The kiss.
That stupid kiss.
Roland’s hands on her waist, on her thighs.
The sound he’d made when Allison had moved her hips.
She told Thora everything. It all came out in one long tortured monologue, whispered between gulping sobs.
The child in Allison had expected the worst, that Thora would condemn her and mock her. The little bit of Allison that was growing into a young woman thought Thora would maybe tell her she was overreacting, that it was no big deal.
Thora hadn’t done either.
“I have to tell you something,” Thora said, and the tone of her voice made Allison finally roll over in her bed to face her. Thora was ashen. Even her lips looked white, bloodless.
“Tell me what?” Allison asked.
“You can’t tell anyone I told you,” Thora said. “I’ll keep your secret, you keep this one. You have to swear. I’m not supposed to know.”
Thora’s mouth was such a tight line it would have taken a pair of pliers to open it up.
Allison said the two words necessary to unlock Thora’s lips.
“I swear.”
Then Thora told her a story. Thora told her the story of how she’d wanted to peek at Dad’s medical files he kept under lock and key in the closet in his office. She wanted to know something—didn’t matter what, Thora said, so don’t ask.
Allison didn’t ask.
Thora waited until a night when everyone was going to see a movie in Astoria. And right before they were all about to leave the house and pile into Dad’s van, Thora had said she changed her mind, had an upset stomach, didn’t feel like going.
Everyone went without her.
And when she was alone in the house, she looked high and low and in and out and finally she found the key to the closet and the key to the filing cabinet. She found the files she was looking for and sat down in the closet to read them.
“What did you find out?” Allison asked, fascinated now, far more fascinated than scared or ashamed.
“You need to be careful around Roland,” Thora said. “You need to stay away from him.”
“Why?” That made no sense to Allison. Roland wasn’t just nice, he was the nicest. He wasn’t dangerous. She was the one who’d kissed him...
“He had a sister named Rachel,” Thora whispered. “She’s dead.”
“Dead?”
Then Thora said the three ugliest words Allison had ever heard.
“Roland killed her.”
Someone knocked on the door. Hard. Loud.
“Girls?” It was Dr. Capello. “Everything all right in here?”
Thora looked at her frozen on the bed.
“Don’t be alone with Roland. Ever,” Thora said, and that was all. Then she ran to the door and opened it.
“Hi, Daddy,” Thora said. “Everything’s fine.”
“You missed breakfast again, young lady,” Dr. Capello said to her. And Allison knew she needed to lie if she were going to survive.
“I had an upset stomach,” Allison said.
Dr. Capello looked at Thora, who nodded, and Allison knew she had a partner in the lie. Thora was going to let Dr. Capello think it had been girl trouble and that’s all this was.
“Let me know if you need anything,” Dr. Capello said. “Feel better, doll. Come on, Thora. Allison’s not feeling well. Let her rest.”
Thora hadn’t wanted to leave, but she wasn’t as quick on her feet as Allison had been. After giving Allison one last look of warning, she walked away.
And alone in the room in her pretty little blue bed, Allison’s heart died.
Eternity passed while Allison rocked back and forth, her arms around her knees, crying and shaking, too scared to leave her room. Roland had killed a little girl. Roland had killed his sister. Thora was scared Roland would kill her, too.
The house’s morning sounds faded to silence. Roland was at work at his new job at that fancy restaurant in Clark Beach. Allison knew Dr. Capello would be up in his office. Kendra was probably in her room reading. Deacon and Thora lived on the beach during the summer. Oliver had left two days ago. And from her bedroom window, she saw Dr. Capello walk out the front door and take his usual path into the woods for his daily ramble.
This was her chance.
She crept from her room into the hallway. When she walked past Thora’s room she heard low voices murmuring—hers and Deacon’s. That was all right. As long as they stayed in there and didn’t try to stop her it would be okay.
Allison snuck up the third-floor stairs and slipped through the door into Dr. Capello’s office. She found the key where Thora had said she’d found it the week before when she’d gone on this very same hunt. The key was to the closet door in the office where Dr. Capello kept his filing cabinet. Allison didn’t know where to start. Thora’d had three hours to dig, but Allison might have half an hour, if that, until Dr. Capello came back from his walk. But it couldn’t take that long to find out the truth, could it? All Allison wanted to know was that Thora was lying to her. She had to be lying to her. Roland? Kill his baby sister? Never. Never ever. Maybe Thora was in love with Roland. Maybe she made all that up because she was jealous. It had to be lies. All lies.
