We walk across the grass toward the parking lot. There are three little boys playing next to Adrian’s truck, pointing finger-guns and firing imaginary bullets. As we get closer, they all sprint across the asphalt parking lot, whooping and hollering and waving their arms like maniacs. They remind me of the boys at the Big Playground. They’re all around five or six years old and they’re nothing like quiet and introspective Teddy, always reaching for his picture books and sketch pads.
Adrian doesn’t say anything until we’re inside his truck. He starts the engine and turns on the air-conditioning but doesn’t shift into drive. “Listen, when I left your house yesterday, I was pretty pissed off. Not because you lied to me—that was bad enough. But you lied to my parents and all their friends. It’s really embarrassing, Mallory. I don’t know how I can ever tell them.”
“I know, Adrian. I’m sorry.”
“But here’s the thing: After I left your house yesterday, I couldn’t go back home. My parents knew all about our date and I didn’t want to see them, I didn’t want to tell them it was a bust. So instead I went to the movies. This new Marvel thing was playing and it seemed like a good way to kill some time. I actually stayed and watched it twice, so I could get home after midnight. And when I finally went upstairs to my bedroom, this was waiting on my desk.”
He reached across the front seat and opened the glove box, revealing a sheet of paper covered in dark pencil.
“Now you want to talk about feeling crazy? I guess it’s possible you sneaked into my house and found my bedroom and left this drawing on my desk while my parents were home all night? I guess it’s also possible that five-year-old Teddy sneaked into my house? Or his parents? But I don’t think so, Mallory.” Adrian shakes his head. “I think the most likely explanation is that you’ve been right all along. Anya is drawing these pictures. And she wants me to know you’re telling the truth.”
22
We drive back to Spring Brook and get right down to business. I grab all the drawings that I found in my cottage, plus the three pictures I took from Teddy’s bedroom. Adrian has the one drawing left on his desk, plus all his photographs of the Maxwells’ den. He’s already output the images on an inkjet printer so we can add them to the sequence. There are less than forty-eight hours before Russell comes to pick me up—and before that happens, I’m determined to convince the Maxwells we’re telling the truth.
We arrange all the pictures on the pool patio, using stones or pinches of loose gravel to hold them in place. Then we spend half an hour moving them around, trying to arrange them in order, looking for some kind of narrative that makes sense.
After much trial and error, we arrive at this:
“The first picture is the hot-air balloon,” I begin. “We’re in some kind of park or field. An area with a lot of wide-open space. Big skies.”
“So definitely not Spring Brook,” Adrian says. “There’s too much air traffic out of Philly.”
“We see a woman painting a picture of the hot-air balloon. Let’s assume for now this is Anya. Judging from her sleeveless dress, I’m guessing it’s summer, or maybe we’re in a warmer climate.”
“There’s a girl nearby, playing with toys. Possibly Anya’s daughter. Teddy mentioned Anya has a daughter. It doesn’t seem like Anya is watching her closely.”
“Then along comes a white rabbit.”
“The little girl is intrigued. She’s playing with a stuffed rabbit, but here comes a real one.”
“So she follows the rabbit down into a valley…”
“… but Anya doesn’t notice the girl walking away. She’s too absorbed in her work. But you can see the little girl off on the horizon. Leaving her toys behind. Does that all make sense so far?”
“I think so,” Adrian says.
“Good, because here’s where it gets confusing. Something goes wrong. The rabbit is gone, the girl looks lost. She might be hurt. She might even be dead. Because in the next picture…”
“She’s approached by an angel.”
“And the angel leads the little girl toward the light.”
“But someone’s trying to stop them. Someone’s chasing after them.”
“It’s Anya,” Adrian says. “It’s the same white dress.”
“Exactly. She’s running to save her little girl, to stop her from being taken away.”
“But Anya’s too late. The angel won’t give her back.”
“Or can’t give her back,” Adrian says.
“Exactly. Now here comes a gap.”
“The angel and the child are gone. We don’t see them anymore. And now someone is strangling Anya. This is the one piece of the puzzle we’re still missing.”
“Time passes. It’s nighttime. Anya’s easel is abandoned.”
“A man arrives in the forest, carrying tools. They look like a pick and a shovel.”
“The man drags Anya’s body through the forest…”
“He uses his shovel to dig a hole…”
“And then he buries the body.”
“So the man strangled Anya,” Adrian says.
“Not necessarily.”
“He moves her body. He buries her.”
“But the story starts in the daytime. The man doesn’t show up until later, until dark.”
Adrian starts moving the pictures around again—arranging them in a different sequence—but I’ve tried every possible order, and this is the only one that comes close to making sense.
Except something’s still missing. It’s like the feeling of working through a jigsaw puzzle, putting the whole scene together, only to discover the box has three or four missing pieces, and they’re all right in the middle.
Adrian throws up his hands. “Why doesn’t she just spell it out for us? Skip the stupid pictures and use words? ‘My name is Rumpelstiltskin. I was murdered by the archduke.’ Or whoever. Why is she being so cryptic?”
He’s just venting, but I realize I’ve never stopped to ask myself this question: Why is Anya being so cryptic?
Instead of using Teddy to draw pictures, why not use words? Why not write a letter? Unless—
I think back to all the one-sided conversations I overheard in Teddy’s bedroom—all the guessing games he would play during Quiet Time. “Teddy says Anya talks funny. He says she’s hard to understand. What if she doesn’t speak English?”
Adrian seems ready to dismiss the idea, but then he reaches for the library book—The Collected Works of Anne C. Barrett. “All right, let’s think this through for a minute. We know Annie came from Europe after World War II. Maybe she doesn’t speak English. Maybe Barrett isn’t even her real name. Maybe it’s a westernized version of something like Baryshnikov, one of those long impossible-to-pronounce Eastern European names. And the family changed it, just to blend in.”
“Exactly,” I tell him, warming to the theory. “George writes like he’s been in the United States for a long time. He’s already assimilated. He’s a deacon at the church, he’s an alderman on the town council. But suddenly his Bohemian cousin shows up in Spring Brook. She’s a reminder of where he’s from, and he’s ashamed of her. His letter in the book is so condescending, all his talk about her slight achievements and her foolishness.”
Adrian snaps his fingers. “And this explains the spirit board! You said her answers were gibberish! You called them alphabet soup. But what if she was spelling in a different language?”