Joyce bustles into the room with a tray. “Thought the two of you might enjoy some lemonade and cookies.”
“Lemonade, yum.” My words are sticky with forced cheer. “Thank you, Joyce.”
“Are you winning, Cole?” Joyce asks.
He shrugs.
“He’s a good checkers player. Aren’t you, Cole?”
Again, he shrugs.
Joyce watches him for a moment, and lines form on her forehead. She glances at me, mouths thank you, and leaves.
“Maybe after our cookies, we could take Sidekick for a walk.” Perhaps Cole will feel more talkative if we’re outside and active. “How does that sound?”
“Okay.”
I move my game piece and stand to put cookies onto individual plates for us.
A scream—Cole’s—tears through the living room. I yelp, and the plate that had been in my hands shatters on the oak floor.
Cole has scrambled backward to the wall. The screaming has stopped, but now he cries with his knees tucked to his chest and his arms wrapped around his legs.
Joyce bursts into the room.
“Just me being clumsy,” I assure her.
She heaves a sigh at the sight of the shattered plate. “Goodness. With all the fuss you two were making, I thought someone had broken in.”
“I’ll get the broom and dustpan and clean it up.”
“You’ll cut your feet if you move.” Joyce is already bustling down the hallway. “Stay there, and I’ll bring it to you.”
I look to Cole, to his shaking shoulders. Then to the locket Father gave me an hour ago. It lies open in the middle of the game board, revealing Lydia’s smiling face. It must have fallen from my pocket when I stood.
“It’s going to be okay, Cole.”
But he doesn’t seem to believe me. Or at least, he doesn’t unroll himself. Instead, he keeps his arms wrapped around his knees, his head tucked as he rocks himself back and forth.
Cole knows something. And I need to know it too.
I attach the leash to Sidekick’s collar. “Look at his tail, Cole.”
A smile flickers on Cole’s mouth as he watches Sidekick’s furry tail brush back and forth on the wood floor. “He’s a nice dog.” He holds out a hand to Sidekick and then giggles when Sidekick bathes it with his long, pink tongue.
That sounds better. I find my hand settles on the back of Cole’s neck as we head outside. When he leans into me, the feeling in my chest is akin to coming home to a warm house on a winter day.
We step outside to find Nick heading up the front walk. With that journalist.
The warmth of Cole settling his head against me is sucked away. Her red dress seems a bit much for before noon, and she’s smiling at Nick, her teeth white and gleaming in the rays of sunshine slanting through the trees.
Her smile sharpens when she sees me. “Hello, Piper. I hoped I’d see you today.”
I wait for Lydia’s voice to tell me to be polite, to tell me that she’s dead and she didn’t love my brother anyway. But she’s strangely silent.
Nick sweeps off his fedora. “You remember Alana Kirkwood, right, Piper?”
“Not really.”
Nick’s gaze commands me to be friendly, but I can’t seem to make myself care. Stupid as it may be, having Alana around feels like a betrayal to Lydia.
Sidekick strains against the end of the leash. “I can’t talk now. We’re taking Sidekick for a walk.”
“What a lovely dog,” Alana coos. She rubs her fingertips together to attract him, but he winces away.
Nick glances at Cole, who has tucked himself between me and the handrail. “And who is this young man?” His tone is strange, high and too bright. He sounds as ridiculous as I do when I’m trying to talk to Cole.
Cole only slips his hand into mine and retreats farther behind me.
“This is Cole Barrow. You probably just don’t recognize him because he’s a big five-year-old now.”
My brother looks at me as though I’m a foreign species, but Alana crouches low. “Hi, Cole. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Hi.” Cole’s word is no louder than a breath.
“Do you help Piper walk her dog very often?”
Cole doesn’t respond.
“He lives one street over,” Nick says to her. “In the house with the white fence that you asked about.”
Of course she’s asking all kinds of nosy questions about our neighbors. Surely her newspaper will bring her back home soon, right?
Alana stands to her full height, nearly a head taller than me. “I was admiring your home, Cole. You have a lovely yard.”
Again, he doesn’t answer her, and Sidekick strains at the lead. “We had better go. We’ll see you in a bit.”
“Piper, when you get back”—Alana touches my arm, and I use Sidekick as an excuse to step away—“I would still love to talk to you about Jacob and Lydia.”
“I don’t know anything that would be of interest to you.”
“I don’t think that’s true at all. Nick was telling me that Jacob wrote you a letter.”
I shift a glare to Nick. “Oh, he did?”
“Don’t be angry with him. He wants the same thing I want—the same thing you want. Justice for Lydia.”
I glance meaningfully at Cole. “Now isn’t the time to discuss it.”
“Of course. Later, then. Maybe after you get home? Do you have the letter here, or is it with the police? I would love to see it.”
If Cole wasn’t here, I would give this overbearing reporter a piece of my mind. What is wrong with my brother, that he can’t see she’s just using him to advance her career?
I turn on my heel without responding and race down the steps before the vicious words on my tongue spill out. Cole collected a stick while I wasn’t paying attention, and he runs it along the wrought iron fence. A metallic thunk, thunk, thunk strides along with us.