But deep down, Allison knew Thora wouldn’t lie to her.
Allison had just begun digging through the first filing cabinet drawer when the closet door opened behind her.
There stood Dr. Capello.
He didn’t look mad. He didn’t even look all that surprised.
He gazed down at her—she was tall now at twelve but not as tall as him—and held out his hand.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s talk about it.”
With a hand gentle on her shoulder he led her from the closet to the sofa in his office. He sat facing her and gently smiled.
“What’s going on here, doll?” he asked.
“I read your files,” she said. “When everyone was at the park Sunday. Roland was outside. He didn’t know what I was doing.” Thora had taken a risk by telling her the truth. She wasn’t about to pay Thora back by getting her into trouble.
“I see,” he said, nodding. “How did you get into the closet?”
Thankfully Thora had told her that part.
“You lock your keys in your top desk drawer,” Allison said. “But you can get in the desk drawer from under the desk with a coat hanger.”
“Smart kid,” he said. “I knew you were smart from the day we met.”
Even then, she wasn’t afraid of him. There was no reason to be afraid of Dr. Capello. It was Roland she had to fear.
“Have you told anyone?” he asked.
“Nobody.”
“This is why you’ve been so upset?” he asked.
Two hot fresh tears ran down her face, answer enough.
Dr. Capello opened a drawer in his desk. He took out a bottle of pills, opened it and shook two pink ones out into his hand. He got up, went to the small half bath in his office and came out with a paper cup of water.
“Here, take these,” he said. “You’ll feel a lot better very soon.”
“What are they?” she asked.
“They’ll help you relax. You’ve been crying so hard you’ll get sick if you’re not careful.”
She took the pills. They were little and it wasn’t hard to swallow them. She would have swallowed anything he’d given her if it came with a promise to make her feel better. Dr. Capello sat down on the chair next to her. He faced her and smiled.
“What did you read in the file?” Dr. Capello asked her.
This, Allison didn’t know. They’d been interrupted before Thora could tell her anything else about Roland.
“Just that...that he killed Rachel.”
“He did kill his sister, Rachel. Yes. That’s true. But you don’t have to be afraid of him or anyone else in the house,” Dr. Capello said. “It was just an accident.”
“It was?” she asked, instantly relieved. Why had Thora scared her like this if it had
been an accident?
“It was. And he feels very bad about it. And if you start talking about it you’re going to upset him and everybody in the house. And we don’t want that, do we?”
A simple question. Allison knew what answer he wanted from her.
“No.”
“Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
“Are you sure?” she asked him. “I don’t think...I don’t think it was an accident. It wouldn’t be a big secret if it was an accident.”
Dr. Capello sighed heavily and nodded his head.
“Too smart,” he said. “You’re just too smart.” He tenderly patted her cheek, still wet with tears.
“I want to go home,” Allison said.
“This is your home, doll. You leave and it’ll break everybody’s heart.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to stay here anymore. You’re all liars. You and Roland and—”
“Shh...” He touched a finger to his lips. “Calm down. We’ll talk about this, okay? I need to go check on something. I’ll be right back. You just lie down on the sofa and rest. Then we’ll figure it out. Together.”
She wanted to figure it out. And she didn’t really want to go home. How could she? She didn’t have any other home except maybe her aunt in Indiana.
“Okay,” Allison said. “I promise.”
He stood up to leave, then bent over and kissed her on the forehead.
“You poor thing,” he said. “This is what we call a much ado about nothing. Just rest now. You have to be so tired.”
He left her in the office and shut the door behind him. Maybe it was the pills and maybe it was that she hadn’t slept much the night before or the night before that, but she did lie down on the couch facing Dr. Capello’s desk. Her eyes grew heavy and yet she refused to close them. She was afraid to close them, though she didn’t know why. She locked her gaze on the drawing of the skull map hanging on the wall behind the desk. She wondered why there were little dragons in the center of the skull. When Dr. Capello finally came back into the room she asked him.
“Why are there dragons in the brain?” she said.
“You still awake?” he sat next to her on the sofa and brushed her hair off her forehead.
“Almost.”
“You should sleep,” he said. “When you wake up, you won’t remember anything that’s happened the past few days. I promise. Won’t that be nice?”
