The Liar Society Part 13

Liam made the turn into Palm Manor Extended Care, and my stomach clenched just looking at the front door. I wasn't sure how I'd ever make it to Elisa's room. I twisted the pearls around my neck, attempting to channel a little bit of Grace's courage. I was going to need it.

"How can I help you?" the woman behind the desk asked, barely looking up from her computer screen.

"We're here to visit with Elisa Moore." My voice shook. I hoped it wasn't obvious.

The woman typed something into the computer and asked us to sign the guest book.

"Ms. Moore's room is 306. Just follow the signs," she said, pointing. "You'll wrap around a bit, and her room will be on the right."

We thanked the woman and followed her directions. Elisa's door was cracked open, so I knocked lightly.

"Come on in," said a young-sounding voice.

Great. Did Elisa have a family member visiting? What would Grace do now? Well, if she'd just knocked on someone's door and gotten the okay, chances are she'd enter the room. I pushed open the door and came face-to-face with a friendly looking nurse who was was.h.i.+ng her hands at the bathroom sink.

"Hi, there," she said. "Have you come to visit with Ms. Moore?"

I nodded my head while Liam hung back.

"Well, she'll be so happy, even if she doesn't show it. She hasn't had a visitor in some time, and I think she could really use a little cheering up. Come in, come in."

A twin bed was neatly made, and an older woman sat in a wheelchair positioned in front of the window. Her light brown hair was pulled into a low chignon. As she kneaded her hands, I clenched and unclenched my own.

"How are you related to Ms. Moore?" the nurse asked.

I glanced at Elisa and sent a silent apology in her direction regarding the lie I was about to tell.

"Elisa is my dad's...cousin," I whispered, hoping that Ms. Moore was hard of hearing, which really was kind of a terrible thing to hope.

The nurse walked ahead of us and placed her hand lightly on Elisa's shoulder, but the woman didn't move a muscle.

"Ms. Moore, you have visitors! Isn't that nice?"

Elisa continued to stare out the window, and just when I thought she'd never answer-or that maybe she didn't even talk-she turned to the nurse and nodded her head. Her face was smooth, aside from a few wrinkles near her eyes and around her mouth. The nurse smiled as she came back toward Liam and me.

"Ms. Moore has good days and bad days, but I think you caught her on a good one." Her smile broadened. "Her memory goes in and out, so be patient." She squeezed my shoulder and left the room.

I sat on the bed near Elisa's wheelchair and figured I should introduce myself.

"Hi, Eli...er...Ms. Moore. My name is Kate Lowry," I said and extended my hand. She didn't move or even turn to look at me, so I awkwardly dropped my hand, barely resisting the urge to start chewing on my fingernails. "And this is Liam," I finished lamely.

"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Moore," Liam said in his polite talking-to-elderly-people voice, even though she really didn't look all that old.

Elisa did nothing but stare out the window.

"It's such a beautiful day today. Look at all that...foliage." Okay, I'm a complete sucker for trying to fill silence, but "foliage" was a stretch, even for me. Liam shot me a look that said, Did you really just say that?

"Um, we're students from Pemberly Brown. My dad tells me you went to school there." I watched her carefully, praying that the name of our school would trigger some kind of memory for her, but her eyes remained stubbornly blank. It was like she didn't even know we were there.

I wanted to ask her about her sister, but I couldn't go there with Liam in the room. I had to get rid of him somehow.

"Hey, Liam, why don't you see if you can snag us all some pudding or something?" I suggested.

Liam gave me a weird look, but he agreed and left the room to find a nurse.

As soon as he was out of earshot, I began firing questions at her. "Ms. Moore, do you remember a Robert Sinclair? He went to Pemberly Brown? I think you might have gone there too."

She didn't move a muscle. I was starting to wonder if she was even breathing.

I heard Liam's voice drift in through the open door. Something about chocolate or b.u.t.terscotch. I didn't have much time.

"Elisa!" I touched her shoulder and spun her around to look at me. "What happened to your sister? What did they do to her? Why did she hurt herself?"

Her eyes widened when she looked at me. They were a muted, gla.s.sy blue, and they reflected fear and something else. Maybe recognition.

"She was your age." Her voice was stronger than I would have guessed, and her creepy eyes were focused on something behind me.

