Morian considered the filthy kitchen table, where cracker crumbs had been smeared into chocolate syrup and peanut butter. Open jars of pickles, jam, and cocktail onions stood amid a clutter of dirty dishes. More dirty dishes were stacked in a tilting pile in the sink. She thought of cleaning up; it was only mid-morning, she had time before class. But she decided not to give the boy the satisfaction. She knew Anne hadn’t left the kitchen in this mess.
She had grown to hate this chore of checking on Tom. Up until his illness, he had always been responsible when left alone.
She called to him, then went to look for him. She found him in Anne’s bedroom.
He had everything out of the closet and the dresser drawers, dumped in a heap on the floor. Clothes were piled in corners and strewn tangled across the bed. The room looked like the Salvation Army sales room after a scatter bomb. She wanted to snatch the kid up and beat the tar out of him. She said, “I knocked. I guess you didn’t hear me.”
He glowered. “What do you want?”
She took a deep breath. “I promised Anne I’d look in. Anything you need?”
Silence. They stared at each other.
She moved nearer the boy. “I suggest you clean up this mess, and the mess in the kitchen, before Anne gets home.”
“Why should I?”
“Because if Anne finally loses patience with you—and that could be very soon—she will do something about you. Tell me, have you ever been inside a mental hospital? Have you ever seen patients tied to the bedposts, or huddled into straitjackets with their arms wrapped around them so they can’t even scratch their own noses? So they can’t eat by themselves, or go to the bathroom by themselves? Have you ever seen patients with electric caps on their heads, with wires stuck into their brains giving them electric shock treatments?”
She had to suppress a smile. Whatever her description lacked in accuracy was made up for by the expression on the boy’s face. And as she watched him, Morian was filled with the cold certainty she had had for days—that this boy wasn’t Tom.
“If Anne thinks you are mentally ill,
“The windows have bars on them,
Fear twisted deeper in the boy’s eyes, and his lips were a tight line. But then hatred blazed from his eyes, raw and cold, stirring a dark fear in her.
She had no theory about what this boy was doing here or how he got here, or where Tom was; the idea of the boys being switched was too bizarre. Half her mind could not accept such a notion. But the other half—the deep, instinctual half—knew that Tom was gone.
She went away quietly, leaving the boy tearing up Anne’s bedroom. Telling herself that her instinct was wrong, that no sensible person would believe Tom had been kidnapped and a stranger left in his place.
Going back across the garden she saw Braden and a girl getting into his station wagon. She lifted a hand to him, admiring the girl’s astonishing hair, wondering what kind of fortune she spent on that wonderful mane. Maybe she was an actress done up for a part. Braden looked pleased as hell with her. Morian smiled and put Tom out of her thoughts. She went on home feeling good.
That morning, Wylles changed his tactics. He began to cooperate. Perhaps his increased wariness was engendered by the cat he had seen watching him, or perhaps by Morian’s rage; likely even Wylles himself didn’t know what ruled him. He cleaned up Anne’s bedroom, then he cleaned the kitchen and did the dishes. Then he found an excuse to visit Olive Cleaver, turning himself into a boy just as bright and amiable as Tom had ever been.
Chapter 40
The tall Victorian house rose above the narrow street shadowed by the branches of twisted oaks laced across the slate roof. The jutting bay windows stood open, their white curtains blowing just as they had blown when Melissa was a child. The brick walk was mossy in patches just as it had been, and the garden flowers looked the same. She wondered if the clay marker still stood in the garden where, long before she was born, Alice had buried her little cat.
She realized Braden was watching her, and she took his hand. When first he had turned onto the narrow street she hadn’t looked at the house, had sat looking down the hill at the familiar rooftops, afraid to look up at the windows of their old room. And then when she did look, the house was so familiar and warm that she might just have stepped off the school bus. And suddenly without warning she was crying.
Braden drew her to him and held her. She cried against him, unable to stop, stricken with the loss of those years and the loss of Alice, her memories jolting back with terrible power.
