Page 93 of The Family Plot
“We’ve all done things we can’t take back,” I say. “And I don’t know how to keep those things from eating us alive. We needhelp. Outside help. Andy never had that, and then he—” I fight back a sob. “Charlie needs help, Tate. More than any of us can give him.”
“But he can’t tell the therapist what happened to him,” Tate argues. “He’ll go to prison if he does.”
“I’m not saying he has to tell them. But he needs to learn how to deal with his emotions. All the performing, the pretending—that’s what Dad conditioned him to do. And look what it’s done to him. He still keeps everything inside, and it’s nearly killing him. Even today—you saw what he was like during the museum. He seemed like he was in physical pain.”
Tate squints, still skeptical. Mom opens her mouth, closes it again, while Charlie stares at me.
“Either you get help,” I say, speaking only to him, “or I go to the police and tell them everything. That’s my condition. That’s the only way I can live with this. The only way Iwilllive with this. You need to get yourself the help you didn’t get for Andy.”
For a while, he only looks at me, eyes tracing patterns across my face. I expect him to break our gaze, to turn toward Tate, see what she thinks he should do. But his focus remains on me. I watch his stare darken, his brows draw together. And now I see the Charlie I’ve always known: the guarded one, the one with all the masks.
Before I know what I’m doing, I stand up, lean across the table between us, and place my palm against the side of his face. At first, it feels hard beneath my fingers, as if I’m touching only bone—but then his breath hitches and he lifts his hand, cradling mine as I cup his cheek. For a few moments, we hold each other like that, his skin foreign to me, but familiar, too.
“Dolls,” he whispers, so tenderly it makes my throat swell.
“Will you do it?” I ask him. “Will you let someone help you?”
He sighs deeply and it somehow changes his eyes. They brighten a little—just a little—like a night sky inching toward dawn. Then, still pressing my hand to his face, my brother sighs again and nods against my palm.
twenty-three
The doorbell rings earlythe next morning, when we’re all still bleary, eating cookies in the kitchen. Charlie startles at the sound, jumpier than the rest of us, but Tate strokes his back as Mom leaves to answer the door.
When she returns, she’s trailed by Elijah.
“I have an update,” he says, “regarding the investigation.”
I force myself not to look at Charlie.
“But first,” Elijah adds, “I understand you found the runaway note.”
My heart gives a panicked kick. “Who told you that?” I manage.
His gaze, falling on me, feels like a spotlight. “A reporter from theBlackburn Gazettesaw you grab something in the foyer, right before you started yelling. I asked around, and more than one person claims to have seen the note.” He waits a beat. “Anyone care to explain?”
“I found it,” Charlie says, shrugging as he stands from his stool. It only takes him a second to transform for this performance, stretching from slumped to straight. But I recognize the effort it’s taking. His lines are clunky on his tongue. “Yesterday morning. I was doing one last sweep for artifacts. And I came across it, in my parents’ closet. Mixed up with a bunch of my dad’s things.”
Elijah’s eyes spark at that.
“We searched this house,” he says. “Why didn’t we find it in your dad’s things?”
When Charlie hesitates, I’m surprised to find myself answering for him, my voice sounding steadier than I feel. “You told me the other day that the note wasn’t part of your search. You said it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.”
Elijah watches me so intensely I wonder if he can see my pulse, throbbing in my neck. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“And Dahlia freaked out,” Charlie says, relaxing into his role, “when she saw I’d decided to display it.” He affects a derisive chuckle, one that scuffs a bit too hard. “She’s like that.Sodramatic. Telling me what aspectacleI was making it.”
Elijah’s focus remains on me. “Is that right?” he asks. My blood pumps faster, and when I only nod, he continues. “And where is the note now?”
I run a hand over my back pocket. I’m still in yesterday’s jeans, the ones I shoved the note into, needing it gone, out of sight, away.
“Right here,” I say. I pull it out and extend it toward Elijah, along with Charlie’s label. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. It was just—an emotional night for us, and I forgot about it.”
Reaching into his own pocket, Elijah removes a plastic bag. He holds it open so I can drop the paper into it. I hesitate when I see the mark that revealed it all, Charlie’s “trademark flair,” but I bank on it meaning nothing to Elijah, who never saw Charlie’s first draft of artifact cards. I let go of the note, and he tucks the bag inside his coat.
“Will you be able to tell who wrote it?” Tate asks. “And know who killed our brother?”
Her voice is shaky with unease, but from the way Elijah responds, it seems he interprets it as a timid sort of hope.
