Final Fall

by Heather W. Petty

  “And if we don’t?” asked Seanie.

  I rested a hand over his. “If you don’t, then I’ll give you a twenty-minute sweetshop shopping spree.”

  Michael started to clap and Seanie smiled widely even after I ruffled his hair. “I’m sure I hate it already,” Sean said.

  Michael and Sean started talking feverishly about what they’d buy at the shop and how much they could gather in twenty minutes. Freddie leaned forward to speak quietly just to me.

  “You shouldn’t have said that.” He looked down at the floor. “Now he’ll be determined to hate it no matter what.”

  “I’m counting on you, Fred. I need you to keep everyone safe in America.”

  “Until you get there? You really are coming?”

  I drew a cross over my heart. “I promise.”

  He hugged me and I patted his back until he was ready to let go. And when I stood, I had to blink the tears from my eyes to look at Olivia properly.

  She rested a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “I’ll take care of them like they are my own family.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know why I trusted her. I shouldn’t have with my track record. But I suppose her chosen profession made her seem more trustworthy. Or perhaps it was how readily she admitted that she hadn’t trusted me to care for the boys when she’d seen me so out of control. I might have been making a giant mistake all over again, but right then I felt more assured than I ever had. She was an outsider, a normal person. She was separate from all the criminals in our lives. And she was going to take the boys to a boarding school where I could call and check in on how they were doing. It was going to be all right.

  Except for how I’d miss them. And how lost I felt when she let her hand fall from my shoulder. So I took her hand in mine and looked at her. I couldn’t speak, so I squeezed her hand and then left the train.

  I stood on the platform, watching them and waving until I was staring at empty tracks. I probably stood there too long, or at least that was what I told myself. I also told myself that it wouldn’t do to wallow in emotions when I had so much thinking to do, so many plans to make. What I needed was a good distraction, so I looked across at the people waiting along the platform and started to run their demographics in my head.

  But right as I’d settled on my list of outliers, including an ornately garbed grandmother clinging to the hand of a young child, my eyes were drawn to the man who stepped up next to them. I almost didn’t recognize Stan out of the black clothing that had become a uniform of sorts for my guards at the farm. He looked different in street clothes and with a cap on his head, but I’d spent months staring at his ugly face and listening to his jeers. I’d probably carry his face in my memory for the rest of my life.

  I didn’t want him to see me, so I moved back just enough to hide myself among the people and still have a good view of him. He seemed to be hiding as well, though I couldn’t understand why. He kept glancing up and pulling his cap down lower to conceal his face, so I followed his gaze to the CCTV cameras set to capture a picture of the entire platform. But those are only seen by operators and police.

  I leaned back as he turned my way, and when I dared to look again, he was staring at the ground.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard the gunshot in the barn, but that couldn’t have been Stan. For him to be in the station right in that moment meant he’d left either before or very near when I did. And when I thought about it, I hadn’t seen his face in the crowd of guards that surrounded Alice to demand their money. I couldn’t remember seeing him that entire morning. I didn’t know anything at all about his circumstances, but it seemed odd that he’d have left the farm without even fighting to get paid.

  Still, I stayed out of his sight line and kept him in mine. Whether he was trying to find me for Alice or had some other plan in mind, I couldn’t let him follow me back to London. I’d reenter my city on my terms, not his. And no one could know I was there. Not yet.

  • • •

  The smell of home is a powerful thing. Even through the hot, dusty smell of the Tube station the minute I stepped off the train, I could tell I was home. And by the time I made it to my beloved Baker Street, I wanted nothing more than to go to the park. My park. And I justified going by creating an errand for myself once I got there. I was tempted to torture myself with a stop at the bandstand, to spend an hour under the branches of the giant willow tree by the lake to make up for five months without paying my penance to Sadie.

