“I’ll take it,” Malone said. “And the coat in the back, if you say it’ll work. I also might want to dig through your pile of castoffs from the morgue. I’ll compensate you. I need some clothes I can work in . . . ones that I won’t have to worry about ruining.”
She heard him, and she nodded, but she wasn’t listening. The cap in her hands was too loud. She rubbed her fingertips against the inside band, the place where the brim joined the crown, the spot that absorbed both perspiration and contemplation.
“Dani?”
“This cap isn’t his,” she murmured.
“Whose?”
“The boy. He found it the day the bodies were found, but higher up on the hill. He hasn’t told anyone. Not even Leonard. He doesn’t know why. When he wears it . . . it’s like he has a secret. But it’s too late to tell anyone now.”
She dropped the hat like it was hot and pushed her glasses up with the back of her hand. For some reason, she felt soiled, and she wanted to wash.
Malone stooped to pick it up.
“I’ll go get that coat,” she said.
“Who, Dani? Who are you talking about?” He kept his face blank, but she thought he knew. She thought he knew a lot more than she did.
“I don’t know. He didn’t think about his name when he was wearing it. He thought about . . . the man who it might belong to. Where did you get that hat?” she asked, striving for the same placid tone he was so adept at.
“I got that hat from a boy named Steve. He mentioned a brother. Leonard.”
She nodded slowly.
“But you said it didn’t belong to Steve. Who does it belong to?” Malone handed her the hat once more, and she accepted it with all the enthusiasm of a child receiving a ruler across her palms. But Malone had asked her, and she was pleased by that, even if she didn’t like the way the hat felt.
She breathed out and listened again. “His scent is faded.”
“His scent?” Malone asked.
“The man who owned it before the boy.”
Malone waited as she dug deeper.
“He drove a car. Not his own. He was a driver.”
“A chauffeur?”
“Yes.”
“He probably wore this hat hundreds of times. Maybe more. And his presence”—she was always frustrated by the words she had to use to describe it—“is layered beneath the boy.”
“Steve?”
“Yes. That feels right. Steve.” Steve was anxious about the hat, and she would rather not keep sniffing at it. The scent did not appeal. But Malone wanted to hear more. She could see it in his stillness and the tilt of his head.
“Who was he? The driver, I mean. Do you have a name?” he asked.
“He thought of himself as Eddie.” The scent became a muddy mix of motor oil and dust, onions and life. She might see something else if she tried again later.
“That’s all,” she said.
She handed Malone the hat. He studied it with a frown and then raised his eyes to hers once more.
“‘He thought of himself as Eddie.’ What does that mean?”
She shrugged, trying to think of the right words. “What do you call yourself?” she asked him. “When you talk to yourself, who are you?”
It was his turn to shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I call myself Malone when I call myself anything at all. Sometimes Michael Francis, in my mother’s voice, when I’ve made a mess of things.”
That made her smile. “And I call myself Dani. Daniela when I am cross with myself. And sometimes I am Kos . . . or Flanagan, with my father’s lilt. It depends. Some people think of themselves as ‘mother.’ Or ‘father.’ Or ‘darling’ or ‘dear.’ I think it depends on the voice they hear in their head, just like you said.”
“So you can’t always get a name from the fabric.” Malone said everything as if he was clarifying, not questioning.
“No. I can’t. Not a proper name. The apron of a woman who is simply referred to as ‘mother’ all day, who doesn’t interact much outside of her family, might be harder for me to name—I may only hear ‘mother’—whereas a gentleman who works in a bank might own a tie that literally vibrates with ‘sir.’”
“That makes sense.” He sounded surprised.
“I don’t think what I can do is so different from what anyone else does. Don’t thoughts and memories and connections flash through our minds all day long, every day? It’s called thinking. We observe and catalog and quantify and organize all day long, every day, and we hardly realize we are doing it. I just seem to have a keener sense when it comes to . . .” She truly wished she had a word for what she did. “See,” “sense,” and “smell” just weren’t quite right.
“When it comes to clothes,” he finished for her.
“Yes, well. Most of the time, it is quite . . . useless. Just a glimpse of faded moments. Like eavesdropping . . . only I don’t know who or what I’m listening to. Who or what I’m looking at.” She shrugged. “It might be the most useless talent known to man.”
He grunted at that, not committing himself to an opinion on the matter, and she let it drop, grateful not to continue.
He followed her through the shop to the stockroom behind the counter, where she unearthed the gray overcoat from the racks that lined the walls. He pulled it on, shot his sleeves to test the fit, and nodded. “That’ll do.”
He peeled the cost of the hat and coat from a money clip in his breast pocket and handed it to her as they stepped back into the shop.
“If you are inclined to give clothes away, or you need something for yourself, please feel free to take from the items we . . . collect.” “Collect” was an imprecise word for what she did, but Malone had helped her twice since the storm, and he had earned whatever she could offer him.
“I might do that. Thank you.”
“I will go again tomorrow, first thing after breakfast if you are . . . free.” She almost laughed at that. What a pathetic outing. “And please don’t feel obligated. I am only telling you because you insisted I do.”
He nodded. “I can do that.”
He tipped his new hat, thanked her for the assistance with his clothes, and disappeared down the hallway toward his room, the dirty checkered hat still clasped in his hand.