“Tell me what’s going on.”
I put the journal on the table and pushed it toward her. She opened it, and her expression softened immediately as she recognized my father and Aunt Helen as teens. She flipped through page after page until she reached the end, and then she looked up at me, confused. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“You don’t see anything weird?”
“This was before I knew your father,” she said. “Weird how?”
I reached across the table and started flipping pages until I found one filled with Sam. It sent a tingle down my spine, a warning signal: this isn’t right.
“This kid,” I said, pointing. “I know him.”
She leaned closer to the photos, squinted, then shrugged. “Is he one of your aunt’s friends? I don’t think I’ve ever met him.”
“I’ve met him,” I said.
“Okay. I’m not following.”
“I mean I’ve met him, and he’s still this age. He’s my age. Like, I’ve met him, and he’s the same age.”
My mom looked at the picture and then looked at me and then took what I thought was the most obnoxious bite of ice cream in the history of the human race, as her expression changed very clearly to one of: I have no idea how to tell my daughter I think she’s full of shit.
“A lot of people look alike,” she said after a minute, after she’d taken her bite and swallowed and thought about how to answer me in the most diplomatic way.
“Identical,” I said. “And I have her journals. She wrote about a Sam in her journals, and his name is Sam, and the lawyer even said she left something in her will for Mr. Williams, do you remember? Sam’s last name is Williams. And also she dedicated the last Alvin book to S.W., Sam Williams, and Sam said yes, that was him, and yes, they were friends, and this Sam is that Sam,” I said, pointing at the picture again, pointing so hard the tip of my finger turned white.
“Honey, I’m sorry,” Mom said. “I don’t think I understand any of this.”
“This person,” I said, jabbing the photo with every syllable, “is still alive and still a teenager.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I believe you think that, honey, but sometimes children look exactly like their parents. Sometimes they’re even named after them. There is another explanation for this. And I will help you find it after I’ve had some sleep. I promise.”
She finished her ice cream as I dealt with the hole in my stomach, the growing black spot that was eating up all my organs. I hadn’t taken a bite of ice cream yet, so she left the bowl in front of me as she went to the sink and rinsed out hers. When she turned around, she sighed and said, “Will you please stop looking at me like I betrayed you?”
But I couldn’t help it. It felt like she had.
And I didn’t know what else to do. If I couldn’t make my mom believe me, what made me think Abe would believe me, or Em, or anyone? The only person who would believe me was dead, was—
Aunt Helen.
I abandoned the bowl of ice cream and sprinted upstairs, tearing the next letter out of the envelope.
Lottie,
Don’t tell anybody. If you’ve told someone already, that’s fine, because they probably don’t believe you, but don’t tell anybody else.
I’m sorry, Lottie. This is a secret I’ve kept for so long that the act of keeping it became effortless. My lips learned to button themselves up, and my heart learned to forget the fact that I lost one of my very best friends in the world when I told him I wouldn’t do what he wanted me to do. All of it will make sense very soon.
I hadn’t seen Sam for almost twenty-five years. He left Mystic when I was still in high school and spent the time between then and now doing God knows what. Traveling, probably. Seeing as much of the world as he could get his hands on. I got postcards every now and then, unsigned postcards with little messages about how he was fine and Paris was beautiful and he wished things could have been different. Always: I wish things could have been different. So you see, unsigned as they were, I always knew who’d sent them.
He came back when I was diagnosed. The news leaked so quickly to the internet (it’s impossible to keep anything a secret nowadays, isn’t it?), and then suddenly he was on my doorstep one day, his face at once changed and yet completely the same. He was the same. Of course I always knew he would be, but it was still a bit of a shock. He rang my doorbell, and I somehow knew who it would be even before I opened the door. Of course I knew it would be him because I had been waiting for him.
You were supposed to come over; you had texted to say you were on your way, so I didn’t let him stay. I watched him disappear into the woods (he’s very good at disappearing, but there’s nothing mystical about that, just a lot of practice) and then I watched your car pull up, not ten seconds later. So of course the next time I saw him he asked me who you were. He’d been watching, I guess.
At first I wouldn’t tell him, but then I did, because I knew he’d figure it out anyway.
Here’s the thing, Lottie. I never believed him. Not when we were younger, not when he’d shown me proof, not even when he begged me to, when he swore up and down on our very best friendship that he would never, ever lie to me. I thought I believed him, but I didn’t, not even when the postcards kept coming, not even when he stuck to his story for twenty-five whole years.
Only when I saw it for my own eyes. Only just a few weeks ago when he resurfaced, and for once, I couldn’t explain it away. Only then.
Trust me, Lottie. Believe what you want from him (because I know he’s found you, I knew he’d find you the second he watched you pull into my driveway), but trust me. I would never lie to you. (Omit, yes. I’ve omitted a lot. But I’ve never lied.)
—H.
I put the letter down and picked up the photograph that I’d peeled out of her journal. I thought about what my mom had said—that sometimes family members looked alike, that maybe this was Sam’s dad—but I knew that wasn’t possible. I knew because Sam had told me himself, he had known my aunt for a long time. I knew because Aunt Helen had told me herself: this is a secret I’ve kept for so long.
I knew because my aunt had asked me to do one thing. Believe her.
And I did.
The Overcoat Man was not there.
They’d come all this way, found his lair, broken in, and he’d managed to slip through their fingers once again.
Margo sat on the very edge of a chair, her eyes blank and glassy.
Alvin overturned a small table covered in papers and immediately wished he hadn’t. They should really look through these; they might find something useful.
He knelt down and began gathering the papers into a neat pile.
And that was when he saw it.
A glint of silver underneath the desk.
He reached for it, somehow knowing what it would be before his fingers even wrapped around it. He picked it up gently, cupping it in his hands, standing slowly to see it in better light.
“What do you have?” Margo asked.