a bad place to fly kites because the trees on the hillside grow so tall. But sometimes people have picnics there.

  If you go through the brambles and watch out for the poison ivy, you can climb halfway down the hill using the branches to hold on. Then, there’s a big flat rock that hangs out of the side of the hill over the water. It’s only just big enough for two small people—an adult wouldn’t fit.

  This is the Secret Place.

  We don’t tell anyone that we come here, because grown-ups always think that, whatever you’re doing, you’re going to get hurt. Like when Hannah’s mom found out that we were riding down the hill on a car seat balanced on top of a skateboard, and she took it away. And when Mama found the bird’s nest I’d been hiding for Teddy to hatch more baby bears in, and she made us put the nest outside, just because there were little tiny bugs coming out of it. That’s why Teddy doesn’t have any children.

  So we don’t tell anyone about the Secret Place.

  Hannah and I scramble down on our backsides and sit on the big stone together and throw branches down at the creek. It’s fun to hear them crack on the rocks. The sun makes the rock warm, and it smells like hot dirt and baking pine needles.

  “The girls at school don’t even like to solve mysteries,” says Hannah. “They’re really stupid. They’d rather go to the mall or something.” She rolls her eyes and throws another stick.

  I am sorry Hannah is sad, so I try not to interrupt her when she explains about how to interrogate a witness, even when Teddy tries to distract me by pushing over a giant rock in the water, and it makes a splash. He’s always biggest and brightest in the Secret Place. He likes the sunshine on his fur.

  “Did you hear that?” asks Hannah, peering over the edge of the rock. We always have to be careful to stay back from the edge. “I think it was a fish.”

  She listens for a minute but doesn’t hear anything else, because Teddy has curled up and gone to sleep. Hannah takes out her notebook. “So, now we have one suspect and one witness,” she says. “This afternoon, we need to find at least one more of each. But I think we’re off to a good start.”

  I nod. That is pretty good.

  “Do you think we can interview your uncle as a witness?” asks Hannah.

  “I don’t know. He’s very busy at wo
rk. He’s trying to figure out how to pay the bills so we don’t get the electricity shut off again.”

  “What are you going to do if he can’t make the rent?”

  “What’s the rent?” I ask.

  “Well, like my mom owns the house we live in, so we can’t get kicked out. But somebody else owns your house, and your mom just pays them to live there.”

  “That’s not true!” I say. Nobody else owns our house but us.

  “Yes it is. And if you ever don’t pay, even one time, they’ll kick you out. My mom explained it to me.”

  “That doesn’t make it true,” I say. But Hannah is usually right about things like Children’s Prison, and then I remember Uncle Donny saying on the phone before Mama came on that Mama would lose her home.

  I wonder if we could all live in the Secret Place forever and ever.

  For a while we play our favorite game, where we drop sticks into the water and see which one goes downstream faster. Hannah’s stick always wins, although one time I’m pretty sure she got the sticks mixed up. Then she tells me the story of her latest Encyclopedia Brown and I pretend to listen. But finally we hear Stephanie calling us. “Hey girls, it’s almost dinnertime,” she yells. “Hannah, you have to get home to see your grandma.”

  “We’re coming!” Hannah calls. We have to run up the hill, because if we take too long Stephanie will come looking for us and she might find the Secret Place, and then we probably wouldn’t be allowed to come anymore.

  The Secret Place is just for us—and Teddy.

  Chapter Six

  Summer is the best time of year.

  It’s still not even close to dark as we head back. We walk all the way to Hannah’s house, but her grandmother hasn’t come yet, so Hannah says that means we still have time to look for clues before dinner. The boy cousins go down in the basement to argue over the Xbox and Hannah runs up to her room while I stand on the front porch and watch the waves of heat coming up from the street.

  I don’t understand what you’re seeing when you see heat waves like that, because there’s nothing there, but still you can see it. That’s like Teddy, or like the saints in the church—they’re still real, even if they don’t quite make sense. I’m not wrong about seeing the heat come up from the sidewalk just because it’s invisible.

  “Aoife wants to play in the backyard, Mom,” says Hannah, coming back downstairs. “Is that okay?”

  The nice thing about playing with Hannah is that she’s old enough to play outside all by herself. I wouldn’t be allowed to unless I was with her.

  “Just until Grandma comes,” says Hannah’s mom. “Dinner’s almost ready. Stay within sight of the house—and don’t go down to Mr. Rutledge’s corner.”

  “We won’t!” says Hannah. “C’mon, Aoife.” She takes my hand and leads me out through the side yard as Teddy clomps after us on all fours. I notice she’s got a backpack with her, but I don’t have time to ask her what’s in it.

  “Okay,” says Hannah. “Your uncle’s car is still gone, so this is our chance to look for clues. C’mon.”

  We run together to the bushes and climb under the fence, which has the bottom pieces broken off. Now that we’re in my backyard, we sneak around to get in the side door, which is never locked during the day.

  Hannah runs straight to the stairs, faster than I can keep up because her legs are longer than mine. “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time.”

  She leads the way into Mama’s room, and I follow more slowly with Teddy nudging against my legs. Even he knows we’re not supposed to go in here without asking permission.

