Page 21 of The Family Plot
“They’re not my dioramas.”
“I don’t just mean this. Where the note went, for example.”
“I told you—” I start, but then I’m stopped by a noise at the door, someone on the other side trying to push it open.
“For fuck’s sake,” I hear Charlie say. His grunts are muffled throughthe wood, the knob turning uselessly. Elijah glances at me, puzzled, but I just shrug. This house is old and the doors tend to stick. Some keep you in. Others keep you out.
The door gives way, and Charlie barrels through. His hair is tousled, face red, and he has a streak of dirt on his sweater.
“Detective Good Boy!” he says. “Sorry, I didn’t know Dolls had company.”
“He’s not company,” I say.
Charlie smirks as he heads for the shelves. Running his hands over the newspaper folds, he plucks some out, letting them fall to his feet. Soon, the floor looks carpeted in black and white.
“What are you doing?” I ask, and I can’t help the shrillness in my voice. I see flashes of victim names—JonBenét Ramsey,Christopher Byers—as he plucks and drops, plucks and drops. This isn’t how Mom taught us to handle the papers; she always warned us to be careful with the pages, make sure our hands were clean and the corners never bent. Then again, Charlie often flouted Mom’s wishes when it came to respecting victims—goofing off during Honorings, wagging his candle in the air instead of holding it solemn and straight. Andy and I giggled at it then, but now, seeing those murdered people tossed so casually to the floor, my chest feels tight.
“I’m pulling out options for the LMM,” Charlie replies.
“The LMM?” Elijah inquires.
Charlie stops, head turned over his shoulder to strike me with a mock scowl. “You didn’t tell him, Dahlia?” He spins around, rubbing his hands together. “The Lighthouse Memorial Museum. In honor of our brother and father. Tate will debut a new diorama, we’ll be—”
“A diorama of what?” Elijah interrupts.
Impatience creases Charlie’s forehead. “Andy, of course.”
Elijah gives me a curious look before returning to his notes.
“For one day only,” Charlie continues, “we’ll be showcasing family artifacts. Exposing our history, our traditions. Basically, we’ll be giving the people of this island exactly what they’ve always wanted: our lives splayed open. All you can ogle!”
Elijah scrawls until his fist falls off the page. “Why?” he asks.
Charlie smiles, slick and taunting. He’s slouching a little toward the left, his usual posture. When he was a teenager, I always thought it looked like one side of him was heavier than the rest, like his skinny body that seemed to be all limbs was always off-balance. Now, it only makes him look casual, like he’s leaning against an invisible doorframe, like the museum he’s planning isn’t strange at all.
“Why not?” he answers. “We’ve got nothing to hide. You’ll have to come, Detective.”
Elijah bites the inside of his cheek—exactly the same way his father did, whenever he was sniffing around, certain of something. He meets Charlie’s eyes, and I watch as they stare at each other, gazes hard and unyielding.
“You can count on it,” Elijah promises.
six
The doorbell won’t stopringing. I try to block it out, burrowing deeper into my beanbag chair, but it shrieks through the air, cutting through my walls. I curl up tighter, fetal and aching.
It’s been a day since those women stood in our driveway, but now, from the sound of it, people have gotten bolder. Charlie’s voice booms up the stairs—“Well, hello!”—every time he opens the door, and it makes my head, already pounding from a second night of too many tears, feel like it’s splitting wide open.
Another chime rings out, quieter than the bell downstairs, and it takes me a moment to recognize it as the sound of a text. I fumble for my phone, lost in a fold of the beanbag chair, and when I finally find it, I stare at a message from Greta.
Just checking in. Here whenever you need me. Police are saying there’s no apparent connection between the Blackburn killings and Andy’s death, but it’s hard not to go there, right? Let me know if you want my help, or a blueberry muffin, and I’ll be on the next ferry.
I know what she means by help. I can imagine her, ravenously reading the news, typing notes into her “Thoughts & Theories” document, which has grown a hundred pages since I met her. I don’t doubt she wants to be here for me, that she’s genuine in her offer of support.But I know a part of her must be tingling at the knowledge of another murder on Blackburn Island. It’s the same part of her that showed me, one Halloween, a picture she’d found in which someone had dressed as a Blackburn Killer victim. They were wearing a light blue—not ice-blue—dress, and they were grinning like a jack-o’-lantern, pointing to the cursiveBthey’d drawn on their ankle.People are sick, Greta said, but her eyes, bright and gleaming, lingered on the photo.
I don’t want that for Andy. For him to be a thought or theory in someone’s obsession with a killer—even if Greta’s right: it is hard not to go there.
I shove the phone into my pocket. Later. I’ll find words for Greta later. Right now, I need something for my headache—ibuprofen, or a sleeping pill even, something to knock me into a state of blank unconsciousness.
The doorbell rings again before I make it down the stairs. I hover on the landing as Charlie, unaware of my presence, arranges his face into a look of cheerfulness and thrusts open the door. “Well, hello!”
