Secret Brother Read online

I paused. I could feel it. He was leading up to something, something to do with the poisoned boy.

  “It’s good to think of people other than yourself, especially when you’re suffering some disappointment or tragedy.”

  “I don’t want to ever stop thinking about Willie,” I said firmly.

  “Of course, you shouldn’t, and neither should I. We should cherish his memory, and I plan to create an endowment in his name,” he said. “You’ll be with me when we establish it.”

  “What sort of endowment, Grandpa?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Maybe a grant or an award. Maybe a scholarship at your school. I tell you what. You’ll be just as important to the decision, okay?”

  I nodded. That sounded good. Uncle Bobby was right, I thought. I shouldn’t be so intolerant of how Grandpa was acting and what he was trying to do.

  I could see that he was hesitating. He finished his meal, drank some water, and sat back. “I was thinking that you might like to go with me tonight to the hospital. I’m meeting with the neurologist about that little boy. He’s rather sad and I’m sure still very frightened. I have him in a private room, which is the most comfortable place he could be there, but there are no other young people. He sees only nurses and doctors,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It would be nice if you spoke to him. He has yet to say anything to anyone,” he added.

  I looked up. “What would I say, Grandpa?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can ask him how he is. Anything.”

  “Why would he talk to me?”

  “I don’t know. You’re a young person, too. Maybe he has a sister.”

  “Well, where is she? Why doesn’t someone come to ask about him and take him home?” I demanded. I couldn’t contain my anger. “How do you just deposit your own child like some . . . garbage?”

  He shook his head. “I’m trying to find out.”

  “But you’ve run into a dead end.”

  “Right now,” he said. “I’m still on it.”

  “Someone could have a little boy, and they don’t want him, and we lost Willie. It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not fair. That’s a lesson you have to learn in life. Things don’t happen just because they should or because it’s fair. You have to make things happen, even the right things, Clara Sue. So what about it? You should get out of the house, and I could use your help with the boy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Whatever. I’ll be going in about . . .” He looked at his watch. “A half hour.”

  My Faith appeared. She looked at my plate.

  “I ate all I could,” I said sullenly. She nodded. “It wasn’t any less delicious than ever.”

  “No, that’s for sure,” Grandpa told her. “How’s Myra?”

  “She fell asleep eating,” My Faith said.

  “I’ll check on her later,” Grandpa said.

  “I’ll check on her now,” I snapped, and got up before he could say anything.

  “You want some of that peach pie you love?” My Faith called after me.

  “I don’t love it,” I replied. “Willie loves it.”

  The silence fell like thunder behind me.

  4

  When I looked at myself in the hallway mirror, I thought I looked more mean than mournful. I didn’t like that. It seemed a wrong feeling to have right now. My sorrow over Willie should make every other feeling do what my grandfather often said about things he didn’t think were as important: “take a backseat.”

  I obviously had an expression on my face that drew Myra’s attention. The moment I opened her door, even though I did it softly and slightly, she looked at me, her eyes taking on that familiar curiosity, this time when she correctly suspected that something was bothering me more than what was to be expected following Willie’s funeral. I wasn’t surprised. Who, after all, knew me better than Myra? Even before my parents died, she had become like another grandmother to me. Having been my mother’s nanny for so long, she was as familiar as my grandmother Lucy had been with the gestures, expressions, and quirks I had inherited from my mother. Both of them often said, “You’re just like your mother.”

  Myra lifted her good arm, and I ran to her bedside to let her take my hand.

  “Someone said something that bothered you?” she asked. “One of your grandfather’s friends?”

  “No. There’s no one here now but Grandpa. How are you?” I asked.

  “I think I can now tell My Faith how Lazarus felt the moment he was awakened,” she replied, and struggled into a sitting position. “Let’s not talk about me, love. I’ll mend. I’ve had plenty of practice with sadness, as, unfortunately, you’ve had in so short a time. So? What is it? You look ready to take on the House of Commons.” She brushed strands of my hair away from my eyes.

  “Grandpa wants me to go with him to the hospital to visit that poisoned boy tonight. He thinks I might get him to talk.”

  She nodded. “Thought it might have something to do with that.” She sat back against her pillow but held on to my hand. “May I tell you something I’ve learned, love? There’s an abundance of mean, selfish, and uncharitable activity in this world. We’ll never lack for it, so we should always embrace the opposite wherever we find it. You’re not ready to care about anyone else. That’s understandable, but maybe you should think about it more for your grandfather than the little boy, as sad and horrible as his life is now.”

  “That’s what Uncle Bobby was telling me.”

  “My mum used to say you can spend your life coping with the unhappiness and disappointment you’ll experience, or you can spend more on the happiness and successes. Dad would tell her that was nothing more than seeing the glass half full and not half empty. Then they’d squabble about who said it better. They’d disagree over whether to put the milk in first or the tea, both quoting this king or that queen, but they loved each other to beat the band.”

  I smiled. Being in Myra’s company was like walking out to a cloudy day and suddenly entering a burst of sunshine. I hoped she would always be here to cheer me up. “So you think I should go?”

