This was her chance.
She crept from her room into the hallway. When she walked past Thora’s room she heard low voices murmuring—hers and Deacon’s. That was all right. As long as they stayed in there and didn’t try to stop her it would be okay.
Allison snuck up the third-floor stairs and slipped through the door into Dr. Capello’s office. She found the key where Thora had said she’d found it the week before when she’d gone on this very same hunt. The key was to the closet door in the office where Dr. Capello kept his filing cabinet. Allison didn’t know where to start. Thora’d had three hours to dig, but Allison might have half an hour, if that, until Dr. Capello came back from his walk. But it couldn’t take that long to find out the truth, could it? All Allison wanted to know was that Thora was lying to her. She had to be lying to her. Roland? Kill his baby sister? Never. Never ever. Maybe Thora was in love with Roland. Maybe she made all that up because she was jealous. It had to be lies. All lies.
But deep down, Allison knew Thora wouldn’t lie to her.
Allison had just begun digging through the first filing cabinet drawer when the closet door opened behind her.
There stood Dr. Capello.
He didn’t look mad. He didn’t even look all that surprised.
He gazed down at her—she was tall now at twelve but not as tall as him—and held out his hand.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s talk about it.”
With a hand gentle on her shoulder he led her from the closet to the sofa in his office. He sat facing her and gently smiled.
“What’s going on here, doll?” he asked.
“I read your files,” she said. “When everyone was at the park Sunday. Roland was outside. He didn’t know what I was doing.” Thora had taken a risk by telling her the truth. She wasn’t about to pay Thora back by getting her into trouble.
“I see,” he said, nodding. “How did you get into the closet?”
Thankfully Thora had told her that part.
“You lock your keys in your top desk drawer,” Allison said. “But you can get in the desk drawer from under the desk with a coat hanger.”
“Smart kid,” he said. “I knew you were smart from the day we met.”
Even then, she wasn’t afraid of him. There was no reason to be afraid of Dr. Capello. It was Roland she had to fear.
“Have you told anyone?” he asked.
“Nobody.”
“This is why you’ve been so upset?” he asked.
Two hot fresh tears ran down her face, answer enough.
Dr. Capello opened a drawer in his desk. He took out a bottle of pills, opened it and shook two pink ones out into his hand. He got up, went to the small half bath in his office and came out with a paper cup of water.
“Here, take these,” he said. “You’ll feel a lot better very soon.”
“What are they?” she asked.
“They’ll help you relax. You’ve been crying so hard you’ll get sick if you’re not careful.”
She took the pills. They were little and it wasn’t hard to swallow them. She would have swallowed anything he’d given her if it came with a promise to make her feel better. Dr. Capello sat down on the chair next to her. He faced her and smiled.
“What did you read in the file?” Dr. Capello asked her.
This, Allison didn’t know. They’d been interrupted before Thora could tell her anything else about Roland.
“Just that...that he killed Rachel.”
“He did kill his sister, Rachel. Yes. That’s true. But you don’t have to be afraid of him or anyone else in the house,” Dr. Capello said. “It was just an accident.”
“It was?” she asked, instantly relieved. Why had Thora scared her like this if it had been an accident?
“It was. And he feels very bad about it. And if you start talking about it you’re going to upset him and everybody in the house. And we don’t want that, do we?”
A simple question. Allison knew what answer he wanted from her.
“No.”
“Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
“Are you sure?” she asked him. “I don’t think...I don’t think it was an accident. It wouldn’t be a big secret if it was an accident.”
Dr. Capello sighed heavily and nodded his head.
“Too smart,” he said. “You’re just too smart.” He tenderly patted her cheek, still wet with tears.
“I want to go home,” Allison said.
“This is your home, doll. You leave and it’ll break everybody’s heart.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to stay here anymore. You’re all liars. You and Roland and—”
“Shh...” He touched a finger to his lips. “Calm down. We’ll talk about this, okay? I need to go check on something. I’ll be right back. You just lie down on the sofa and rest. Then we’ll figure it out. Together.”
She wanted to figure it out. And she didn’t really want to go home. How could she? She didn’t have any other home except maybe her aunt in Indiana.
“Okay,” Allison said. “I promise.”
He stood up to leave, then bent over and kissed her on the forehead.
“You poor thing,” he said. “This is what we call a much ado about nothing. Just rest now. You have to be so tired.”
He left her in the office and shut the door behind him. Maybe it was the pills and maybe it was that she hadn’t slept much the night before or the night before that, but she did lie down on the couch facing Dr. Capello’s desk. Her eyes grew heavy and yet she refused to close them. She was afraid to close them, though she didn’t know why. She locked her gaze on the drawing of the skull map hanging on the wall behind the desk. She wondered why there were little dragons in the center of the skull. When Dr. Capello finally came back into the room she asked him.
“Why are there dragons in the brain?” she said.
“You still awake?” he sat next to her on the sofa and brushed her hair off her forehead.
“Almost.”
“You should sleep,” he said. “When you wake up, you won’t remember anything that’s happened the past few days. I promise. Won’t that be nice?”
Sleepily she nodded. It would be nice. It would be nice to forget it all happened—Roland’s arms, the wave, the kiss, his hands on her waist, the tears, the shame, Thora telling her that Roland had killed a little girl... Yes, she did want to forget it all. But that didn’t make any sense. She was twelve, a kid, but not stupid. You couldn’t magically make people forget things.
She closed her eyes and started to fall into sleep, and when she was almost out, she felt Dr. Capello’s strong arms under her, lifting her up and carrying her from his office. Was he taking her back to her bedroom? To his? No, they were going up. She heard the creaking of stairs under his feet and felt hot sticky air on her face. The attic. He had taken her up to the attic. But why?
She was too sleepy to ask. Those pink pills, they were the allergy pills Kendra had to take in spring, the ones that made her fall asleep and stay asleep for ten hours straight when she took two. Allison wanted to wake herself up but the pills had her. Even when she felt something cold on her temples, she couldn’t shake free of her need to sleep. But she knew she had to try.
“What about the dragons?” she asked.
“You really don’t want to sleep, do you?” He sounded almost proud of her for the way she could fight off sleep. “The hippocampus is a structure at the center of the brain. Hippo means horse. Campus means sea monster. They call it that because it looks like a sea horse or a water dragon. That’s all.”
“Oh,” she said. “There’s a dragon in my brain.”
“There’s a dragon in all our brains,” he said. “And some of us have nice dragons and some of us have bad dragons. You know what I do sometimes?”
She shook her sleepy head.
“I slay the bad dragons,” he said.
“Like a knight?”
“Just like a knight. How about you recite one of your poems to me,” he said. “That’ll help you fall asleep. And when you wake up you won’t remember anything bad about Roland. Okay?”
“What poem?” Her body felt so heavy. Her brain like mush. But if someone wanted her to recite a poem, she would do it.