This Secret Thing, стр. 28
Polly nodded and motioned for Violet to go in ahead of her.
“Those police didn’t clean up after themselves very well, even though that detective promised they did. The kitchen and living area are OK, but your mother’s room—and yours, I’m afraid—are a mess,” Polly said from behind her. “I wanted to tidy up while I waited for you. But I’m not sure where some things go. I figured you could tell me?”
The question hung in the air as Violet took in the scene. She could tell that the police had tried to put things right after the search, but in spite of their efforts, everything felt off-center, as if the whole house had been picked up by a giant and shaken. They hadn’t made it the way it was before. Violet supposed no one ever could.
She felt her grandmother’s hand rest cautiously on her shoulder. “Want to show me where everything goes?” Polly asked. Her voice shook slightly as she spoke, and as their eyes met, Violet saw fear in her face, fear that matched her own. Neither of them, she could tell, knew what to do next. The realization brought her a strange sort of comfort. If no one knew what to do, she thought, then nothing you did could be wrong.
She forced herself to smile, if for no other reason than to put her grandmother at ease. “I’m not sure if I know where everything goes,” she said, shrugging her shoulders as if it didn’t matter. But it did. When her mom came home, she wanted everything to be just right for her. She wanted her mother to be happy when she saw how well Violet had managed in her absence.
“I bet you know more than you think you do,” Polly said. “You live here, after all.” Polly walked farther into the house, calling over her shoulder to Violet. “C’mon, we’ll figure it out together.” Violet nodded, picked up the bag she’d hastily packed under that cop’s big nose, and let her brand-new grandmother lead the way.
She stepped into her room and stopped short. The cops had been thorough in their search, tossing things aside as they dug for evidence. Though downstairs it appeared they’d at least attempted to put things back, they’d left her room in disarray. Her dresser drawers yawned open like so many mouths vomiting cotton, denim, and rayon blends. The items on top of her desk and dresser had been rifled through as well. Someone had even opened the expensive mascara her mom had bought her. Violet jammed the wand in and out of the tube a few times, then examined the brush. Bits of dried mascara flecked from it. She tossed it into her empty trash can that had been full before the police arrived, the contents probably carted off in some evidence bag. As if her mother would carelessly toss whatever they were looking for into her daughter’s waste bin.
She cringed as she recalled throwing away a letter she’d written—but never intended to send—to Micah Berg the same night her mom had brought that pumpkin home. It had been a horrible admission that was part letter, part poem, in which, inspired by the pumpkin, she had compared Micah to a jack-o’-lantern, how his carved smile didn’t really reveal the light she saw inside him, that if she could carve the right expression on his face, she would. She’d revealed what she knew about that night, what she’d seen from her window, how she understood what no one else did.
She stood over her trash can, now empty save the ruined mascara, feeling sick at the thought of a cop extracting that letter from her wastebasket and reading it. She should’ve destroyed it, taken a match to it and watched it burn. What if a cop read it and figured out what she was talking about, went to the Berg house, and handed it over to Micah saying, “I think you’d better read this”?
At that moment she heard the sound of Micah’s basketball, the familiar rhythm of bounce, bounce, bounce, then the silence as the ball traveled through the air. Then the thunk of it hitting the rim and bouncing down, or the swoosh of it sinking into the net. She’d missed that sound when she was away, missed the nearness of him.
But this time the familiar sound was interrupted by another sound: a man’s deep, resounding laugh. The laughter pulled her to the window to investigate who had joined Micah, worried that perhaps her fear had come true and a cop was there with him, her letter in his hand, the laughter about her. Her heart thumping with fear, Violet squinted through the blinds. Ever since that night last spring, he had played basketball alone, except for his dog Chipper watching from a safe distance, out of the path of stray balls. Once a ball had beaned poor Chipper on the head, and the way Micah had reacted, fawning all over the dog, had made her heart swell inside her chest, made her love him all the more. He was not the person people said he was. Violet knew this better than anyone.
Downstairs, Polly rattled and banged dishes in the kitchen as she attempted to make dinner. “I stopped at the grocery store,” she’d said in that too-eager way adults use when they’re trying to get a kid to be excited over something that’s not exciting at all. “I’m making your mom’s favorite dinner.” Polly had thought about that for a moment. “I mean it used to be her favorite.” She’d glanced around the kitchen, looking uncertain and maybe a little frightened. Violet had left her to it and made the excuse that she needed to unpack, before fleeing to her room. Violet had her