  “We’ll never forget our Willie, but it’s important now to get your mind on other things, too. I can’t say I’m not curious. Aren’t you? Where’d this boy come from? Did the man who brought him just find him lying about somewhere? Why was he afraid to tell anyone anything? Who’d want to poison a little boy, anyway? Unless it was by accident and they were afraid of getting blamed, of course, but why was he so thin and small?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go with him and let you know what I’ve learned.”

  “I’ll be up and about when you come home. I just need a bit more of a rest. But I’m not taking those fog pills,” she added firmly.

  I hugged her and went looking for Grandpa. He was on the phone in his office. When he saw me in the doorway, he put up his right forefinger.

  “I’m heading there now in a little while,” he said into the phone, “but I don’t have much more to tell you. Suit yourself,” he added, and hung up.

  “Some police detective. He called my office to ask me more questions about the boy today, too, but I didn’t have time to speak to him. Don’t know why the police are hounding me about it. You go and do something for someone, and suddenly you’re the one with all the answers,” he muttered. “Like I can hand them all over, neatly tied with a ribbon on a silver platter. Everyone wants their work made easier.”

  “I decided I will go with you,” I said.

  “Good. We’ll leave in ten,” he said.

  I nodded and hurried up to my room. I never thought of my mother as a conceited person or even a little too much concerned about her looks, but one thing that impressed me about her was that she wouldn’t leave the house without looking her best, no matter where she went, even if it was just to the super
market.

  “Looking messy in public says a lot about how you live your life, Clara Sue,” she told me. Myra either agreed or wanted to be sure she always pleased my mother, even now. She always made sure I didn’t leave the house with my hair disheveled, or wearing something torn or missing a button, or certainly wearing anything with a stain on it.

  I chose a prettier blouse than the one I was wearing, changed my shoes to a newer pair, and then brushed my hair, pinning it back with hair clips. I couldn’t throw off my sense of guilt for caring about my looks so soon after Willie’s funeral, but it wasn’t that easy to push aside what I knew had pleased my mother.

  Grandpa certainly looked pleased when he saw me. He smiled, put his hand on my shoulder, and then held my hand as we walked out to his car. Jimmy Wilson and two of the grounds workers paused to look our way. They were replacing bulbs in the driveway and landscape lights. Jimmy smiled and waved, obviously happy to see me out and about. I waved back and got into Grandpa’s sedan, immediately feeling funny about it.

  There hadn’t been all that many times in my life when I had gone somewhere with Grandpa and not had Willie along, too. Sometimes Grandpa took me to a friend’s home, but even if we went shopping for something I needed, Willie would be with us, because he knew that Grandpa would find something to buy for him, too. I usually sat in the front, and Willie sat in the rear. He would talk from the moment we drove out of the estate to wherever we were going. Grandpa called him “Motor Mouth” and said he could get more words to the mile than anyone he knew. He also said he would have been a good passenger for him to take along when he used to drive trucks long distances. “I wouldn’t ever fall asleep with Willie in the truck,” he’d say. That didn’t discourage Willie. If anything, it got him to say more.

  Perhaps it was the quiet. Maybe Grandpa was thinking about Willie talking a blue streak, too, but we rode for quite a while before either of us spoke.

  “The poisoned boy really hasn’t spoken yet, Grandpa?” I began.

  “He doesn’t even cry. He doesn’t call for his mother. First they thought he might be deaf, because he wouldn’t even turn toward the person speaking to him, but they know he’s not. My guess is he doesn’t trust anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Someone he should have trusted disappointed him. That’s one theory Dr. Patrick expressed. She hasn’t had any luck getting him to talk to her, either.”

  “Who is she?”

  “The psychiatrist I asked to look in on him,” he said.

  I didn’t know anyone who went to a psychiatrist, much less a young person. It seemed so strange. Weren’t his physical injuries more important? “Uncle Bobby said he can’t move his legs.”

  Grandpa nodded. “Dr. Friedman, the neurologist, told me it’s like the boy’s neurological systems have shut down. He said he has seen similar cases. The arsenic did some damage to his nerves and affected his muscles. It could take a long time for him to recuperate. Some patients don’t. He’s stopping in tonight and will tell me more about it.”

  “What’s that all mean? He’ll die, too?”

  “No, not now. He could have, almost did. They said another hour or so might have made all the difference. He’ll be in a wheelchair for a while . . . maybe forever.”

  “Oh. Then he’ll have to go to a special place, right?” I said quickly. Even though I had agreed to go to see him and even to speak to him—mainly because of the things Myra had told me—I was still hoping he would be out of our lives soon and forever.

  “We’ll see,” Grandpa said.

  When we arrived at the hospital, the police detective who had been looking for Grandpa earlier greeted us in the lobby. He introduced himself as Lieutenant Bronson. Grandpa wasn’t happy he was there and didn’t hide it. He approached us the moment we entered.

  “I told you everything I knew on the phone,” Grandpa snapped before the man could even say hello. He had shown us his identification. “I don’t know why you’re coming to me to ask these questions. I never saw him before,” Grandpa said. Before the detective could ask anything else, he added, his voice sharp, “And neither has my granddaughter. I don’t know anything more about him than you do.”