  But instead I walked straight to the old, two-tiered fountain that had been turned into a planter. I sat on a nearby bench to wait for dusk, and for the paths around the planter to become deserted. Then I placed my hand on the plaque depicting the Tree of Life and tipped it up. Once it clicked, I heard the soft ticks of a timer and ran around to the other side before they stopped. I twisted the clover plaque to the left until the chamber inside was revealed. It seemed somehow poetic and yet still practical to stash my getaway papers and money there. And after waiting for a pair of dog walkers to pass me by, I opened the chamber again and stuffed about two thousand in pound notes on top—just in case.

  Then I sat back on the bench, and when the sun had disappeared completely, I pulled out a burner phone and called Lily Patel. I was sure she wouldn’t answer a number she didn’t recognize, and, as predicted, she let it go to voice mail.

  “I’m in London. Meet me tomorrow after school at your dad’s place. I’ll have a list.”

  It was completely dark when I walked up Gloucester, looking to rent a room for the night. I found one soon enough, not too posh, and it had a café downstairs where I could take my breakfast in the morning. I needed an early start. It was time to find out all that my father had been up to in the months of his unearned freedom.

  Chapter 11

  I spent most of the morning hiding across from my house—and watching. In my confinement, I’d imagined my father leaving the house early in the morning to start his day of corruption, with him and his cronies terrorizing the Westminster Borough of London. I’d imagined myself following him and finding a way to foil his plans from the shadows, never revealing it was me who was slowly ruining him. Then I’d finally lure him into a trap of my choosing, where I would out myself as his nemesis and take care of him for good.

  What I hadn’t imagined was that my father would spend his first three hours of the day sitting at the kitchen table and drinking like he always had. Jail hadn’t changed him at all; it had only cost him his job. Honestly, I didn’t need to hide. The whole of London could have pulled up a chair outside the kitchen windows and watched him stare into space or scroll through random websites on a tablet he couldn’t even bother to hold upright to read. How pathetically docile the monster looked, blinking his eyes to clear his stupor enough so he could stumble his way to the bathroom or collapse on his bed or some other mundane thing.

  Was this the man I’d spent my nights plotting against? Was he even worthy of my plans? Would anyone notice if I wandered into the house, pulled a carving knife from the drawer, and plunged it into his chest while he slept?

  It was very nearly noon when I caught my reflection in a decidedly empty kitchen window. I’d chosen the wrong way to suss him out. I started back down the street, returning the way I’d come, when I recognized someone from the neighborhood that I knew. Well, “knew” was probably an overstatement, but I was sure she’d recognize me, so I crossed the street and found myself walking right toward 221 Baker Street.

  The moment I saw his doorway, I wanted to go inside. My heart even started to race in that way it does when I’m about to do something shocking or stupid or forbidden. And a visit to Sherlock this early in my reconnaissance would be all three, as well as burdensome, as I didn’t suppose Lock would let me be off on my own if he knew I were in London.

  Or perhaps he would.

  It had been nearly five months, and the last Lock knew, I’d refused his invitation to meet him in the park. Five months, and I was sure that he’d returne
d to his studies and his experiments. Did I really think I’d stroll in, greet him over afternoon tea, and he’d ask me to sit for a catch-up session? Did I expect he’d be thrilled to finally discover my intrusion back into his life? He probably never thought about me at all anymore.

  Still, I wanted to go inside—and I could be in and out before anyone knew I was there. I watched for a few minutes, thinking about how I’d break in, or whether I could pick the lock quickly enough to keep from looking suspicious, and quietly enough not to alert anyone who might be in the house. But as I walked toward the steps leading up to his front door, I saw it—the fake rock that held their extra key. That was all the invitation I needed.

  I knew exactly how the house would look inside, and still the sameness of it surprised me. It also made me angry. I’d told myself over and over that I wanted Sherlock to go on with his life without me. There was no reason at all for me to be mad now that I knew he had done so.  And still, when I found mugs for tea in the sink and a film-wrapped plate half filled with sandwiches in the refrigerator, I scowled.

