Page 64 of The Whisper Place
He laughed and even though it was just as high, just as soft as his voice had been, the sound made my skin crawl.
“Did you forget who found you running on that gravel road? Who visited you in the bakery that day?”
I sat up, my arms shaking from the effort, and tried to make myself think, to separate the real from the not-real.
“I found you the first time when you came to visit your mom. You made such a big deal out of going to the movies with her every year. I knew you’d do it again, even if you thought you could just disappear after murdering my dad.”
“Theo.” The man’s outline wavered into focus, shadows settling into brow, nose, chin. Ted’s son crouched outside the time-out room. My stepbrother. My kidnapper.
He was still too thin, still carved out from a lifetime of skirting the edges of Ted’s ego, his shoulders permanently hunched and battered by Ted’s rage.
“That’s how you found me?”
“I followed her to the theater on her birthday and waited until you showed up. It was easy to tag your car and track you back to Iowa City.”
I could see him now, the cold shock of Theo Kramer ripped out of a nightmare and thrust into my new life, standing tall and awkward in front of the bakery cases. “Hello, Kate. Long time.”
I’d sputtered and struggled for words, trying to keep myself from sprinting out the bakery door and pretending this was normal. He seemed normal, or normal enough for him that I thought he must not know. I waited for him to bring up his dad, mention that he hadn’t seen him or maybe what a raging abusive asshole he was, since we were a full state away and far from the shadow of his rotting corpse. But he didn’t. Theo ordered a black coffee and watched me while I filled it with shaking hands.
“It’s good to see you.”
I said something in reply. I have no idea what. We made excruciating small talk for the length of time it took to ring up his order after losing all feeling in my hands. Then he left. As soon as Blakecame back from her errand, I told her I felt sick, tore off my apron, and practically sprinted outside. I ran with my head on a swivel to try to see where Theo went, but he’d vanished as quickly as he appeared.
“I wanted to see how you’d react,” Theo said. He was still crouched in front of the crawl space door, running a finger lightly along the metal plate of the lock. “When I walked into that bakery, I didn’t know if you’d run or try to hide again. Maybe you’d lie and ask me how my father was.”
“I knew exactly how your father was.” Dead. Rotting.
He didn’t act like he’d heard me, still hunching into himself and brushing the lock plate with light strokes of his finger. “Or maybe you’d break down and confess what you’d done.”
My mind raced, trying to understand how Theo knew I killed his father. Had he been in the house when it happened, sitting silently upstairs while I kicked Ted’s head in? We’d never searched the entire home, too busy burying the body and scrubbing the kitchen clean. Theo could have watched us pull his father’s body across the lawn from an upstairs window.
Or maybe there were hidden cameras in the house. A surveillance system we’d never known about. That would fit in perfectly with Ted’s controlling, paranoid brand. Theo could’ve come home, found Ted gone, and watched the recording. But if he’d done that, why hadn’t he just handed the evidence over to the police?
“Why?” I sat up as far as the crawl space allowed, studying the backlit shape of the man who’d returned me to the belly of my every nightmare. As a teenager, I’d barely looked at Theo Kramer. He shrank to the edges of the room, existing like a ghost in his father’s house. When he wasn’t doing chores or eating meals withus, he stayed in his room and there was never any sound of music or videos coming from behind his door. I imagined him googling flight schedules under a blanket, planning his exit strategy.That’s what will happen to us, I’d thought. If my mom never left Ted, we’d become ghosts, too. When Theo left for college the fall after Ted and Mom got married, I was jealous because he’d gotten away. I never expected to see Theo Kramer again in my life.
“Why did you track me down? Why are you doing this? You’re not Ted.”
His finger paused on the metal lock plate and his head tilted, considering me.
“Actions have consequences, Kate.”
Those words. They were Ted’s, spoken every time I’d done something that didn’t meet his impossible expectations. Ted, dumping a trash can out on my bed. Ted, locking me in my bedroom after making me lie to the police. Ted, speaking through his hunched, broken son’s mouth.
He flicked the flashlight on again, shining it in my face. I flinched and covered my eyes.
“You should know that by now. If you do something wrong, you get punished. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you have to be in time-out.”
The light danced away from my eyes and traced a path along the walls. For the first time, I could see the room where I was being held prisoner. The outside wall was concrete blocks, molded and covered in cobwebs. The inside wall was wood. The dark panels looked streaky and mottled, but as my eyes adjusted I could see the streaks were claw marks, dug out by fingernails. Near the top of the wall, four jagged letters had been scratched out.
The light disappeared and the door slammed shut. I barely heard the click of the lock. Crawling over to the wall, I ran my hand over the wood until I could feel the ridges of what my eyes had seen.
THeO.
I wasn’t the only one who’d been put in time-outs.
Max
“She’s trapped somewhere? In the dark?” Charlie wasn’t taking the news of Jonah’s dream well. The three of us sat around his kitchen table and for once he wasn’t pacing. He had his head in his hands, rocking back and forth, with bloodshot eyes that looked like he’d slept as well as Jonah.
