Katie sat in silence for a moment.
“Why did Hobbes want Chris to take the book?”
“I don’t know. Chris thought it was maybe because it was worth a lot of money—that it was kind of severance pay. But we had no idea how to sell it or anything. And then this guy phoned us. He said Hobbes had told him to get in touch about it. And so Chris made him an offer.”
“And this is who Chris went to meet at the café?”
“Yeah. He wouldn’t give his name, and the money was almost too good to be true, so not taking the book along was meant to be an insurance policy. I was supposed to turn up with it once Chris had had a chance to feel him out and see if he was genuine. But then…”
Alderson trailed off helplessly. The guilt he felt over not going with Chris was obvious, and Katie could see him doing the same thing she had done once. Wishing he’d done things differently. Hammering on a door even though he knew it was sealed shut behind him.
“Where’s the book now?” she said.
Alderson nodded toward Chris’s backpack.
She put her glass on the table, then reached down and opened the cords sealing Chris’s bag.
“Hey—” Alderson started.
But she ignored him and began to discard the clothes packed at the top. About halfway down the backpack, her fingers brushed against plastic, and she felt a jolt of electricity. Her hand recoiled as though it had burned her, but then she forced herself to reach in and pull it out.
An old notebook, wrapped in protective plastic.
She turned it around in her hands, her fingertips still tingling slightly wherever they touched it. The covers and spine were made of black leather, and there was a thick wedge of well-preserved pages between them.
The silence in the room began singing slightly.
It’s just a book, she told herself.
Which was true. That was all it was—just a horrible relic from the past. No matter what anyone else chose to believe, it contained nothing more than the deluded justifications of a child killer. And yet the book felt heavier to her than it seemed it should have, as though whatever scrawls of ink had been added to the pages inside had somehow doubled it in weight.
“Have you read it?” she said.
“God, no.”
“What about Chris?”
Alderson shook his head. Then he frowned.
“Are you…?”
Katie looked down at the book.
Without realizing it, her fingers had begun absently toying at the seal.
“No.” She put the book down quickly on the bed beside her. “I’m not interested in it.”
Then she began rummaging through her brother’s backpack again.
“What are you looking for?”
“Chris’s phone.”
“He had that with him.”
Of course he had; she wasn’t thinking. She looked up at Alderson and held out her hand.
“Give me yours.”
He hesitated, but the reluctance on his face only held for a couple of seconds. She could tell that a part of him wanted to take care of this himself, but the fact remained that he had called her. He was the same age as Chris, and right then Katie felt very much like the older sister. The one who took charge and sorted things out.
The one who looked after people.
When he passed her his phone, she flicked through until she found the contact number for Chris and then dialed it. The call went to voice mail.
“His phone is turned off,” she said.
“I already tried.”
“So I’ll send him a message.”
Alderson sounded alarmed. “Don’t read—”
“I’m really not interested.”
She opened up the SMS conversation between Alderson and Chris. Her brother’s phone might have been turned off right now, but if whoever had taken him wanted the book that badly, then perhaps they would switch it back on again at some point.
I have the book, she typed. We need to talk.
She hesitated for a moment.
And then decided to be forceful.
Hurt him and I’ll burn it.
She pressed send and put the phone on the table beside her. Alderson stared at it, as though thinking of asking for it back, then clearly decided it was better to let her handle this.
Katie wished she felt half as confident about that as he did.
“So now what?” he said.
“Now,” she said, “we wait.”
* * *
Which is what they did.
Every now and then she checked the phone, but there was no response to the text she’d sent. At one point, Alderson asked if it was safe for him to go outside for a cigarette. She thought about it and decided it probably would be: if anybody was going to find them here, it wouldn’t be because they randomly spotted him skulking outside. He was gone awhile, but she wasn’t worried. She figured he was probably chain-smoking—loading up for the night—and being alone gave her a chance to think. Not just about everything he’d told her, although she was still trying to make sense of that, but about her life up until now, and how the events of the past few days had knocked it off course and brought her here.
To this hotel room. To this situation.
And while she didn’t properly understand those thoughts either, they gave her an odd, incongruous feeling. She was frightened, yes. She was scared for her family. And she also knew she was in real trouble after running from the police. But there was also a strange kind of relief. It was like a lever had been pulled that had unexpectedly released her from rails she had been dutifully following without even realizing.
Like she had a chance to put something right before it went wrong.
Alderson hooked the chain on the door when he came back, for all the good that was likely to do them. Then he lay down on his bed with his hands beneath his head and stared up at the ceiling.
“I just want Chris back,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
“I keep kicking myself. If only I’d done this. If only I’d done that.”
I know the feeling, Katie thought. He sounded so despondent that she wanted to console him, but she knew there was nothing she could say that would make him feel better. The past was sealed away. All you could do was your best in the world it had brought you to.
Which reminded her of something.
“I liked your painting, by the way,” she said.
“My painting?”
“The one of you and Chris. The one made up of lots of smaller paintings. I know it wasn’t quite finished, but I thought it was lovely. And maybe that’s something to cling to, you know? That while you might have made some mistakes along the way, you also made lots of right decisions too.”
He was silent for a time.
“Thank you,” he said finally. “But actually, you’re wrong about one thing. The painting was finished.”
“What about the empty spaces?”
“You got what the picture meant, right?”
“I think so. It was you and Chris in the present, made up of people and places from your pasts. The things that made you both you. All the things that brought you together.”
“That’s right. And do you know what I was going to call it?”
“Unfinished?”
He laughed despite himself.
“No,” he said. “Hope.”