I arrived back at Stonehaven eight months after my trial and conviction. I’d been sentenced to only fourteen months, thanks to the work of the expensive attorney that Vanessa hired on my behalf (paid for, I’d later learn, with the money we found in Michael’s kitchen). Instead of a felony, my grand larceny charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. With good behavior and time served, I was back at Stonehaven by November, six weeks after Daisy was born, almost exactly a year since I’d shown up on the same doorstep as Ashley.
Benny was living here by then, too, helping his sister with the baby. Vanessa had finally talked him into moving out of the Orson Institute and in with her. It was to be a “trial run” at independent living, which so far seemed to be fairly successful, even if the ghost of failure always lingered in the stones: What happens if? But nothing had happened yet, and in the meantime, they were both so careful with each other. Vanessa hovered over Benny constantly, watching as he took his meds, buying him notebooks and fancy pen sets for his drawings. (Mostly, now, he drew Daisy.) He, in turn, was a consummate uncle, content to spend endless hours reading Pat the Bunny and Mr. Silly, drawing on the infinite patience of someone who has spent the last decade of their life just watching bugs crawl.
They both seemed happy, and honestly, I was happy for them.
He and I went on a long walk on my first day back, down to the shore—both of us going a little stiff and awkward as we passed the caretaker’s cottage—where we sat watching the boats out on the lake. He seemed a little slower, dulled, not quite the Benny I remembered; and yet something of the teenager I’d known was still there, too, in the way he smiled sideways at me, his neck flushing with embarrassment.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” I said. “I thought you said you’d never come back.”
“I didn’t think I would, but someone needs to keep my sister sane so I figured who better to do it than someone who is even less sane than she is?” He picked up a flat stone from the shore and threw it out toward the water, with a schoolboy flick of the wrist that sent it skipping four times before it sank. He turned and smiled awkwardly at me. “Also she promised me that you were going to be here.”
His smile spoke of heartbreak and loss but also a bit of hope; and just like that I understood the other reason that Vanessa had invited me back here. It wasn’t for my incomparable curatorial knowledge of antiques, or even to buy my silence. I was a lure for her brother. I was there to help glue her family back together.
Maybe that was to be my penance. If so, I thought maybe I was OK with that.
“I’m not going to moon over you or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he continued. “I’m not delusional. I mean, I am, but not that way. I don’t expect you to save me, or anything. It’d just be nice to be friends again, you know?”
“I do.” I thought of the superhero Nina that he had once drawn of me, the one who could slay dragons with her fiery sword. I wondered if maybe I’d finally lived up to the promise of his drawing, and my dragon was currently floating at the bottom of the lake. Or maybe I was the dragon, and I’d slain my worst self; and now that there was nothing left to slay I could finally put the sword down and just be.
“I’m sorry,” he said, fingering another rock that he’d plucked up from the shore. “I’m sorry that I didn’t stand up to my father when he humiliated you that day. I’m sorry that I let my parents make you feel bad about yourself, and I’m also sorry that I didn’t tell you that I was sorry sooner.”
“God, Benny, it’s OK. You were a kid,” I said. “I’m sorry that my mom was an opportunistic thief who did terrible things to your parents.”