Page 8 of The Family Plot
As he slides apart the living room doors, the darkness of the foyer gapes like the mouth of a cave. Strange that nobody’s turned on the chandelier, that the eight p.m. sky seems brighter than the inside of our house. Elijah steps outside to answer his phone, and I feel my way along the walls, following the voices coming from the kitchen.
The swinging door is closed, but when I open it, there’s finally light—a little, at least, from the bulb above the stove. Tate and Charlie sit at the counter, legs dangling from stools, palms circling mugs. Mom paces back and forth between the sink and the oven.
“Is Detective Good Boy done with you?” Charlie slurs, and I don’t think it’s tea in his mug.
“He got a call.”
“From the bone people?” Tate asks, her spine straightening.
“Isthatwhat we’re calling them?” Charlie says. “I’m fine with it if we are. Did you see that one guy, the really tall one? He canboneme whenever he wants.”
“Charles!” Mom says, voice like a whip.
“Sorry, Mom. Sorry. Not my fault—it’sthe city. It’s made me so crass.”
“It’s made you anass,” Tate mumbles, and Charlie slaps his hand over his heart, pretending to reel from a stab.
“Stop,” Tate whines. She puts her elbows on the counter, massaging her temples. “You’re acting like we’re hanging out at a bar or something, when really—”
“Oh,” Charlie cuts her off, looking around as if taking in his surroundings for the first time. “This isn’t a bar? No wonder the service sucks.”
“—whenreally,” Tate continues, “we’re waiting to hear if it was our brother out there.”
“It wasn’t Andy,” I say.
Charlie turns so sharply I almost jump.
“Is that what Kraft said?” he asks.
“No. I just know. He’s not dead.”
Mom makes it over to me in two quick strides. “You’ve spoken to him, haven’t you—your brother?” She picks up my hand, stroking the back of it with a firm, insistent touch. “In these last ten years, you’ve heard from him, right? And maybe you didn’t tell me because he needed more time away, but… you know where he is, don’t you?”
Her eyes are frantic, flicking like a too-fast metronome.
“I…” I start to say, but the kitchen door swings open behind me, and I look back to find Elijah Kraft. In one hand, he holds his cell phone, and in the other, dangling at his side, is the notepad where he’s been writing down our lives.
Mom’s grip on my hand tightens. Tate and Charlie perk up on their stools.
“Is there news?” Tate asks, just as Mom says, “What is it?”
Elijah glances at his feet, and when he looks up, he looks around—at the clock that’s always broken, at the Honoring calendar pinned to the wall, at the butcher block and all its knives.
“I’m afraid,” he begins—and right away, it’s like someone turns down the volume, “that we’ve been able to confirm it.”
And this, as he continues, comes to me as only a whisper: “The remains in that grave, they belong to…”
And this—like a blade thrusting toward me—comes to me in silence (but I’d know the shape of his name anywhere; I can see it on Elijah’s lips): “Andy.”
Mom screams. I see her mouth split open, her face go red, but I don’t hear it. I don’t hear anything at all.
three
On our thirteenth birthday,Andy carved his name into the wall beneath my bedroom window. Even then, he was thinking of leaving.
We should go, he said, concentrating on the knife.We’re old enough now to figure things out on our own.
But I didn’t feel old enough. We’d only just reached the age at which Mary Phagan was raped and strangled, her body found in the basement of the pencil factory where she worked. We were only just as old as Lisa Ann Millican had been when she was abducted by a disturbed couple, who, among other horrors, injected her with drain cleaner. At thirteen, I was still scared to venture too far beyond our door. It wasn’t until I was nineteen, living without Andy for three years already, that it became scarier to walk the halls of a house where I could only trail after his ghost.
