Page 42 of The Family Plot
“Ah, great plan,” Charlie says. “Cookies will solve everything. What do you think—should I offer the officers some of your previous concoctions? Nothing works up an appetite quite like photos of dead women.”
“Charlie,” Tate says sharply, swiping away her tears. “You’re being cruel.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You are. And I know you’re scared, but—”
“I’m not scared,” he says, voice rigid.
Charlie and Tate stare at each other—wide, wordless moments—and I see something pass between them, a message relayed in the silent shorthand they have with each other. It always annoyed me, their invisible words I never learned to read, but right now I’m grateful for it, grateful for Tate, especially, the only one who can crack through Charlie’s meanness like it’s nothing more than the thinnest layer of ice.
“Well, I’m fucking terrified,” she tells him softly. “So could you please ease off everyone? What’s happening out there is no one’s fault. No one’s in this room, anyway.”
Charlie looks at the bottle in his hand. Then he raises it to his lips, gulping it down like he’s dying of thirst. As he turns to face the window, Tate glides into place beside him, the tension between them instantly dissolved. Now, sharing the same view, the two of them lean together. It’s almost imperceptible, how they’re propping each other up, but I know that if one of them were to move, the other would stumble.
I ache for that. For someone to keep me standing. Which means I ache for Andy.
Without thinking, I take a step toward them, bend toward Tate as if to lean on her other shoulder. But then I see a freckle of brown paint on her jaw, and immediately, I recoil.
How could I forget? While I was descending into the room beneath the shed, she was dipping a brush into paint. While I was tracing Andy’s footsteps, crouching over the same chest he once split apart, she was building our woods, tree by tree. And when I illuminated those women, shining a light on their branded ankles, their strangled necks, she was staring at death, too, preparing our brother’s miniature grave.
They’re oddly accurate, Elijah said of her dioramas—and it’s a sickness really, how committed she is to getting them right. I think of herstudies in the passageway, the sketches manic, obsessive, edges overlapping like—
Like the photos beneath the shed.
My body jolts at the comparison, one I haven’t registered until now.
I look at Tate again, watching as she nestles closer to Charlie, resting her chin on his shoulder. Together, they stare at the woods outside, at the police scattered between the trees.
I see it again—photos taped to a wall; sketches taped to studs—and a chill winds up my spine. But it’s too much right now, trying to make sense of that similarity, so I shake the thought from my mind.
eleven
Elijah returns after dark.
When I open the door to his insistent knock, it’s like opening it to the past. For a moment, it’s his father I see on our porch, with a smile he’s biting back, certain he’s finally got us.I always knew, I hear him saying,there was something evil here.
But then I blink, and it’s Elijah there, glowing gold in the porchlight. He was unexpectedly kind to me, earlier today, his voice gentle as he asked the questions, as he encouraged me to take my time. Standing with him in the backyard, his team already gathering, I regarded the shed like if I turned away, it might start creeping toward me. Elijah shifted then, blocking that terrible, ivied place from my line of sight, and I managed a grateful flick of my lips before seeing the view his moving had exposed: the yellow tape of Andy’s grave. The other crime scene in our woods.
Now, I expect Elijah to tell me that Fritz has made a full confession. Already, I feel the burden of the looming challenge: reconciling the man I thought Fritz was with the monster he turned out to be; modifying every memory where I saw him be good to Andy. But then I notice the officers behind Elijah. There are five of them, out on the walkway, looking off to the sides as if scanning our yard for danger, forshadows that move with a human shape. They each rest a hand on the gun holstered to their belts, while Elijah, dressed in his usual slacks and coat, forces a tight, toothless smile.
“We have a warrant to search your house.”
He holds up some papers, and I stumble back in surprise, a movement he takes as an invitation to enter.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” a voice growls behind me.
I smell Charlie before I see him. His cloud of whisky precedes him.
“Actually,” Elijah says, passing him the papers. “Judge Matthews was the judge of that, as you’ll see from the signature.”
Charlie skims a finger down the first page, elbowing me aside as I try to read it, too. “You’re looking for… evidence and instrumentalities of a crime,” he says. “Well. I believe my sister already gave you free rein of an entire shed full of evidence.”
“You can keep reading,” Elijah says.
Behind him, one of the officers wipes their feet on the front mat, an oddly polite gesture for someone invading a home.
Charlie’s head snaps up. “You’re looking for the brand.”
