I wanted this one back, and I wanted her hair clip, her address book, her pens, even the photos that had not been ours. I hated the thought of Paul's eyes roving over the image of her face, his narrow fingers touching her belongings, but I had to leave everything where I found it.
I set down the watch and noticed the shimmer of an object half hidden by a computer game magazine with a lurid red cover. Lifting the magazine, I found my sister's bracelet, the wide silver bangle I had given her for her sixteenth birthday. I picked it up and slid it over my hand.
The moment the silver touched my wrist I felt its icy sting. Cold traveled up my arm and fear rippled through me, wrapping my heart in a chilling web.
Paul's room slipped into shadow, then darkness, its edges glimmering blue. I could smell the creek.
Not again! I thought. Please, don't make me go through it again!
I yanked the bracelet over my knuckles and heard it land on the bureau. The blue glint disappeared and the darkness of my vision frayed until the sunlit room shone through again. But fear still made my heart beat fast; Liza's fear throbbed inside me.
I held my head with my hands, trying to sort out what was happening. Most of my sister's belongings, such as her pens and hair clip, did not affect me when I touched them. It was as if the emotion coursing through her the night she died had imprinted certain things she touched-the window she had climbed through to meet Mike, the bank beneath the bridge, a piling beneath the pavilion-enough so that when I touched them they could engender my visions. Liza's extreme fear and pain the moment she was murdered had charged the hammer even more. Feeling the same sensation when I touched the bracelet, I wondered if she had been wearing it when she died.
I looked quickly inside Paul's bureau and closet and probably should have searched further, but I had seen all I could endure for the moment. After placing the magazine so that it partially covered the bracelet-I didn't dare touch the bangle again-I checked that everything else was as I had found it, then left. and locked the door. Heading toward the stairway, I noticed Mike's name on the door across the hall.
I didn't try to rationalize my snooping, but simply unlocked the door and let myself in. Mike was neater than Paul, though his concept of order appeared to be leaving everything out and stacking his belongings in thematic piles. Clothes, books, CDs, tennis balls, sunscreen and shaving lotion-all of it in organized piles-covered the tops of his desk, bureau, and chair. Glancing down at a stack of books, I noticed a satiny edge of paper protruding from the pages of one. A photograph. Curious, I pulled it out.
It caught me completely by surprise. Liza and I, our arms around each other's shoulders, wearing T-shirts made in honor of our father, laughed into the camera's eye. It was a favorite photo of my sister's because, as she used to say, "We look just like us!"
Mike knew who I was. He had known from the start. But if he knew my identity, why had he lied to me about his and Liza's relationship? Did he fear I would pepper him with questions until he revealed something he didn't want me to know?
I slipped the photo back in the book. I had seen what Brian wanted me to see, and then some, but the more I knew, the less I understood.
Walker ended rehearsal early that day, reminding us that it was Movie Night. Kids left the theater quickly, and Walker followed Maggie down to the offices. Both had been edgy that afternoon; according to Shawna, they had argued fiercely while I was gone on my errand. Brian followed them downstairs, hoping, he said, to get them to cool it.
I had already returned the master key to him, choosing a time when there were too many people around for us to confer. I didn't want to discuss what I had discovered.
Tomas and I were about to leave the set when Arthur and another guy from maintenance arrived, carrying the extension ladder that Tomas had been calling about all day. The two men made a hasty exit, perhaps afraid of being asked to do something else. After several clumsy efforts Tomas and I managed to rest the ladder against the catwalk thirty feet up.
"Shall I give it a try?" I asked.
Tomas shook his head. "I'd rather have a couple people here holding it."
"Don't worry. I'm not going far."
Tomas held the ladder and I started up the aluminum rungs. On the sixth one I stopped. I didn't like the give of the ladder, the way it vibrated in my hands and the metallic noise it made.
"Everything okay?" Tomas asked, pulling his head back to look at me.
"You're going to have to find someone else for the job," I said, climbing back down.
"I've already got them lined up."
"Shall we store this on its side?" I asked.
"No." He gestured toward a table full of tools and the bolt of blue fabric. "I'd like to get the sky hung right away tomorrow."
"Walker might get irritable if he starts the day with a ladder in the middle of his stage."
"If he does, I'll say I'm sorry," Tomas replied.
"I see. Better to say you're sorry later, than ask for permission before? "
He smiled. "Sometimes, with some people, yes."
"Tomas, you continually surprise me."
We gathered our belongings and walked back to the dorms together, passing Mike, who was carrying a tennis racket and a can of balls. He said hello, more to Tomas than me, and continued on. After Tomas and I parted, I headed in the direction Mike had taken, figuring there were courts somewhere beyond the Stoddard parking area and athletic fields.
I found him playing alone, hitting a tennis ball against a wall in a practice court, driving it hard. Thump! Thump! A day's worth of heat radiated from the pavement, and the humidity wrung every last degree from the lowering sun. Mike's shirt was soaked through and his forearms shone with sweat, still he played on as if some demon were goading him. Sometimes he slammed the ball hard, too hard to get the rebound-that seemed to give him the most satisfaction.
He didn't notice when I sat on a bench outside the court's wire fence. I brushed the gnats away from my face and waited. At last he stopped to drink from a water bottle.
"May I talk to you?"
He spun around, surprised, then glanced about to see if anyone else was there. "All right," he said, but he stayed where he was, midcourt on the other side of the tall wire fence. "About what?"
"My sister."
He didn't move.
"My sister Liza."
He wiped his face on his shirt and walked toward me, but only as far as the fence, keeping it between us.
"When did you know who I was?" I asked.
"As soon as I saw you."
"Why didn't you say something?"
"Why didn't you?"
"I have reasons," I replied.
"So do I."
I kicked at the grass, frustrated. He turned the face of his racket horizontal and bounced the ball against the court.
"Why did Liza give you the picture of her and me?"
"I guess she told you I liked it," he said, continuing to dribble the ball. Then his hand swooped down and snatched it. "No, she couldn't have, or you would have realized that I recognized you. How do you know about the photo?"
"I saw it in your room this afternoon."
"In my room?" His eyes narrowed, turning the color of blue slate. "What were you doing there?" Snooping.
He looked at me, amazed. "I can't believe it," he said. "I can't believe you'd do something like that."
"At least I'm honest in admitting it. You lied to me about Liza."
He turned his back on me and drove the ball hard against the wall. "You lied the day you introduced yourself as Jenny Baird."
"If you knew who I was, why did you He to me about her?" I persisted.
He faced me again, frowning.
"Why didn't you admit you were dating, in love, whatever?"