I considered a moment, then handed it to her. “It’s worthless now. The papers hidden in the lid were stolen, unfortunately.”
Her gaze shot up to mine. “You know about them?”
“We know more than that,” I said. “We know what happened to Tyler.”
Emma froze. Then her face crumpled, and her chest began to heave with rapid breaths.
“We’re here to find your mother. Tell her everything. We thought you might come with us.”
Emma fought to get her breathing under control. “I . . . I can’t.”
I stepped closer to her. “I’ve met your mother,” I said. “Like, twice. It’s not like I know her. But she was willing to go out of her way to try and keep me safe. And you’re her kid. I’m betting she’ll fight for you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why not? You made the anonymous 911 call, didn’t you? You hid that box from your father.”
She gasped. “How did you know that?”
“So you must have hoped all this would come out, one way or another. Part of you wanted to see that justice was served.”
Emma shook her head. “I was fooling myself. Things always go my father’s way in the end. I don’t think there’s anything he ever wanted that he didn’t get. Except maybe a son who made the Virginia all-state football team.”
“I thought you were an only child.”
“Exactly. There are generations of Herndons counting on me not to screw up.”
I felt a surge of anger. “Too late.”
Eric laid a hand on my arm. His look reminded me that we were trying to convince Emma to help us out, and nasty comments might not be the best way to go about it.
Emma’s spine straightened, and she forced her features into something like indifference. “You know what?” she said. “I could be someplace else right now. Like, anyplace else.” She lifted her chin high and turned to walk away from us.
Another image of Lucy flashed into my mind. “I might have been at six or seven other engagements this morning,” she’d said to John Wilkes Booth, on that day her life would change forever. Clara Harris’s life too, and countless others. One act of violence, so many people caught in its undertow. I thought about Lucy and Clara—and Emma—all three the daughters of senators, all three trying to balance their own lives against the expectations of their families.
“Hey!” I called after Emma. “Here’s something you might not know. My brother didn’t die of a head injury.”
Emma stopped in her tracks.
“It’s going to be in all the papers tomorrow. The head injury didn’t kill him. He died of a drug overdose.”
“No.” Emma turned around. Her face was ashen, her eyes wide. “That’s not possible.”
“Funny, that’s exactly what I said.”
Eric spoke up. “Come with us, Emma. Help us make this right.”
Emma was visibly shaking now. “I can’t.”
“Please.” Lucy Hale’s face flickered in my mind, sitting in that candlelit restaurant, watching Booth walk away from her forever. “If you let your father make your decisions, then nothing in your whole life will belong to you. Not even your mistakes.”
Emma took a few steps backward, the cigar box wobbling in her hands. Tears ran down both cheeks, marring her flawless makeup.
I reached into my backpack, pulling out Detective Johnson’s card and resting it on the cigar box. I tapped Johnson’s name with one finger. “This detective will hear you out. She’ll be fair.”
Emma studied the small white rectangle. A tear dropped onto the cigar box beside it, quickly soaking into the wood. Finally she looked back up at me. “I’m not sure I can live with what happened. But there’s no way I can fix it.” She disappeared into the crowd.
For a few seconds, Eric and I stared at the spot where Emma had been standing.
I could see the path stretching out before her, the long and lonely path Lucy Hale had followed: consumed by guilt, never able to escape the gravitational pull of her father, her obligations, her reputation. I’d seen it before, when I’d touched Lucy’s ring. “We need to tell Mrs. Herndon about this,” I said. “I’m scared for Emma.”
Then Eric’s face changed, and his hand closed around my arm. “Incoming. Two o’clock. It’s your mom.”
CHAPTER 19
MY MOTHER HADN’T SEEN US YET; SHE WAS TALKING to a woman with a blue dress and a head of puffy blond hair that, together, made her look like a dishwashing wand. “Crapdogs,” I said.
At that moment, Nathan appeared beside us. “Found you. What did I miss?”