Sleepily she nodded. It would be nice. It would be nice to forget it all happened—Roland’s arms, the wave, the kiss, his hands on her waist, the tears, the shame, Thora telling her that Roland had killed a little girl... Yes, she did want to forget it all. But that didn’t make any sense. She was twelve, a kid, but not stupid. You couldn’t magically make people forget things.
She closed her eyes and started to fall into sleep, and when she was almost out, she felt Dr. Capello’s strong arms under her, lifting her up and carrying her from his office. Was he taking her back to her bedroom? To his? No, they were going up. She heard the creaking of stairs under his feet and felt hot sticky air on her face. The attic. He had taken her up to the attic. But why?
She was too sleepy to ask. Those pink pills, they were the allergy pills Kendra had to take in spring, the ones that made her fall asleep and stay asleep for ten hours straight when she took two. Allison wanted to wake herself up but the pills had her. Even when she felt something cold on her temples, she couldn’t shake free of her need to sleep. But she knew she had to try.
“What about the dragons?” she asked.
“You really don’t want to sleep, do you?” He sounded almost proud of her for the way she could fight off sleep. “The hippocampus is a structure at the center of the brain. Hippo means horse. Campus means sea monster. They call it that because it looks like a sea horse or a water dragon. That’s all.”
“Oh,” she said. “There’s a dragon in my brain.”
“There’s a dragon in all our brains,” he said. “And some of us have nice dragons and some of us have bad dragons. You know what I do sometimes?”
She shook her sleepy head.
“I slay the bad dragons,” he said.
“Like a knight?”
“Just like a knight. How about you recite one of your poems to me,” he said. “That’ll help you fall asleep. And when you wake up you won’t remember anything bad about Roland. Okay?”
“What poem?” Her body felt so heavy. Her brain like mush. But if someone wanted her to recite a poem, she would do it.
“Kubla Khan,” he said. “That’s a good dream poem. Maybe it’ll give you good dreams.”
“‘In Xanadu,’” she began, “‘did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree...’”
She was almost asleep, one second from it, when she felt something hard, something that tasted of plastic being shoved into her mouth between her lips. She felt something cold on either side of her forehead. And then a shock tore through her, a shock like lightning had struck her. It lifted her into the air and ripped a hole into her brain.
And after that...nothing.
The next thing she remembered was waking up in the hospital in Astoria. The first face she saw was her great-aunt Frankie’s. She was a tall thin lady with long white hair tied up in a bun. Her dark eyes sort of reminded Allison of her mom. Allison liked her immediately.
“What are you doing here?” Allison asked, after her aunt Frankie introduced herself.
Aunt Frankie answered very simply, “Little girl, I’m getting you the hell out of here.”
* * *
Allison pulled into the long driveway to the house, parked and went inside. She went quietly, not wanting to draw attention to herself. Where Deacon and Thora were she didn’t know, but she glimpsed Roland standing on the deck, staring out at the water. Praying? Maybe. She wanted to talk to him more than anything but she couldn’t trust herself yet. Or him.
She went right up to the third floor. Part of her wanted to confront Dr. Capello but she didn’t know what to say to him. She needed proof, first of all. She needed proof that what she remembered was true.
Outside Dr. Capello’s bedroom door she paused and listened. Allison heard nothing. She peeked in and saw the room was dark. He must be sound asleep. It was late, past eleven, but Allison knew she wouldn’t sleep for a very long time.
She went to the attic door. It was unlocked. She turned on the light and walked up the wooden stairs, going as slowly as she could. She didn’t want a creaking footfall to telegraph to the entire house where she was and what she was doing. She made it up without a sound, no sound but her own shallow, panting breaths.
Allison knew what she was looking for, and she even had a good idea where to find it. She walked to the south wall, to the row of display cases where Dr. Capello kept his collection. She pulled down one white sheet and peered through the glass front doors. She saw bone drills and assorted ivory-handled scalpels, a metal mouth stretcher, a copper syringe and a sterling-silver catheter. But not what was she looking for. She pulled down the second white sheet on the second glass case and searched it top to bottom. Nothing again. Allison was starting to panic now. Any second Roland would come up and ask her what she was doing and why she was doing it, and she didn’t have a good answer. She ripped the sheet off the third and final case and scanned all the contents.
Nothing.
She stood up and rested her head against the top of the case. It had to be here. Had to be.
“Where the hell are you?” she said to herself.
“Tell me what you’re looking for,” Dr. Capello said, “and I’ll tell you where to find it.”