  The room looks just like it always does, which is a surprise somehow. I think it should look different since Mama didn’t come home. But everything looks like she’ll be right back. Mama’s shirts are still hanging up in her closet. The morning we went to the mall, she was trying to choose between two cardigans, and the one she didn’t wear is still hanging over the back of her chair. She hasn’t come back and put it away yet.

  “I don’t think we should be in here,” I say, but what I really mean is that I’m afraid I’m going to start crying like a baby. I miss Mama. The room still smells like her, but she’s not here. Those are her earrings, and her watch, and that’s her bed that she made the morning we left—the pillows are still crooked—but she’s not here.

  “Come on,” says Hannah, opening the closet door. “Help me look.”

  Mama’s jewelry box is on the dresser next to the lamp. I open it, even though I know everything there by heart. Sometimes, if I promise to be careful, Mama will let me play with her earrings and wear her necklaces. There’s a strand of pearls Mama says are graduation day pearls, and she says that one day she will give them to me. And there’s a sparkly stone in a gold ring, and a silver bangle.

  “People always hide things under the bed,” says Hannah, getting down on her knees to look.

  Teddy is rolling over and over on top of the sheets the way he does when something is too tidy. He likes beds to be rumpled, so you can climb right in there and snuggle up.

  The Illustrated Volume of the Saints is sitting on the dresser with a candle and Gramma Aoife’s rosary. Both the book and the rosary are very special.

  I have to move the rosary to pick up the book, so I do it carefully with both hands. Mama taught me to say the Hail Mary and the Our Father on this rosary, and she said that it protects our house from evil spirits. But I’m not interested in that today. I want to look at the book.

  There’s a bookmark at Mama’s favorite, Saint Catherine. That’s Mama’s confirmation name, and the saint she prays to the most. I turn the pages through the paintings of people being burned and stuck with spears and crushed under piles of rocks to get to Saint Joan.

  My saint is wearing armor and riding a horse. They could have painted her burning at the stake, but they didn’t. They put her leading the armies of France instead. The text on the other page says that Joan was a maid who led a holy war against the wicked soldiers of England. She trusted the voices of the saints when they appeared to her in her visions.

  “Aoife, stop messing around,” says Hannah. “We’re supposed to be looking for clues.”

  “I’m not messing around,” I say. But I put the book down and put Gramma Aoife’s rosary carefully, carefully on top of it.

  “What’s this?” Hannah is halfway under the bed, her butt sticking out and legs wiggling in her denim shorts as she reaches for something underneath.

  “What’s what?” I say. I’ve hidden under that bed before, and there’s nothing but a bunch of boxes.

  Hannah is dragging out a big box and pulling off the lid. “Maybe there’s a diary!” she says, sounding excited. “In books, there’s always a diary full of clues, and it ends the day someone died.”

  “Then we need to look for Theo’s diary, not Mama’s,” I say. I come over and look anyway.

  But it’s just a bunch of papers in the box. I thought we were looking for clues. On TV, clues are usually footprints or a dropped handkerchief or something. If Hannah just wants to look at papers, that’s not even where Mama keeps the really important ones. Those are in the box in the linen closet. But I don’t say that, because Hannah doesn’t like it when I interrupt her in the middle of investigating.

  “Start looking, Aoife,” says Hannah, sounding excited. She has spread the papers across the carpet and is digging through them.

  I sit cross-legged next to her. Most of the papers are boring, but there’s a stack of birthday cards with pictures of cats or butterflies. One of them is tucked into an envelope written in Mama’s beautiful handwriting. Mama loves to write letters.

  I guess she didn’t send these. Most of them are pretty pictures, one of flowers, one of birds. I’m planning to look at each of them one by one when a photograph falls out of the stack, and then I’m looking at a picture of Mama and a man in a tan uniform.

  “What’s this?” I say. He’s a dark-haired, handsome man, with thick plastic glasses. He’s standi
ng behind Mama with his arms around her, and she’s smiling at the camera.

  Hannah crawls around behind me. “Do you know who that is?” she asks.

  The only people who put their arms around Mama like that are her special friends, and that’s not Mac in the picture, or anyone else I remember. “No,” I say. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “I bet I know,” says Hannah, sounding excited. “Maybe it’s your father!”

  “No, because Mama found me in a cabbage patch,” I explain. But Hannah just rolls her eyes and flips over the picture.

  ME AND BEN, AUGUST 1998, says the back in Mama’s beautiful handwriting.

  “It could be a clue,” says Hannah. “Add it to the list.” Sometimes Hannah tells me what to do even though she’s already doing it herself, like right now.

  She takes out her notebook, and under SUSPECTS, right under MACK, she writes BEN, 1998?

  “Okay, that’s the most important clue. Let’s check Theo’s room next,” she says. She brushes off her knees and runs across the hall.

  I can’t believe I found a clue, all by myself. I just picked up a birthday card, and there it was. Maybe I’m a great detective. I hope so, because I want to bring Mama home as soon as possible.

  I stay behind to put the papers back in the box and then push the box back under the bed. I don’t want Mama to find her stuff all moved when she gets back. When everything looks exactly the way it should, I follow Hannah.

  Theo’s room is just the way he left it—the posters on the walls, the Game Boy that I’m not allowed to put new batteries in. All of his school awards, for spelling and field day and soccer. His remote-control car is in the corner where he left it. His bed is still made with Avatar sheets. Even most of his clothes are still in the closet.