My uncle shakes his head. “Give him ten more minutes, and if he shows up after that, throw him out on his ass.”
“A few months ago?” I say. I look at Uncle Gavin. “You didn’t tell me?”
“You never asked,” Uncle Gavin says. He seems about to say more when the door swings open and a man walks in, about my height but with broad shoulders, muscled chest and arms, and a waist cinched tight as a ballerina’s. My first thought when I see him is that he’s a gymnast—he moves like he’s walking on an enormous ball, rolling the world beneath his feet. I’ve seen oiled hardwood floors that are darker than him, but not by much. His head is shaved clean except for a trim moustache and goatee. He frowns when he sees me. “Who is this?” he asks, his voice quiet and unfriendly.
“My nephew,” Uncle Gavin says. I don’t detect much enthusiasm in his voice.
Now all three of them are looking at me like I don’t belong. Then the man pointedly turns to my uncle. “Mr. Lester, do you want to talk in your office?”
“I need to talk to you,” I say to Uncle Gavin. “Now. Please.”
The man turns back toward me, his frown deepening like an ugly wrinkle.
“Caesar,” Frankie says. The man looks at Frankie, who shakes his head. Still frowning, the man crosses his arms and waits.
Uncle Gavin grunts. “Are you okay, Ethan?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I say.
He considers me, nods, and turns for the stairs. I follow him to the swinging door. Once there, I look back at Frankie. He’s still standing in the middle of the kitchen, watching me. Caesar is still to the side, arms folded. “I’m sorry,” I say to Frankie. “I just—there’s a lot going on. Susannah’s in trouble, and I have to find out what this woman—”
“Your sister?” Frankie says. “She okay?”
“Ethan,” my uncle calls, already halfway up the stairs, and I shrug at Frankie, who motions me to go on and follow my uncle.
MY UNCLE’S OFFICE is upstairs, above the bar. It has bookshelves on one wall and an Oriental carpet and some upholstered chairs, but it is dominated by a massive, claw-footed desk that must weigh a ton. As in all of my memories of Uncle Gavin’s office, the top of the desk is a pile of disorder, a blizzard of newspapers, magazines, torn notepad pages, precarious stacks of loose-leaf papers, a food wrapper or two, and two abandoned mugs, both half-filled with what is presumably old tea.
Uncle Gavin sits behind the desk, his chair creaking as he lowers himself into it. “What’s wrong, Ethan?” he asks.
I sit in my old place in front of his desk, suddenly uncertain and not a little overwhelmed. “Susannah’s in the hospital again,” I say, to my surprise.
Uncle Gavin’s face is, as usual, inscrutable. “Is she all right now?” he asks.
I rub my face with my hand. “I think so,” I say. “She’s not … she isn’t suicidal, right now. I had to talk her off of a bridge.”
Silence stretches between us, a spool of wire uncoiled and being pulled taut. Uncle Gavin shifts in his chair, making it creak again. “You said you need help with something,” he says.
Some people might think my uncle particularly coldhearted for not expressing more concern about Susannah, or at least asking more about her. They wouldn’t be right, exactly. Uncle Gavin has never been an overly warm person, although he can be friendly enough and allows himself to smile and even laugh occasionally. It’s more that he is extremely practical, solving problems and moving on to the next bit of business without much sentimentality. Given the nature of his business, his practicality is as necessary as it is fortunate. He asked about his niece and learned she’s alive and safe for the moment, so he’s on to the next most immediate item of concern.
Haltingly at first, and then with increasing clarity, I tell him about Marisa. He listens behind his desk, those dark eyes of his always on me. Twice—when I talk about her relationship with Susannah, and when I say that I found her phone—I think I detect a flash in his eyes, a sharper awareness, but he says nothing, aside from encouraging me to go on when I occasionally stop to put my thoughts in order. When I’m finished, the silence makes me wish I was still talking.
“Why haven’t you gone to the police?” he says.
“And tell them what? This woman is stalking me? They’ll have to investigate; it’ll take time. She’s hurting other people right now—students, kids. My sister. She’s pretending to be me on social media. She’s trying to ruin my life.” I take a breath. “She knew about my parents being killed. She said she knows who killed them.”
Uncle Gavin continues to look at me, unperturbed. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s what she said. It might be bullshit, but I need to know. I need to find her, Uncle Gavin. I need to find out what she knows and keep her from doing any more damage, to me or to anyone else.”
Uncle Gavin nods and leans back in his chair. “So what do you need me to help you with?” he asks.
“Marisa’s phone,” I say, taking it out of my pocket. “She left it at my house. She kept texting me, telling me to give it back. She was taunting me, so I turned the phone off. And now I’m wondering if maybe she sent more texts. Maybe about my parents.” The words are heavy and hard to say, and once spoken they seem to lie on the desk between us, ugly and leaden.
“You can’t read her texts now?” Uncle Gavin says.
“I don’t know her password. I blocked her on my phone, so she started texting her own phone, the one she left at my house. I could only read the texts right when she sent them, and
