“How can I help you, Miss…?” he asked in a dry, gravelly voice.
“Beatrix Corbyn,” I said, figuring from experience that my full name would go over better with the school staff than my preferred nickname. I had to care what they thought at least a little if I was going to get answers. “I’m looking for my brother.”
The declaration had felt much more momentous when I’d pictured making it before. In reality, the words simply faded into the air, and the spindly man continued peering at me, a puzzled line forming in the middle of his forehead.
“He got a spot here on scholarship,” I went on. “Cade Harrison? He came at the end of August last year.”
The man shifted his weight, and I got the impression he’d have liked to close the door in my face. Instead, he nudged it a little wider and stepped back.
“Why don’t you come in and I’ll see what I can tell you? I’m Dean Wainhouse, and all student affairs at Roseborne College fall within my purview.”
I didn’t know what exactly I’d been expecting from the school office, but it definitely wasn’t the room I stepped into. It held a big oak desk surrounded by bookshelves at one end and a sitting area with a sofa and armchairs around a fireplace at the other. No secretaries, no filing cabinets, no computer stations—none of the typical features I’d become familiar with during my many trips to various offices across elementary, middle, and high school.
Apparently the dean handled his own paperwork and scheduling. If there was any paperwork. He positioned himself behind the desk, but he didn’t take anything out of the drawers or any books off the shelves. You’d have thought the guy believed any information he needed to know would absorb into him by osmosis just by standing there.
I stayed on my feet too, liking the feel of my boots’ thick soles supporting me, and waited to see what he’d say next.
His stare shifted to gaze off into the distance beyond me. “Last August, you said?”
“Yes. Our foster father drove him out here. I came along to see the place.” To see Cade off. I’d thought it was only going to be for a few months, until Christmas at the very most. Since we’d been thrown together three foster homes and twelve years ago, we’d never been apart even that long before.
“Very strange.” The dean frowned. “I don’t recall a student by the name of Cade Harrison. Are you sure it was Roseborne he came to and not one of the other private colleges in the state?”
“Yes,” I said. “Like I said, I was here. I saw the place.” And how could he be so sure whether Cade had been enrolled without looking at a single record?
But even as I spoke, a worm of doubt wriggled into my mind. When I’d gone searching for the scholarship documents to confirm the school’s address, I hadn’t been able to find a trace of them. The Monroes had stared at me in bewilderment when I’d asked them about the college.
Of course, they’d also looked totally befuddled when I’d mentioned the drive out here and the fact that Cade was missing at all. Our foster mother’s voice came back to me with a fresh chill. Cade? What are you talking about, Beatrix? You were alone when we took you in—and it hasn’t been hard to see why. We’ve never fostered any boys.
Like he’d never existed. But I knew I hadn’t made up twelve years of memories. I couldn’t have simply imagined the most important person in my entire life, the only person I’d ever been able to count on. Even if all the photos I’d had of us together had vanished from my phone and my computer. Even if none of the mutual friends I’d talked to had so much as recognized his name. Cade? Um, no, haven’t known anybody named that. Why do you look so serious about this, Trix? You sure you’re all right in the head?
All I’d gotten as I’d tried to understand what was going on was confusion, skepticism, and laughter. But I could still feel the ghost of Cade’s hand knuckling my shoulder when he teasingly gave me a hard time. The coppery scent of his skin when he pulled me close. There was no way I could have made all of that up… right?
I’d been here. I’d known the bramble-choked walls, the wrought-iron gate, and the looming mansion the moment I’d seen them. This was the last place I was sure my brother had been. Whatever had happened to him—and to everyone who’d known him other than me—the trail started here.
Unless he’d been completely erased from here too, with no trail left to follow.
Unless I was going crazy, and he really hadn’t existed at all.
“I really am sorry I can’t offer more,” Dean Wainhouse said. “It is a tight-knit school. I’m generally familiar with all our students.”
I dragged in a breath. I’d only just gotten here—I wasn’t going to roll over just like that.
“Can I stick around for a little while?” I asked. “Talk with some of the students, see if anyone remembers seeing him back then?” It was possible something had happened to him before he’d even started classes.
The dean’s expression gave me the same feeling as when I’d thought he was going to close the door on me, but after a moment he nodded. “All right. As long as you don’t interfere with their studies. Please don’t enter the classrooms or interrupt anyone who’s at work.”
“That’s fair. Thank you.”
I slipped out of the office, trying to ignore the sinking sensation in my stomach. What if no one here could tell me anything? What if all the other students were pricks just like the ones I’d encountered outside?
Where the hell are you, Cade?
The foyer was still empty. I wasn’t sure which halls led to classrooms and which to whatever leisure rooms the college offered. In the absence of a clear direction, I wandered toward the nearest doorway to the left of the grand staircase.
The wood-paneled wall there held seven painted portraits, all the same size and in the same gold-flecked frames. I stopped for a second, eyeing them. From the rectangle of faded varnish at the end of the row, there’d used to be eight. The strange thing, though, was none of the figures were elderly school patrons or former deans or what have you. All seven of the portraits appeared to be of older teens—three girls and four guys.
They all stared straight forward, wearing the same uniform of white dress shirt and burgundy jacket. The paintings had been done in totally different styles, though—some watercolor, some acrylic, some oil, and obviously by different artists. One was so detailed I’d have taken it for a photograph from a distance; one verged on abstract with its bold colors and blunt lines.
Other than the particularly detailed one, they were decent but amateurish enough that I couldn’t imagine they’d been professionally done. Maybe it’d been a self-portrait project from art class, and these seven had been held up as the best?
I was about to walk on when my gaze caught on a mark at the bottom right of one of the girl portraits—where you’d expect the artist’s signature to be. My breath caught in my throat. I stepped closer, my left hand rising to touch my right forearm.
It was a signature, just not in any way most people would have recognized: a little white starburst, slightly uneven with the top tines a little longer than the bottom ones. It was Cade’s secret signature, modeled after the pale starburst birthmark just below his left elbow. I had a nearly identical mark on my right arm, like a mirror image, where I’d carved it with one of our then-foster father’s hunting knives when I was eleven and Cade was twelve, as a promise that our lives were meant to be one and the same.