I took a step back, not knowing what to say, and followed Elisa's line of vision, terrified that Liam was back and that he'd heard me badgering an unstable old woman. Instead I saw a framed picture of a girl. The picture was yellowed, but the image was a familiar one. She looked like the girl in the plaid skirt with her long dark hair. She reminded me of Grace. I felt queasy.

"We would talk for hours lying next to each other in the gra.s.s. She told me everything." Elisa's skin looked paper-thin, and she sounded miles away. As if she were reading a script.

"She had her whole life ahead of her. We talked about what we would do when we left. We talked about falling in love and moving away. Because that's what sisters do."

I glanced at the door, praying Liam hadn't been able to decide between the pudding flavors or that maybe Elisa's strange condition made him uncomfortable and he'd take his time.

"I told them what I thought happened. I told them she was acting differently. She never recovered after that night. And then when she went to the police, they started in on her. I knew they would kill her. No one believed me."

She reached her frail arm toward the picture frame and tried to move her body forward. Afraid that she'd lose her balance, I grabbed the frame with shaking hands and placed it on her lap.

"She never came downstairs for breakfast, and I knew the worst had happened." Elisa lifted the frame and c.o.c.ked her head.

Liam walked into the room with the pudding and opened his mouth to say something, but I quickly shook my head and gestured for him to stay quiet.

"Will you go try to find the nurse?" I whispered to him. "She's not right."

Liam rushed back out of the room, and I knew I had to work fast. There wasn't much time. I took Elisa's hand in mine again.

"Did Robert Sinclair hurt your sister?" I asked, even though I knew the answer.

"Her bed was empty because she was in the tower."

"What tower?" But as soon as the question left my lips, I understood. The clock tower. Abigail was the girl hanging from the beams. It wasn't a legend after all. She was a real person with real problems and a real family who had been destroyed by the loss.

Spidery wrinkles formed along Elisa's forehead as she remembered. "Station 2. She was at Station 2 all along. Her sisters couldn't save her. The brothers got her. They did this. They took her from us. And they lied. All they tell are lies." Her eyes bulged, and her hands clenched the arms of her wheelchair so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

I stood and ran to the door, looking wildly down the hallway, praying someone would come to help. The sound of broken gla.s.s made me rush back over to Elisa's wheelchair. But when I got there, her face had rearranged itself back into a blank stare, as though her earlier outburst had never happened. I gathered the shattered gla.s.s from the frame and placed the fractured picture of the young girl back onto Elisa's bedside table next to a vase of beautiful pink peonies.

I was almost fifty years too late, but I placed my arm around her shoulders and tried to comfort the fragile woman with the broken heart.

Chapter 30.

After I got back from the nursing home that afternoon, yet another email was waiting for me in my inbox.

To: [email protected] Sent: Sun 4:21 PM From: Subject: (no subject) You're looking in all the right places And never finding the right things.

The answers lie within the heart of Brown Where the Brothers live.

Find them.

I had to get back to the old Brown buildings. I was sure I was missing something that would tie the headmaster's brother back to Grace, but I had no idea what it was. And who was I supposed to look for? Brown had closed more than sixty years earlier. There were no boys to be found.

I sat on my front porch, staring at the sheets of falling rain. Why'd it have to rain right now? I mean, how was I supposed to follow up on leads without a reliable mode of transportation? I'd already texted Liam twice, and a third time would venture into Stage 5 clinger levels of desperation.

My only remaining option was riding my bike to the clock tower in the pouring rain, and that was obviously out of the question. It was getting dark, and to avoid getting flattened by a car, I'd have to wear a helmet, reflective clothing, and probably a poncho. Enough said.

And then, as if the G.o.ds had sent him down from above to answer my prayers, Seth appeared in midair. Well, technically he jumped down from his lame-a.s.s tree house, but at that moment he looked like a pocket-sized, redheaded superhero to me. He had his windbreaker thrown over his head and was running toward his front door.

"Hey, Seth!"

He spun around, his face all scrunched up.

"Come over here. Get out of the rain!" My chipper voice sounded a little false. Better tone it down a notch before he got suspicious. Seth ran over and under the porch roof. "Hanging out in your tree house again? You're so lame."

"I was just checking out the neighbors. They installed a new satellite dish, and I think they're using it to communicate with their FBI handlers."