  I’d had all these ideas on how I would show myself to Lock again. On how he would react. How I’d refuse to explain to him what had happened to me until he promised to meet me later. Or maybe I’d never tell him at all, knowing his convoluted imaginings of how I’d spent all those months would be way more intriguing than my slow trip to madness from inside a horse-stall jail cell. But when it was real, when I heard two voices at the front door, instead of posing with a false disinterest in his sitting room, I ran up the stairs to hide.

  “And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how you’d known exactly who was lying and where she’d hidden the money.” The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t seem to place it without taking a peek. “It was an impressive deduction.”

  I’d almost forgotten his name—Lily’s boy. I kept wanting to call him Watkins, but I knew that was wrong. And me with the eidetic memory. I really had lost my mind on that farm.

  “For the life of you,” Lock echoed.

  God, he sounded smug. I smiled.

  “Would you like to stay for tea? I have sandwiches.”

  Lily’s boy paused. And finally his name jumped out from my memories.

  “Watson,” I whispered aloud, then covered my mouth and moved back from the top of the stairs and into Lock’s room, though I did keep the door cracked open so I could hear what they were saying.

  Watson didn’t answer right away, which definitely meant he didn’t want to stay, but it took him far too long to spit out, “Just came for the book, if that’s okay?”

  “No, you didn’t,” Sherlock said in perhaps the most irritatingly arrogant way possible. “But I’ll be right back with it.”

  And really, it was a wonder Watson didn’t roll his eyes and storm from the place when Sherlock spoke. It had taken all of five months for Lock to become a torrential storm of jackassery in my absence. I felt like I should apologize to the entire city on his behalf. As it turned out, I’d have to apologize to all of London’s citizens save one: John Watson.

  “Maybe. . .,” Watson said, after I’d heard Sherlock run up a few steps. “Maybe we could have our tea out. My treat. To thank you for the book?”

  I didn’t hear Lock respond, but I did hear him start to climb the steps again. I quietly closed his door, which was when I saw it—the string map on the wall, just like it had been so many months ago. Only this map wasn’t a web of my father’s crimes. This map was about me.

  My name was at the center. And something about the way my simple nickname was written in Lock’s hand made me freeze in place. He was coming up the stairs. He was most likely coming into his room, but I couldn’t look away from all the pins he’d used to mark possible places I’d been. Blue for places he wanted to check, red for places he had? It appeared so. The red pins all had little collars of string, as though their connection to my name had been severed the moment the investigation came up empty. There were only three blue pins left.

  The floorboards creaked at the top of the stairs and I ran for the far side of his wardrobe, tucking myself into the corner between it and the wall just as the doorknob started to move. And then he came in, and I wasn’t prepared for how it would feel to be in the same room with him.

  Idiotically, my first instinct was to jump out of my hiding place. I caught myself literally hanging on to the wardrobe to stop my legs from doing such a thing against my will, as though he were this giant magnet and my core was straining against the pull of him. When he came closer to inspect his bookshelves, my hand wanted so badly to reach out and rest on his arm. Just to touch him, I thought, to let him know I was there. That his search was over. That I was standing right next to him.

  Sherlock grabbed a book off his shelf and turned his back to me, then stopped cold in the center of his room. I thought maybe I’d somehow revealed myself, so I tipped my head to see what he was up to, but he stood very still, book in hand. His head turned just enough to stare at his own bed. He breathed in deeply and then furrowed his brow. He lifted the book to his nose and breathed deeply again. Then he dropped the book back to his side and walked to the door. I thought at first he’d leave, but instead he reached up to rest his hand on the center of his map, just beneath my name.

  “Did you once hold this book?” he asked. “Did I stir up the dust that held your perfume just now?”

  An ache started pulsing at the center of my chest with his words. I somehow managed to keep silent until he left the room, though I couldn’t say how. I felt like someone had turned me inside out. Like everything I knew before I stepped into his room was gone and I had to start over again. Only I couldn’t, because I was already changed. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t.

