the clues.
“Record shop,” Will said, pointing out another abandoned building. He kept his arm around her waist, guiding her toward their ultimate destination. The hornet sensation got worse. Ashleigh Snyder kept flashing into his mind. The photo they showed on the news must have been from her student ID card. The girl’s blonde hair was pulled back. Her lips showed an amused smile, as if the photographer had said something funny.
Sara asked, “Where did you live?”
Will stopped. They had almost passed the children’s home. The building was so changed that it was barely recognizable. The Spanish Revival brick architecture had been completely bastardized. Large metal awnings eyebrowed the front windows. The red brick had been painted a rheumy yellow. Chunks of the facade were missing. The huge wooden front door that had been gloss black as long as Will could remember was now a garish red. The glass was caked with dirt. In the yard, Mrs. Flannigan’s white painted tires no longer held tulips and pansies. They were no longer white, either. Will was afraid to guess what was inside them now, and he didn’t want to get close enough to find out. There was a sign slapped onto the side of the building.
“ ‘Coming soon: Luxury Condos,’ ” Sara read. “Not too soon, I’m guessing.”
Will stared up at the building. “It didn’t used to be like this.”
Sara’s reluctance was palpable, but she still asked, “Do you want to look inside?”
He wanted to run away from here as fast as he could, but Will forced himself to walk up the front steps. As a kid, he’d always felt a certain amount of dread every time he entered the home. There were new boys constantly in and out. Each of them had something to prove, sometimes with their fists. This time, it wasn’t physical violence that sent a cold fear through Will. It was Ashleigh Snyder. It was the unreasonable connection Will was making because the missing girl looked so much like his mother.
He pressed his face close to the window, but couldn’t see anything other than the reflection of his own eyes staring back. The front door was secured with an expensive-looking padlock. The wood was so rotted that one yank on the hasp pulled out the screws.
Will hesitated, his palm flat to the door. He felt Sara standing behind him, waiting. He wondered what she would do if he changed his mind and walked back down the stairs.
As if sensing his thoughts, she said, “We can go.” Then, more pointedly, “Why don’t we go?”
Will pushed open the door. There was no expected creaking of hinges, but the door caught on the warped wooden floor so that he had to shove it open. Will tested the floorboards as he entered. Though it was still light out, the house was dark, thanks mostly to the heavy awnings and dirty windows. A musky smell greeted him, nothing like the welcoming scent of Pine-Sol and Kool 100s Will recalled from his childhood. He tried the light switch to no avail.
Sara said, “Maybe we should—”
“Looks like it was turned into a hotel.” Will pointed to the caged front desk. Keys still hung from the cubbyholes along the back wall. “Or a halfway house.”
Will glanced around what he guessed was the lobby. Broken glass pipes and tinfoil littered the floor. The crack addicts had demolished the couch and chairs. There were several used condoms melted into the carpet.
“My God,” Sara whispered.
Will felt oddly defensive. “Picture it with the walls painted white, and the sofa this big, yellow, kind of corduroy sectional.” He looked down at the floor. “Same carpet. It was a lot cleaner, though.”
Sara nodded, and he walked toward the back of the building before she could run out the front. The large open spaces from Will’s childhood had been chopped up into single-room apartments, but he could still remember what it had looked like in better times.
He told Sara, “This was the dining hall. There were twelve tables. Kind of like picnic benches, but with tablecloths and nice napkins. Boys on one side, girls on the other. Mrs. Flannigan was careful about letting the girls and boys mingle too much. She said she didn’t need more kids than she already had.”
Sara didn’t laugh at the joke.
“Here.” Will stopped in front of an open doorway. The room was a dark hole. He could easily picture how it used to be. Flowery wallpaper. A metal desk and wooden chair. “This was Mrs. Flannigan’s office.”
“What happened to her?”
“Heart attack. She died before the ambulance got here.” He continued down the hallway and pushed open a familiar-looking swinging door. “The kitchen, obviously.” This space, at least, hadn’t changed. “That’s the same stove from when I was a kid.” Will opened the pantry door. There was still food stacked on the shelves. Mold had turned a loaf of bread into a black brick. Graffiti marred the back of the door. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” was carved into the soft wood.
Sara said, “Looks like the addicts redecorated.”
“That was always there,” Will admitted. “This is where you had to go if you acted up.”
Sara pressed her lips together as she studied the bolt on the door.
Will said, “Trust me, being locked in a pantry wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to a lot of these kids.” He saw the question in her eyes. “I was never locked in there.”
She gave a strained smile. “I should hope not.”
“It wasn’t as bad as you’re thinking. We had food. We had a roof over our heads. We had a color TV. You know how much I love watching television.”
She nodded, and he led her back into the hallway toward the front stairs. He tapped a closed door along the way. “Basement.”
“Did Mrs. Flannigan lock kids down there, too?”
“It was off limits,” Will answered, though he happened to know that Angie had spent a lot of time down there with the older boys.
Carefully, Will walked up the stairs, testing each step before letting Sara follow. The scruffy treads were just as he remembered, but he had to duck at the top of the landing to keep from smacking his head on a structural beam.
“Back here.” He took purposeful strides down the hallway, acting as if this was exactly what he’d planned to do with his evening. As with downstairs, the space was divided into single rooms that met with the needs of the prostitutes, drug addicts, and alcoholics who’d likely rented space by the hour. Most of the doors were open or hanging off their hinges. The plaster around the baseboards had been nibbled away by rats. The walls were probably crawling with their offspring. Or cockroaches. Or both.
Will stopped at the next-to-last door and pushed it open with his foot. An iron cot and a smashed wooden table were the only contents. The carpet was a fecal brown. The one window in the room was cut in half, the other side shared with the next-door neighbor.
“My bed was here against the wall. Bunk bed. I got the top.”
Sara didn’t respond. Will turned around to look at her. She was biting her lip in a way that made him think that the pain was the only thing keeping her from crying.
“I know it looks awful,” he said. “But it wasn’t like this when I was a kid. I promise. It was nice. It was clean.”
“It was an orphanage.”
The word echoed in his head like she’d shouted it down a well. There was no getting past this difference between them. Sara had grown up with two loving parents, a doting sister, and a stable, solidly middle-class life.
And Will had grown up here.
“Will?” she asked. “What just happened?”
He rubbed his chin. Why was he such an idiot? Why did he keep making mistakes with Sara that he’d never made with anyone else in his life? There was a reason he didn’t talk about his childhood. People felt pity when they should’ve felt relief.
“Will?”
“I’ll take you home. I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t be. This is your home. Was your home. It’s where you grew up.”
“It’s a flophouse in the middle of a slum. We’re probably going to get stabbed by a junkie as soon as we leave.”
She laughed.