I allow myself a few moments to silently seethe over crafty Alana Kirkwood, but I can’t let her rob me of the opportunity I have to talk to Cole privately.
“Do you like having a little brother, Cole?”
He shrugs.
“Does he cry a lot?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a good helper?”
Another shrug. Another fence. Thunk, thunk, thunk . . .
My chest aches with impatience. How does one go about making a five-year-old talk? How would my mother have tricked me into talking?
The answer is simple—she wouldn’t have tricked me. She would have just asked what she wanted to know.
I glance at the child beside me, at his blond curls and his hand pocketed in mine. Maybe he just needs to be asked.
“Cole.” He turns his big brown eyes to me. “Have your parents talked to you about Lydia?”
His hand goes stiff inside mine, and his eyes widen. Oh, great. I’ve scared him.
“You don’t need to be scared.” I squeeze his rigid hand. “I’m with you, okay? Nothing is going to happen.”
“I can’t talk about her.” Cole’s voice is so quiet, I have to lean closer to hear. “It’s a rule.”
I crouch beside him. “It’s okay when you’re with me.”
He shakes his head. One hand covers his bottom, and he does a squirmy sort of dance.
Perfect. This is why I avoid being alone with kids. “Do you need a restroom?”
Again, he shakes his head, but his hand stays planted atop his bottom.
We walk on. Questions build in my head, and with the stick limp at Cole’s side, I actually have silence to accommodate my thinking. Was he asking his parents too many complicated questions and they told him to stop? It would be hard—impossible, even—to explain what happened to Lydia without terrifying a small child. Especially one who knew and loved her, and walks the same streets she did.
Cole crouches next to the fence. “Look. A spider.” He pokes it with his stick, causing the spider to scurry. “They eat other bugs. They catch ’em in their web and eat ’em.�
�
“That’s right.”
“I’m very smart,” he informs me.
I can’t resist a smile. “Yes, you are.”
When he turns back to the spider, he leans closer. And the hem of his shirt slides up high enough that I catch a glimpse of a dark blue line.
He’s so focused on the spider, he doesn’t notice me lightly adjusting the fabric of his trousers, where the bruise seems to come from. Doesn’t notice the whoosh as my breath exhales from my chest at the sight of it—lines in all shades of purple, blue, and gray crisscrossing on his fair skin.
Lines from a father’s belt make sense for a boy who tried to hide a frog under his bed to keep as a pet and who threw his dinner against the wall when he didn’t want to eat it. But for this complacent and meek child? What could be the cause?
The answer comes swiftly, as if being presented on a platter. I can’t talk about it. It’s a rule. His hand protective over his rump.
And it’s a rule I need him to break.
“I used to get whippings too, when I was your age.”
Cole turns and looks at me with interest. “But you’re a girl.”
“Girls can get whippings. Actually, do you want to know a secret?”
Cole nods, and I make a production of crouching on the ground, of lowering my voice. “Sometimes, I still get whipped. Not by my father, but at school. I have a teacher who likes to whack me with her ruler.”
His eyes are bright. “Where?”
“On my knuckles, here.” I shift Sidekick’s leash to my left hand so I can show Cole my normally bruised right. “It’s faded now that I’ve graduated.”
“Was it because you tried to talk about Lydia?” Cole’s voice has a solemn empathy to it.
My heart squeezes so tight, it feels as though it might burst. “Is that how you got yours?”
When Cole nods, it’s all I can do to not weep. “I don’t mean to, but it’s awfully hard.” His sigh makes him seem much older than five.
“Maybe you and I could make a deal, Cole.”
“What’s a deal?”
“A deal is when two people agree on something. So if you want, we could agree that when it’s just the two of us, we can talk about Lydia.” Cole’s hand is already inching to protect his behind. “And no one will hurt us because of it, okay? You can ask questions or tell me stories about Lydia, and it’ll be our secret.”
There’s a crease on the bridge of his nose as he studies me.
“I could go first, if you want.”
Cole nods.
I settle against the fence. “Lydia and I used to walk this way all the time when we were kids.” I point to the stone house on the corner. “There used to be an elderly woman who lived there. When it was nice out, she sat on her porch to knit, and she would give us peppermint drops if we passed by.”
Cole frowns at the house. “What does elderly mean?”
“That she was old.”
“Like you?”
“No. Like a grandparent. Do you have any grandparents?”
Cole nods. “And my grandfather always has peppermint drops.”
I glance at the house. “Lydia was her favorite. I don’t think she would have given them to just me. I was too loud.”
Cole nods sagely. “I get too loud sometimes. And babies like quiet voices.”
I smile, and try to seem serene despite the way my heart thumps wildly in my chest. “Okay, Cole, now it’s your turn. To share something about Lydia.”
He blinks at me. Then shakes his head.
“It’s a secret, remember?” I use a whispering voice. “Just for you and me, because we loved Lydia so much.”
Sidekick has given up on getting his walk. He lays his big head on my lap.
Cole pats him. “He’s a nice dog.”
“He is. And he won’t tell anyone that we like to talk about Lydia when it’s just the two of us.”