“Scatter!” Eric shielded his face and made a beeline for the men’s room.
I grabbed Nathan’s arm and tugged him around a corner. We squeezed into a tiny alcove, pressing our bodies up against a water fountain. I could hear my mother talking a few feet away, and I could smell the faintest hint of cologne on the crisp white front of Nathan’s shirt. I closed my eyes and stepped a little closer to him, so that my nose was almost touching his chest. He swallowed hard.
“What’s going—” he whispered, but I cut him off with a hand over his mouth.
Around the corner, my mother and the woman droned on, but in our little alcove, Nathan’s breath warmed my gloved fingertips. He caught hold of my wrist, brought it to his mouth, and kissed the bare skin right below the glove.
My mouth went dry, and my breath hitched in my throat.
“Is that your boyfriend?”
“I’m still working on that.”
“Oh, hi!” Mom’s voice cut through my scattered thoughts. “Thanks for getting those programs, Maureen.”
Nathan dropped my hand. Judging by the look on his face, he’d figured out why we were hiding here.
Mom laughed. “I’m impressed you could carry all those boxes.”
“I was lucky Megan and her boyfriend were there to help.”
Double crapdogs, I thought.
“You saw Megan?” And then, in a slightly higher-pitched voice: “And her boyfriend?” I couldn’t see her face, but I knew that tone intimately.
“Yes, he was right over— Huh. I don’t know where he disappeared to. But Megan has my keys, so I’m sure she’s looking for me.”
“If you see either of them again tonight, please let me know immediately.”
“Oh, you haven’t met the boyfriend yet,” Maureen replied, a smile in her voice. “Don’t worry, he’s completely adorable.”
Nathan sent me a cocky smile.
“Seriously,” Maureen continued, “if I were thirty years younger, I would be all over that.” A look of horror crossed Nathan’s face, and I stifled my laugh in the buttons of his shirt.
Their voices faded away, and we poked our heads around the corner.
I let out a long breath. “She’s going to kill me. I’m so totally and completely dead right now. I am the walking dead.”
“You’re a zombie,” Nathan agreed. “So you better make tonight count.”
I took a moment to admire him in his tuxedo. The arms and legs were still a tiny bit too short, and beneath the jacket, he had on an ordinary white dress shirt. But his personality shone through, pulling everything together and making it look like a fashion statement. The adrenaline that had been coursing through me since I’d first spotted my mother was draining away, and I could feel the pain returning behind my eyeballs, the tight fist of tension gripping the base of my skull. Like Nathan had said, I needed to make tonight count. Because who knew what would happen next?
Eric joined us again. “All clear?”
I stood on tiptoe to look around. “Mom’s gone. But I haven’t seen Mrs. Herndon anywhere.”
“Should we look inside the theater?” Nathan asked.
I glanced over at the ushers and shook my head. “I don’t want to get stuck in a seat for the whole show. What if she leaves before we can get back to the lobby?”
Suddenly Eric turned his back on the crowd, blocking me from sight. “Dr. Brightman. At the far
doors.”
I peeked around Eric’s shoulder and spotted him, immaculate in a mandarin-collar tuxedo, his sunglasses firmly in place. His face seemed composed, his body language ordinary, despite the fact that he was hours away from having the derringer in his hands. He handed his ticket to the woman at the door and entered the theater.
As the lobby started to empty, I realized how conspicuous the three of us would be, standing out here all by ourselves. “We can’t hang around in the lobby during the show.”
“Know a good place to hide?” Nathan asked.
I thought for a moment, jingling Maureen’s keys in my hand. “Let’s try the family circle.”
We used Maureen’s key fob to take a back elevator up to the second balcony level. Once upon a time, the family circle had been the theater’s cheap seats, but now it was mainly used for lighting and sound equipment—and tonight, an elaborate television setup, as well. We perched on wooden benches at the top of the balcony and watched the TV people scuttle about, taking care of last-minute details as the rest of the audience found their seats far below. Behind a set of glass windows, the stage manager and her crew sat in the control booth, prepping for the performance. A charge of excitement ran through the room when the president and first lady arrived, and the audience stood as the orchestra played “Hail to the Chief.” Then the lights dimmed and the show began.