  “So you don’t know anything about the man who brought him here, either?” Lieutenant Bronson asked, as if Grandpa hadn’t said a word yet. Either he couldn’t see how annoyed my grandfather was or he didn’t care. “You did hire a private detective, I understand.”

  Grandpa looked surprised that the police detective knew, and then he shook his head. “He didn’t find out anything, and I didn’t learn anything about the man on my own, either. We weren’t exactly watching and listening to other patients’ problems at the time we brought my grandson here, you know.”

  Grandpa Arnold wasn’t usually this irritable when it came to police or anyone else who didn’t have anything to do with his business. He was a very easy­going, gentle man, despite his size. If anyone accused him of being that way, he usually blamed it on my grandma, who he claimed softened him up. I was puzzled about why he was so antagonistic with the police. Did he blame them somehow for what had happened to Willie?

  “I know. I’m sorry about your loss. Terrible thing,” Lieutenant Bronson said. “I just thought that with the interest you were showing and the money you were spending, you might know a little more by now that would help us get to the bottom of this.”

  “There is no bottom for something this bad,” Grandpa said. “All we know right now is what we were told by the nurses in the emergency room and what the doctors are telling me. I’d have no reason to hold back. I’d like to see whoever did this punished, too.”

  Lieutenant Bronson nodded, glanced at me, and stood there staring for a few dead moments, moments when he looked like he couldn’t squeeze a thought out of his brain or a word off his tongue. It was as if he had gone off somewhere for a few seconds and left his body behind.

  I supposed everyone got like that sometimes, but it reminded me of a time when I was playing with my food at breakfast instead of eating it, and my grandma told me not to be wasteful of my time and especially to avoid what she called “dead time.” Those were the moments when you were in a sort of daze, not thinking or talking. She said seconds were like bubbles, and just like you couldn’t keep them from popping, you couldn’t keep time stored up in your pocket. There was no piggy bank for minutes. Time wasted was time lost forever: “Even blessed Jesus couldn’t resurrect it.”

  “Amen to that,” My Faith had said. She knew all about Jesus and often quoted the Bible. She traveled thirty-five miles every Sunday to attend her church in Charlottesville and volunteered to cook church dinners regularly.

  “Well,” Lieutenant Bronson finally said, “as of today, we still don’t have a missing-child report that would fit him. It’s really weird.”

  Grandpa grunted. I had the feeling his private detective had at least told him that much.

  Lieutenant Bronson produced a card and gave it to my grandpa. “If you learn anything that will help get the people who did this . . .”

  Grandpa took it and shoved it quickly into his pocket.

  “We’ll follow up on what we have and see what’s what,” Lieutenant Bronson added.

  “You do that. In the meantime, I’ll look after him,” Grandpa told him, with such firmness in his voice that I couldn’t help but imagine steel doors slamming shut. There wasn’t even a hint of temporary when he used the word “meantime.” He seemed to know instinctively that whoever had done this to the little boy would avoid detection and especially avoid having to care for him. The poisoned boy was disowned, cast out to either die or disappear, and my grandfather was determined to make it impossible for him to suffer a moment more than he already had.

  Lieutenant Bronson smiled at me and then hurried away.

  “C’mon,” Grandpa said, taking my hand. We went to the elevator and rode up to th
e floor where the boy was being treated in a private room.

  When we got there, I paused in the doorway, even though Grandpa marched right in. The boy didn’t look much different from the way he had that day Willie was brought to the hospital. He still looked withered and tiny, way too small for all the equipment that surrounded him. After a moment, I followed Grandpa in. The boy’s eyes were on us, and I thought he almost smiled at the sight of Grandpa.

  “Hey, champ,” Grandpa said. “How you doin’?”

  The boy didn’t answer. He looked from Grandpa to me and just stared at me. Grandpa noticed.

  “This is my granddaughter, Clara Sue,” he told him. The boy seemed to show more interest in me. Grandpa urged me on with his eyes. I stepped closer.

  “Hi,” I said. “What’s your name? What grade are you in?”

  We waited, holding our breath, because his lips parted, and he looked like he might speak, but they closed again, and this time, he looked away, turning his head away. I looked at Grandpa. His eyes urged me to continue.

  “I’m in the tenth grade,” I said. “Do you like school?”

  We waited, but he didn’t turn back.

  “How do they know he’s not deaf?” I asked.

  “They know. Keep trying,” Grandpa said. “I just saw the neurologist arrive. I have to speak with him.”

  He walked out, and I stood there. The boy was so thin. His wrists looked tiny, certainly tinier than Willie’s. His eyebrows were very fine, almost invisible. All of his features were small but perfect. I imagined every one of his nurses had a broken heart over him and couldn’t keep their hands off him. He looked as fragile as one of my mother’s special collectible dolls given to her as a child. Despite what he had gone through, his skin looked as smooth as glass. How could his mother or father not want to cherish him? How could anyone want to kill someone so dainty and precious?

  Standing here beside him, I was losing my anger. I didn’t expect that, and I didn’t like it. I kept telling myself that I should be home thinking about Willie, writing another letter to him, and not standing here caring about this . . . strange bird. My rage once again began to rise to the surface.