I looked over at her. She jerked her head toward the kitchen, so I followed her back there. She leaned against the one counter and I leaned against the other, facing her.
“It’s true, isn’t it? All that stuff Ryan was saying to her? It’s true. She lived with some man, and she . . . lived with him or whatever.”
“She was taken.”
“Are you sure? What if she ran away? What if she wanted to be away from us? Someone else seemed more appealing. Better.”
“Stop it.”
“It’s possible, Tom. Admit it’s possible. Don’t all kids wish they could be away from their parents? Maybe Caitlin . . .”
I went back to the living room and looked out the window. Buster wore a large smirk, and for a moment, he looked as childish and pouty as Caitlin under the heat of Ryan’s questions. He flicked his cigarette butt out into our yard and kept smirking.
Chapter Thirty-one
I turned back to Caitlin. It was getting late in the afternoon, and the light was going. I sat in a chair across from her and didn’t bother to see if she would move her eyes from the TV screen to me. I knew she wouldn’t.
“I know Detective Ryan was kind of hard on you,” I said. “He’s just doing his job, trying to find out what’s going on.”
Silence.
“He left you a note.”
“Fuck him.”
“I don’t mean Detective Ryan.”
She cut her eyes toward me. I waited while the realization showed on her face.
“He left it in the cemetery, with a bouquet of flowers. Ryan took it, but I’m sure he’ll show it to you at some point. I think they’re looking for fingerprints.” I paused, letting that hang in the air a moment. “The note said not to come back. It told you to go away and not come back.”
“Why would anyone leave a note in the cemetery?” she asked.
“Maybe because that’s where he took you.”
She started to turn back to the TV, but stopped. She looked at me again, still processing. “Was my name on it? The note. Was my name on it?”
“No.” I didn’t know where she was going with this.
“Then how do you know it was for me?”
“He left it someplace special,” I said. “Someplace just for you.”
She had never been a stupid kid. She was always two steps ahead of Abby and me, even when she was little.
“What could be just for me in a cemetery?”
I didn’t say anything, but Caitlin stared, her eyes a little wider.
“No,” she said. “You fuckers.”
I was trapped. “You were gone a long time, Caitlin. We wanted to celebrate your life somehow.”
She started shaking her head.
“You buried me,” she said.
“No.”
Her mouth hung open, her face disbelieving.
“He was right,” she said.
“Who?” I asked. But I knew. The man.
“He said you’d forget about me. You’d move on.”
“He lied to you, Caitlin. We never forgot.”
“It’s bullshit.”
“It’s a headstone, Caitlin. It’s just a memorial, a tribute.”
She turned back to the TV, her jaw set like granite.
“I’ll show you the note when I can. He’s done with you. Stop protecting him.”
“You’ll never know what happened,” she said. “Never.”
“I will.” I raised my hand, index finger extended. “I promise.”
She shook her head, speaking one word.
“Never,” she said. “Never.”
I looked outside, where Buster paced back and forth on the porch, a new cigarette burning in his mouth. It looked like Ryan was gone, so I went outside.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“Breaking my balls, I guess.”
He kept pacing.
“What did he ask you?”
He stopped pacing and came up to me. The cigarette smoke curled up into his face, and he squinted.
“He showed me that sketch and asked if I knew who the guy was. Then he asked if any of my associates might know the guy. Associates. Can you believe he used that word? Associates.”
“What did you say?”
He took the cigarette out of his mouth, still squinting. “What do you think I said? I told him I didn’t know the guy. I told him the same stuff today I told him four years ago. Did you put him up to this?”
“I need to know.”
He broke off eye contact with me and walked away, turning his back. I was surprised to see his hair was thinning at the crown of his head, allowing pale skin to show through. He was younger than me, so much younger than me, I always thought. He took a last drag on his cigarette and dropped it on the porch, grinding it beneath his shoe.
“Your brother?” he said. “You’d really question your brother?”
“I don’t know . . .” I paced a little, back and forth on the porch.
“You’ve got all this anger, Tom. All this anger toward me. Toward the family. We were close as kids. We looked out for each other. I looked out for you. Always.”
“I know,” I said. “But you should have heard the things Ryan was saying back there . . .”
“What kinds of things?”