A shiver ran through me in the dark, and Nathan leaned toward me. “You okay?”
I took a deep breath, trying to calm the creeping dread in my stomach. “We’re running out of time. And this plan is never going to work.”
“When the performance is over, we’ll find Mrs. Herndon.”
“What if we can’t?”
“Then we’ll find your mother,” Nathan said, “and she’ll find Mrs. Herndon. We’ll tell them everything we know. We’ll ask for their help. If worse comes to worst, I’ll tackle Senator Herndon and you can grab the gun.”
“Well, nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan.”
He bumped my shoulder with his own. “Nothing will go wrong.” His face grew serious. “We’re doing this for Red. I think, somehow, he’ll be watching out for us.”
“I thought I knew him,” I said. “Tyler. I saw him every day of my life for fifteen years. I knew what he ate for breakfast every morning, what kind of jokes made him laugh.” I leaned my head on Nathan’s shoulder, my gloved fingers creeping up to find his hand and hold it tight. “But it turns out he was someone I only thought I knew.”
He rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand. “You might not have known everything about him, but you knew him. And you loved him. That’s important too.”
I shifted on the bench, too nervous to pay attention to the performance, even if it had been the slightest bit interesting. I scoured the backs of people’s heads below, hoping I could spot Mrs. Herndon, but when that failed, I pulled out my phone.
Eric gave me a scolding look. “No cell phones.”
“Are you seriously lecturing me on theater etiquette right now?” I whispered.
“Do you want someone to see the light and come looking for us?”
“Point taken.” A door off the second balcony led to the theater’s boardroom, and I used Maureen’s key to unlock it. A long wooden conference table dominated the space, and an oil painting of Lincoln hung on one wall. He was seated, his head resting on one hand.
“Lincoln, Lincoln everywhere,” I muttered, studying the portrait.
Huge windows overlooked the street, and the lights outside were the room’s only illumination. Music filtered through the doors to the balcony: a woman’s voice, high and pure. Phone in hand, I pushed aside a heavy gold curtain to sit on a windowsill and stare down at the street below.
I started typing a message to Elena. But after a few seconds, I changed my mind and dialed her number. I needed to hear her voice.
“You’re calling me on the phone?” she said by way of greeting. “Is this the apocalypse? Look around. Do you see horsemen?”
“I love you. You know that, right?”
There was a moment of dead air before she spoke again. “Oh my god. Where are you? What happened?”
Tears filled my eyes. I’d kept everything from her. The visions, Dr. Brightman, everything. She’d been like a refuge, the one good place in my life that none of this could touch. But what if something truly awful happened to me tonight? I couldn’t even say good-bye.
“Okay,” Elena said, when I didn’t answer right away, “enough bullshit. This calls for video chat.” She ended the call, and seconds later, her face appeared on my phone.
She looked so different from the last time we’d done this. Her hair had grown out enough that it almost touched her shoulders, and she’d cut it in a messy shag. Her eyebrows had been plucked thin and penciled into place, and her lipstick was an aggressive red. Her devious grin, however, was the same as ever.
“You look amazing,” I told her.
“I take it you have not been following me online.” She fluffed her hair.
“Social media? Not since Tyler died.” I shuddered. “Sympathy overload.”
Elena craned her neck. “And what are you wearing? Tilt down! I want to see!”
I showed her the dress. “I’m on a date, actually. With New Boy.”
“No way! Where did he take you?”
“To the theater.”
“Very nice,” she said approvingly. “So how’s the show?”
“Um, it’s pretty scary, actually.” I held my eyes wide, trying to keep the tears in. “I’m kind of freaking out about what’s going to happen next.”
“Wait a minute. Are you crying?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Oh, honey, it’s just a play.”
