Page 73 of The Family Plot
“Tell us what?” Mom asks.
Tate squeezes his shoulder. “I’m right here.”
My heart races as I watch them both. For a few charged moments, Charlie returns our sister’s stare, but then he throws out an arm behind him, feeling for the wall. He lets himself fall against it and slides down until he’s sitting on the floor.
Knees up, elbows on his thighs, fists against his forehead, Charlie lets out a single word: “Fuck.”
My skin goes cold, waiting.
Finally, Charlie drops his hands. “I got the brand from the chest. In the room beneath the shed.”
The sentence startles me, but I force myself to stay rigid. “There was nothing in that chest. I checked.”
“There was nothing in it,” Charlie says quietly, “because I broke into it.”
I picture the splintered wood on top of the trunk. “When?” I ask.
He answers me slowly. “After Fritz found the body… Andy… I knew it was only a matter of time before the police searched the shed. I waited until the middle of the night, when Kraft and everyone else was gone. I didn’t know the combination to the lock on the chest, so I chopped it open. With Fritz’s ax.”
“That wasyou?” I’d been certain it was Andy, proof that he’d uncovered secrets that someone would kill to protect. But now I stutter onto another thought. “Why did you go down there? How’d you even know about the room?”
Charlie swallows. “It was just the iron in the chest that night. But that used to be… That’s where the dresses—” He stops, his mouth moving soundlessly before he continues. “I planned to take the photographs, too. But they weren’t like that, back then. Hung up like that. They used to be in the chest. And I couldn’tbreathelooking at that wall. I barely made it out without throwing up.”
I feel my pulse thrumming, a taut string plucked. “Charlie,” I manage. “How did you know what was in the chest?” I stare at the key overlapping the brand on my palm. “Where did you get this key?”
Charlie’s gaze darts toward Tate.
“It’s okay,” she says softly, and there are tears shimmering on her cheeks.
He closes his eyes, mouth shut tight, inhaling through his nose.
“I got it from the Blackburn Killer,” he says. Beside me, Tate releases a breath. I find myself holding mine. “I got it from Dad.”
“What?No!” Mom shouts.
I fall back against the counter, my hip stabbed by its edge.
“Why would you say that?” Mom cries. “How could you eventhinkthat of him?”
“Because I was there!” Charlie bellows. “I was involved with it! Always.”
Silence plows through the room. I’m stuck inside it, embraced too tightly by the quiet. When sound finally surges back, it bursts from Mom’s lips, her words coming out like wails.
“What does thatmean, Charlie?”
It’s a while before he answers. My heart pounds out the seconds, my head becoming so light I worry it’ll float away.
“It started when I was six,” he says, voice flat.
I watch his lips move.
“Dad came into my room, late one night. Yanked the blankets off me, told me we were going hunting.”
Charlie knocks his fist against his forehead. Once. Twice. I flinch both times.
“I didn’t question it. Even though it was dark out. Even though he didn’t take the rifle. He had this bag I’d never seen before, and I… I went with him. I followed him to the road that leads down to the shore—which I did think was weird; he only ever hunted in the woods. But suddenly Dad stopped, and we just stood there, waiting for”—he shakes his head—“I didn’t know what.”
My heart keeps banging. I grip the counter to remain upright.
