Page 21 of Broken Things

Hank Ball’s workshop is nearly the size of the house—and, in contrast to the rest of the property, pristine. Both doors are rolled open to reveal a clean and bright interior, neatly fitted out with circular saws and benches, drafting tables and shelves. One wall is tacked entirely with paper and labeled for tools I’ve never even heard of.

And one wall is shiny with dozens and dozens of instruments.

Tubas, saxophones, clarinets reflecting sun off their polish: it’slike some vertical band dropped their gear before running.

Mr. Ball must be into old clocks, too, because there are plenty of those, including a cuckoo clock frozen with its wooden figurines on parade, like a face stuck with its tongue out. He’s straddling a workbench, doing some fiddly operation on a grandfather clock with all its parts exploding everywhere, like a body mid-surgery.

He barely glances up to look at us. “Help you?” is what he says. I might even think he doesn’t know who we are. But that’s impossible.

Everyone knows who we are—or who they think we are, at least.

Mia takes up Abby’s spiel about the spring cleaning and the mouthpiece. I have to hand it to her. She used to be a shit liar. But she’s doing a passable job.

Hank just keeps on working. His fingers—stumpy with age and arthritis—move with surprising grace. I try to imagine those fingers holding on to a rock, bashing Summer’s head with it. But all I see—all I’ve ever seen—is a shadow, clinging to her back like some kind of horrible cloak, pouring itself down her throat when she tries to scream.

“Might’ve come off one of my horns,” he says at last. “Doesn’t matter now, though, does it? Ain’t missed it in five years. You can go on and trash it.” He straightens up at last, wiping his hands on his jeans. But he stays seated. “We don’t keep nothing she had her hands on around here, anyway. Barbara doesn’t like it. Might as well toss it like all the rest. Besides.” His eyes are mud brown, nested under enormous eyebrows like insects burrowingfor cover. “Can’t believe you came all the way out here because of some old junk like that.”

And suddenly I remember that moment in the bathroom when I had my pants around my ankles. I remember a creak outside the door and seeing the wink of an eye at the keyhole.Blue.

“Did you ever hear Summer mention a Lillian Harding?” I ask. Strangely, the fact that it wasn’t him all those years ago—that it must have been Summer, doing it as a joke or to freak me out, or both—makes me want to pin the murder on Mr. Ball even more, not less. I watch closely for his reaction, but he doesn’t even blink.

“Never had any girls coming round here for Summer except for you,” he says. “Had to run off some of those football boys a few times, though. Summer had gone and turned those boys’ heads. They were at each other’s throats, fighting over her like she was a trophy. Lost more than a game or two because of it, I bet.” He shook his head. “I told her she shouldn’t be hanging with older boys like that. What’d she think they wanted from her, anyway? I told her she would get into damn trouble. And look. Look what happened.‎” He speaks with sudden viciousness, and Mia goes tense beside me. I have an old urge to take her hand, to tell her it’ll be okay. But Mia’s not my responsibility anymore. “She went and got herself killed.”

“You’re acting like it was her fault,” I say. “Like you think she deserved it.”

He stands up then. He plants both hands on his workbench and heaves up to his feet. For a second, I’m half-afraid he’ll come at me.

But he just limps slowly out into the sunshine. His left foot drags slightly when he walks. Mr. Ball, like his wife, seems to have aged two decades in the past five years.

“Nah, she didn’t deserve it,” he says, in a softer voice. “It wasn’t her fault, neither. She’d had it rough. Her mama pretty much booted her curbside when money ran tight for drugs. And she’d been bounced around some bad places. Some real bad places, with some real bad people.”

A memory overwhelms me: Summer, looking up at me calmly, while her cheek reddened with the impact of my fist. It was the first and only time I’d ever hit her. It was the first and only time I’d ever hit anyone.

“But she didn’t make it easier on herself, that’s for sure,” he continues. “Her lying and stealing. Running around with those boys. Jake and Heath and that boy Owen they looked at and God knows who else. Still. We thought if we gave her a stable home...”

“Sure,” I say, crossing my arms. The cat is still slinking around the shadows, and I don’t like the look of it. It reminds me a lot of their old cat, Bandit; Summer hated that cat with a passion. “And spied on her, and looked through her email, and kept her basically on lockdown...”

Mia shoots me a look and mutters, “Brynn.” But I don’t care. Someone killed Summer. Someone dragged her into a stone circle and made her into a sacrifice. And I’m sick of seeing the killer’s face only in my dreams, a gaping hole that turns to fog as soon as I wake up.

“She needed rules. She needed structure. She’d been running wild her whole life. Never had anyone give a shit about where she was or who she talked to. You think that’s what caring for people is all about? Letting them do whatever they want?”‎ He tilts his head back to look down at me, and I think of how Summer used to do the same thing, even though I was two inches taller. And isn’t that, after all, what we did with Summer? Didn’t we let her do whatever she wanted—to us, to everyone? “You can think what you want. But we cared for that girl. We would have kept her. We tried to.”

The Balls’ new cat slinks out into a patch of sunshine and rolls down into the dirt. Watching me. Tail lashing.

“I was up in Burlington the day she died, filling out paperwork for her adoption.” This he says so quietly I nearly miss it. “We were going to tell her that night.”

No wonder the police never looked at Mr. Ball. I feel like an idiot. Worse. I feel like a zero. I can tell Mia does, too. Her skin is the color of old cheese. Even Abby looks sheepish.

“Sorry for wasting your time.” Mia can hardly speak above a whisper. She won’t look at me.

“That’s all right.” Mr. Ball squints at us. Then he says, “You know, I always felt kind of sorry for you two. For what it’s worth, I always knew you didn’t do it. Not a chance.”

My whole body goes airless, like the words have knocked away my breath.

“She really had you wrapped around her finger, didn’t she?”He means both of us, I’m sure, but he’s looking straight at me when he says it. “Well. That’s just how she was.”

For a long, long second, we just stare at each other. Then, finally, he shifts his eyes to Mia.

“Sorry I couldn’t help you. But you know what they say about the sleeping dogs.” He smiles sadly. “Best to let them lie.”

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