The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,49

some stones, calling in. You’re what . . . eleven, twelve?”

“Thirteen,” I say tightly.

“Oh, thirteen,” he says. “Pardon me. Well, listen, kid—”

“Tress,” I say, and I hear him take a drink, the swallow wet in my ear.

“Tress,” he repeats, this time without the edge. “All right, Tress Montor. Listen—and I mean it—you listen to me, now. Your mom and dad fell off the grid. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Like nobody has heard from them?”

“Heard from them or seen them, sure. But it’s more than that, kid—sorry, Tress. They made no calls, made no purchases, after that night. The last cell signal from either of their phones came from near that bridge—you know which one I mean?”

Of course I do. It’s the one around the corner from our old house, at the bottom of the hill. The one Felicity and I sang about going over the river and through the woods to our best friend’s house. It’s where the police—maybe even Officer Riley—found Felicity. It’s at the edge of town . . . right where something starts turning into nothing.

“Yeah, I know it,” I say.

“You know what I’m looking at right now?” Riley asks me.

“Nope,” I say.

“My desk calendar. You know what one of those is?” Those is comes out in a slurry that I’ve got to pick apart and translate before I can answer.

“I know what a desk calendar is,” I say.

“Well, you kids with your phones these days—” Riley begins, then cuts himself off, like enunciating these days wore him out. “I’m looking at tomorrow,” he goes on. “I boxed it off in red and drew a big happy face in the middle of it. You know why?”

“No,” I say.

“Because it’s my retirement day, and if it wasn’t, I would’ve hung up on you the second you said who you was.”

Were, I think quietly.

“But you didn’t,” I remind him, and he sighs.

“No, I didn’t.” He’s quiet for a second, and I think maybe he’s got a hard little ball of words in his stomach, too, one that he’s been waiting to unload on someone.

“No trace of your parents has ever been found; we have no leads on this case. And by that I mean forensic, and otherwise. You’re the only person who’s ever called the tip line—you know that?”

Of course I didn’t know that. But I stay quiet, let him cough out the thing he’s been choking on for years.

“Lee and Annabelle Montor are the only missing-persons case we’ve ever had, and it’s locked up tight. Not solved; I mean locked up. Nobody’s talking. You know what it means when nobody’s talking in Amontillado?”

“It means somebody important wants it kept quiet,” I say. It’s an old lesson, one I knew even before I came to live with Cecil. It might not be taught like the alphabet in school, but it’s learned around the dinner table, inferred with down-turned mouths and quick subject changes.

“Uh-huh,” Riley agrees. “And what makes you an important person in Amontillado?”

“Your name,” I tell him.

“Or your money,” he says back.

I let that sit, collecting it with the other words forming the hard ball in my gut.

“And, kid, one more thing—”

“Yeah?”

“What do you see when you turn over a rock?”

“Bugs,” I say automatically, having watched Rue search for a snack more times than I can count.

“Bugs and worms and all kinds of shit—sorry. All kinds of gross stuff you didn’t know was there and maybe didn’t need to know,” Riley says. “You turn over this rock, you’re going to see those things. Things that people want left under there, in the dark.”

“I do need to know,” I tell him.

“Then be careful,” he says. “And only believe about half of what you hear.”

“Okay,” I say. “Thank you. Thank you for talking to me.”

“And, kid?”

“Yeah?”

“If half of what you hear doesn’t make your parents sound like great people . . . well, that’s probably the half that’s true.”

I clench the phone in my hand, the hard ball of words turning into something else, hot anger, surging, ready to come up and blister Riley’s ear, giving him something to take with him into retirement. But I don’t have time to turn the emotion into words before he hangs up.

I think of the Turnado car, splashing past me. I think of Lenore Usher, her lips a thin line when she tells me nobody knows what happened to my parents.

“Somebody knows,” I say into my phone, even though no one is listening.

“Felicity Turnado knows.”

Chapter 35

Felicity

“I don’t know!” I spit back at