Tell that to Abraham Lincoln, I thought, and I choked out a laugh that turned into a sob.
“Okay, spill,” Elena said. “Is this about Tyler? Tell me what’s really going on.”
I studied Elena’s face, which was every bit as strong and gorgeous as I remembered. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“You’re my best friend. I damn well hope so.”
“How did you do it?” Realizing that probably wasn’t enough information, I kept going. “I mean, with everything that happened before you left, how did you end up still being you?”
Elena squinched up her face, considering me. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Because I’m scared,” I confessed. “All the time. Even though I shouldn’t be, because nothing really happened to me, it happened to you. But I am. I’m so, so scared.” I was openly crying now. “How do I turn it off?”
She paused a moment. “You can’t turn it off. You just have to find the things that make dealing with the fear worth it.”
I took a deep breath and wiped the tears off my cheeks. “Okay.”
“Man, I wish I was there with you. I really do.”
“I’m fine. I just needed to hear your voice. And see your face.” I heard applause from beyond the theater wall. “I’d better get back.”
“I want to see you again soon, okay? And Megan . . . one more thing?”
“Yeah?”
“You tell New Boy if he breaks your heart, I’ll break his face.”
I laughed.
After the final curtain call, Eric and Nathan and I split up. Eric went to look for Mrs. Herndon, while Nathan took the lobby, to make sure that the senator and Dr. Brightman didn’t leave through there. I stayed in the back of the balcony as the cameramen powered off their machines and coiled up their cables. When the light went off in the stage manager’s booth, I went down to the balcony railing and stayed there, half hidden behind a lighting instrument that clicked and popped as it cooled. If I was lucky, Mrs. Herndon would walk in any second now. Otherwise, I’d have to come up with some way to keep the senator and Dr. Brightman here until she did.
As the final patrons filtered out of the theater, Dr. Brightman made his way to the front, glasses and glove
s in place, straightening his tuxedo sleeves. He stood near the stage and waited, tucking his hands into his pockets. Around him, ushers cleaned up programs and the house manager urged people out into the lobby.
Senator Herndon entered through the rear doors, with Matty trailing at his heels like a cocker spaniel. Matty handed the senator a wooden box, similar in size to the Lincoln box. The senator continued down the aisle while Matty stopped the house manager and spoke to him briefly, passing him a long white envelope. The house manager nodded and gestured the ushers out of the theater, closing the doors behind them. Matty stayed, standing behind the last row of seats.
I ducked down a little lower behind the balcony rail, consumed with a sick curiosity to hear what they would say to each other.
The senator walked up to Dr. Brightman and clapped him on the shoulder. “David. It’s been too long. I don’t think I’ve seen you since the accident. Genevieve and I were so sorry for your loss.”
Dr. Brightman froze. He stared stiffly at Senator Herndon but didn’t speak, and I had the sudden thought that he might be in over his head. Mrs. Herndon had told me they’d been friends with Dr. Brightman, once upon a time, and I wondered if the two men had sat in the Herndon study, smoking cigars and bonding over obscure Lincoln manuscripts.
Herndon checked his watch. “Well, David, the house manager won’t be able to give us more than a few minutes in here, and he didn’t come cheap. So we should get a move on.”
Dr. Brightman finally spoke. “Yes. Let’s get this over with.” He reached into his pocket and took out the folded papers we’d found in the lid of the cigar box. He held them up between his thumb and forefinger. “Fascinating story. A prominent lawyer, the father of a U.S. senator, involved in a plot to steal a major national artifact. Did your father want the derringer that badly?”
Herndon shrugged slightly. “It’s the most sacred Lincoln artifact in the world. And my father was Lincoln’s most faithful disciple. If anyone deserved to own that gun, I suppose it was him.” He reached for the papers.
Dr. Brightman tucked them back into his pocket. “As soon as you show me the contents of that box.”
The Hidden Memory of Objects Page 25