Cole seems to think about this for a minute. His voice is small when he asks, “Do you know what this means?” Cole holds up his pointer finger.
I resist the urge to scream with frustration, to yell Tell me what you know about Lydia! “It’s a one, right?” My cheerful voice is lined with impatience.
“Okay.” Cole turns his pointer finger to himself and stares at it. “Mommy and Papa didn’t know.”
The skin on the back of my neck prickles. “Where did you see this, Cole?” I hold up my own pointer finger.
“It’s what Lydia did to me.” His eyes are round and woeful. “Before she got in the car.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
After Cole goes home, I sit on the porch with my notebook and write it all out. Digging the information from Cole had felt like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. I had to shovel past the “That stick looks like a seven,” and, “Your eyes are brown and white,” to get to what I hope is the real story.
The evening Lydia was taken, Cole was playing in his bedroom and saw her coming up the sidewalk. A car pulled up alongside her, and she started talking to the driver.
“Where did the car come from?”
Cole shrugged. “Maybe the store? That’s where our car goes a lot.”
“Did you recognize the car?”
“What does recognize mean?”
“Is it a car you’d seen before?”
Cole nodded. “Yep. Lots of times.”
My heart had pounded, sure that I was a breath away from knowing who had taken and killed my best friend.
“I have one just like it at home. Santa Claus brought it to me. Do you know when Santa Claus will come back? Just Christmas. That’s the only time he delivers.”
“What did the car look like?”
“Black. Just like the one Santa brought me. Papa says they only make them in black. If I could pick any color for a car, I would pick orange. That’s my favorite.”
Not helpful. “Do you know what kind of car Santa brought you?”
“What kind?”
“No, I’m asking you. What kind of car is it?”
“Oh. Ford. Model P, Papa says.”
I couldn’t resist groaning. “Model T?” Only the most common car in the country. We’d seen seven just since we left the house, not counting the one that belonged to my family.
Cole had giggled. “Model T and Model P rhyme!”
So Lydia had been talking to someone—who could have been anyone—in a Model T. I asked if he saw what the driver looked like. Which had begun a long line of fruitless questions.
“Could you tell what color of hair the man had?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there one person in the car, or more?”
“I don’t know. Hey, look, an ant.”
“Did you see what he was wearing?”
Cole shrugged. Poked at the ant.
But, finally, I landed on the right question. “When did Lydia do this, Cole?” I held up my finger like a one.
“I knocked on the window and waved to her. She did that and got in the car.”
No struggle? “Did she do anything else with her hands? Or say anything?”
“No,” Cole said. But then he pointed down the road. “Just this.”
“Just what?”
“This.” He kept pointing.
“She pointed at something?”
Cole nodded.
“At what?”
He shrugged.
“When did she do that?”
“When she was talking to the car.”
“So she pointed down the street before she showed you the one? Did she do anything else?”
“Just some talking.” Cole shrugged. “Butterfly!” And he was off to follow it.
My stomach clenched like a fist as I followed him on numb legs. She had gotten in the car. Willingly. The implications made my stomach feel sloshy. Had she known the driver? Could it be—I loathed to even think it—Matthew?
But it wouldn’t take much to talk Lydia into a car. She was easy to convi
nce, after all. Despite the questions pulsing in my head, I let Cole prattle on about other matters—rocks and colors and bugs—for another ten minutes. He seemed lighter than he had been before telling me about Lydia, and I wanted him good and relaxed before I dug for the answer to the big question.
A passing police car provided the perfect opportunity. I lifted him off the ground so he could see the car far down the road. “Have you ever gotten to talk to a policeman before, Cole?”
He frowned as he thought. “No.”
“Even after Lydia made the one and got in the car? You didn’t talk to any policemen about it?”
“No.” He craned his neck, trying to watch the car at an impossible distance.
“Did you tell your mother about it?”
“She was sleeping. That was when she still had her big belly. Down, please.”
I returned him to the ground. “What about your father?”
Instead of skipping ahead, he took my hand again. “I’m not allowed to talk about Lydia to Papa. But sometimes, I forget.”
I thought of the stripes on his backside, and my stomach tightened. “Did you try to tell him about Lydia? I mean, a long time ago when you saw her get in the car?”
“I don’t know.”
I closed my eyes. Yes, you do, Cole. It’s in there, I know it is. “Did your papa talk to the police about Lydia?”
“They came to the house when I was in my room with Dottie. I wasn’t supposed to go down there, though.”
“Did your papa tell them about what you saw?”
Cole’s face scrunched. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, cuz he doesn’t like to talk about her. When I do, he just says, ‘You stop talking about that.’” Cole deepened his voice and made a lecturing motion with his pointer finger. “‘You know not to do that.’” Cole sighed. “Sometimes, I forget.”
I squeezed his hand. “It’s okay to forget with me, remember? We can talk about Lydia together, and it’ll be our secret.”
Cole beamed up at me. “I like you.”
“I like you too, Cole.” And, oddly, I wasn’t lying.
Cole squeezed my hand back. “Maybe when Lydia comes home, you can both come play with me.”
The Lost Girl of Astor Street Page 18