"Sounds cool. So what are you up to tonight?"

Seth was visibly taken aback by my question. I made a mental note to be nicer to him in the future. He was acting like an abused animal, shocked at the tiniest bit of affection. It made me feel like the worst person in the world.

"I was just, you know, hanging out. Gonna do some homework, eat dinner...watch some more Conspiracy Theory Week, if you're..."

"No, no, no," I said, cutting him off before the invitation left his lips. "I just wanted to see if you're interested in taking a road trip to..." I began but was interrupted.

"Of course!" Seth said, not letting me finish. "Just let me ask my mom if I can borrow the van. It's raining, but I'll convince her to say yes!"

"Seth, you have no idea what you just agreed to. What if I said, 'to see if we can score some crack'?"

"Then I would have reminded you of the drug-free pledge we all had to sign last year. Where do you wanna go anyway?"

"I actually have to run back up to PB. I...um...forgot something...at one of the...uh...old Brown buildings."

My response didn't even make Seth think twice.

"I'll go get my keys!" Seth threw his jacket over his head again and ran toward his front door to get permission. "Mom!" I heard him yell before the door shut behind him.

Seth probably would have agreed to drive me to the end of the earth in his mom's white minivan, and for that I was eternally grateful. I mean, come on, every girl should have a Seth Allen in her life.

While Seth begged for permission, I went back inside and loaded my oversize purse with a flashlight, a notebook and pen, my camera, and the Mace my dad had forced on me when I started at the upper school. Considering my history with the building, I had to be prepared for the worst. If it was creepy during the daytime, I couldn't imagine what it would be like in the dark. A girl could never be too careful, even if she had a skinny, ginger-haired superhero by her side.

By the time I ran through the garage door, Seth had pulled the minivan into my driveway. Even through the rain-streaked windows, I could see the huge smile on his face.

c.r.a.p. He was probably misinterpreting our little errand as a date. Oh, well, beggars can't be choosers, and this beggar needed a ride. I was just lucky he hadn't changed into his fancy clothes or something.

I climbed into the car and got to work thinking about the task that lay ahead.

"You okay?" Seth asked. "You're so quiet."

He was right. I was quiet and more than a little scared. I hadn't forgotten about the rock that had come sailing through the window on my last visit to the old building. Someone seemed to know my every move before I knew it myself, and they didn't appear to be thrilled about my investigation. I'd have to be careful.

"Yeah, yeah. Just a little nervous. Everyone says the Brown buildings are haunted."

"Come on, you don't really believe in ghosts, do you?"

"I...well, I never did. But lately I've changed my mind," I said, thinking about Grace's emails and the girl in the plaid skirt.

"I think you've got bigger problems than ghosts, Kate." He flicked on his turn signal and turned left-hand over hand, of course.

"What do you mean?" I panicked, wondering if he'd figured everything out-if he knew all of the lies, all of the secrets I'd been hiding.

"I mean Liam Gilmour. What are you doing with him? He's dangerous."

I couldn't hold in my sigh of relief.

"Liam? Seriously, Seth? He's the least of my problems."

"I heard he's dangerous, Kate, unstable. You know what everyone says. It's true." Seth pulled into a parking spot in the student lot and put the van in park.

"Liam is a lot of things, but dangerous isn't one of them." Well, unless you counted him potentially breaking my heart. "You don't know him. People just like to gossip." I leaned my head against the window.

"He started a fire," Seth blurted out.

In an instant, the van filled with tension so thick I could barely breathe.

I whipped my head toward Seth. "What are you even talking about? What fire?"

"It happened before he started at PB. When I was working in the office last year, I had to refile his folder. The report slipped out."

I was reminded of Liam saying everyone had something to hide. Could that be what he was hiding? I shoved the thought away. It couldn't be true. If he had told me he'd caught Liam making out with Beefany I would have believed Seth, but there was no way that Liam was some kind of pyromaniac.

"Why can't you just be happy for me? A guy finally shows interest, and you just have to get jealous." The anger came out of nowhere and surprised even me. Each terrible word hung in the air, punctuated only by the sound of the swis.h.i.+ng winds.h.i.+eld wipers and Mrs. Allen's soft-rock radio station. I chewed on my nails, and Seth squirmed in the driver's seat.