  When I heard the front door close downstairs, I emerged from my hiding place and walked a straight line to his bedroom door. I rested my hand where his had been, just below my name. I’d created a pretend version of Lock, knowing how mad that made me seem. How long, I wondered, had he been speaking to my name on this bloody map?

  I made a fist with my hand and let my gaze wander down to the final three blue pins. I huffed out a breath when I found the one that connected my name to Piddinghoe.

  He would have found me, my Lock. Maybe it would have taken him weeks or another month, but he would have found me. And maybe then everything would’ve been different. Wouldn’t it?

  “Too late,” I whispered.

  With Lock to help me, I could have found a way past Alice and her guards without anyone getting hurt. Without having to hear Alice’s screams or the echoing crack of a gunshot.

  “Too late,” I growled through clenched teeth, then started pulling pins from their places and tearing cards and papers and receipts down onto the floor.

  I was breathing heavily when I was done, like a madwoman after a tantrum. Only then did it occur to me that the mess I’d made would be a message I didn’t particularly want to send. So I knelt down on his rug and made a quaint little pile of pins. I stacked the pages and cards up nicely right next to it and bundled the strings.

  When everything was ordered, I stood, but the sparkle of a pin hidden near his bed got my attention. As did the floral pattern on the cardboard box the pin was resting against. The box.

  I pulled it out from under the bed quickly and knocked the lid off. And right in the center was a frame with little orange Xs across the broken glass.

  My mum’s things. Had they been here in his room all this time? I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten this box for so long. And then I couldn’t believe he’d kept it there under his bed. A secret. Had he kept these things for me? Or from me? I would never know, which meant it didn’t really matter. It only mattered that they were mine.

  I left that day with my box of things. I made sure I was gone before he returned, though he’d know I’d been there. He’d have to know now that I’d destroyed his work. I grinned a bit at the thought of how Lock would put it all together, the pieces of his map piled next to his
bed, all except for the one red pin pushed through the center of the first letter of my name to hold it against his pillow. Would he notice right away that my mum’s things were missing? Would he wonder where I was?

  He’d know soon enough. And it would be better this way. The next time he’d see me would be out on the street, where neither of us would have the space or silence to say anything we’d regret later. Next time, all of London would be watching.

  Chapter 12

  I dropped the box at my hotel room and grabbed a cap and hoodie on my way out. I couldn’t let myself be recognized by any of our neighbors. I couldn’t risk that they might tell my dad they’d seen me.

  Lily beat me to the clearing in Regent’s Park. She’d laid out a blanket and was staring at the tree where her father was murdered. No beer or flowers this time. Evidently, five months was enough time to get over her ritual.

  Without turning to face me, she said, “I’m ready to hear your explanation.”

  “Explanation for what?”

  “You said you’d explain later, why you were at Alice’s countryside house.”

  “And here I thought you wanted my father dead as soon as possible.”

  Lily didn’t answer, leaving me to wrestle with her quiet expectation. But I wasn’t really sure how much I wanted to tell her beyond what she already knew. So I moved closer to her blanket and sat down between her and the tree. I thought for sure seeing me would break her silence, but it didn’t. Instead, she stared at me, which made everything worse. So I decided to frame my story around the one thing I knew she cared about.

  “When I heard my father was going to be released on court bail, I packed us all up to go to America to hide my brothers from him. But at the last minute I stayed behind, because I knew he needed to die.”

  I glanced up at Lily, and her expression was this beautiful mix of anger and pleasure at my words. I’d seen that expression so often in the mirror. That Lily didn’t even bother to mask her feelings told me two things—she was far more brutal than I’d ever expected, and I had her. She was one of my people now. I looked back down at the stitching across the blanket and decided to slice through the binds that Alice had managed to wrap around Lily as well. That would be easy enough.