Nightshade

hadn’t opened. He tried, but it was locked.

When he asked about it, his stepfather smiled at him. “Everybody has to have a few secrets,” he said, winking mysteriously. “And that drawer contains mine.”

From then on Matt had wondered what might be hidden in that bottom drawer, but his stepfather had never told him. “You’ll find out someday. When the time’s right, I’ll show you everything that’s in that drawer.”

Then, last week, his stepfather had said something else. They’d been talking about his birthday, and his stepfather grinned at him. “Maybe I’ll give you something really special,” he said, and Matt had wondered if his dad was going to come home. But that dream had lasted no more than a second. “Maybe I’ll finally show you what’s in my secret drawer,” his father went on, his expression turning serious.

Matt didn’t tell him that he’d stopped wondering about the drawer years ago, when he decided there probably wasn’t anything in it at all — at least nothing really wonderful. Probably just a bunch of old papers.

But now, as he gazed at the drawer, the memory of his aunt’s words came back to him, “He’s mine… he’s always been mine.” And he wondered if there might actually be something in the drawer.

Something about him.

Now Gerry Conroe’s shouted words came back to him. “Who is he? Who is Matt? Tell me the truth!”

Was that what his stepfather had hidden in the drawer? The truth? His pulse quickening, Matt knelt down and pulled at the drawer.

It was locked.

He pulled open the other drawers, searching for a key, but there was none. But the lock looked simple — very much like the lock on his own desk upstairs.

A lock that had never had a key, but that he’d figured out how to pick when he was only ten years old. All it took was a paper clip — one of the big ones, that wouldn’t bend easily.

He rummaged through the top drawer of the desk again and quickly found what he was looking for, almost lost in a jumble of rubber bands so old they were crumbling. Straightening the paper clip, he carefully inserted about three-eighths of an inch of its end into the crack between one of the drawers and the desk’s frame, then bent it ninety degrees. Inserting the bent end into the lock, he rotated it one way and then the other, feeling for the familiar resistance of the locking device. When the end of the pick caught, he tested it a couple of times, then gave the paper clip a quick twist.

The lock clicked open.

Matt pulled the drawer open, not knowing what to expect.

What he found was a file folder.

Still on his knees, he set it on top of the desk and opened it.

Photographs.

Photographs of himself.

In two of them he couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. Then there was one in which he looked to be about five, and in the others he was a little older.

But something wasn’t right. He looked more closely at the photos, and in an instant he knew: they weren’t of him. He didn’t recognize the backgrounds in any of them, or the other people who appeared in two of them. And now that he looked more closely, the boy looked most like him in those in which he was youngest. In the last one, where the boy looked to be about the same age as Matt was now, the resemblance was still strong, but it was clear that whoever the boy was, it wasn’t him.

Then who? Matt wondered. Where had the pictures come from? What did they mean?

He was going through them again, examining them even more closely, when he smelled it: his aunt’s perfume, filling his nostrils with its musky scent. He froze. He could feel her now — she was right behind him!

But that was impossible! She wasn’t real! She was dead! But as the scent in his nostrils grew stronger, he turned around.

His eyes widened in shock as he stared up at the figure that loomed above him. She looked almost exactly like the portrait of his aunt that hung in the guest room upstairs. Her hair — her makeup — everything about her looked the same. “Aunt Cynth — ” But before he could finish, the figure spoke.

“I’m not your aunt! I’m your mother! And I’ll never let you go! Never!”

Only now did Matt see the fireplace poker raised high and arcing down toward his head.

“You’re mine,” he heard. “You’ll always be mine.”

The weapon struck, and Matt crumpled to the floor.

* * *

BECKY ADAMS READ the page of her history text for what seemed the hundredth time, but it made no more sense to her now than it had an hour ago, when she first slammed the door of her room — not quite in her mother’s face, but almost — and flopped down on her bed to study. Except she hadn’t been studying at all; she’d been seeing the words, but the meaning hadn’t registered. Finally giving up, she tossed the book aside, skootched farther down on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling. The plaster was spiderwebbed with a network of cracks that, over the years, had provided her with hours of lonely entertainment as she searched for new pictures or traced new routes through an imaginary maze. But this afternoon even the patterns on the ceiling couldn’t lift her spirits.

And she’d felt so good when she came in after Matt walked her home from school, the warmth of his kiss still on her lips. But that good feeling hadn’t lasted after she closed the front door behind her.

“You come in here right this minute, Rebecca Anne!” her mother had commanded from the living room.

Her mother’s use of both her names told Becky she was angry. Then she saw the small glass of sherry on the table next to her mother’s chair and understood. She tried to pull her eyes away from the nearly empty glass, but it was too late.

“Don’t you get that look on your face, young lady,” Phyllis Adams said, the edge in her voice telling Becky this wasn’t her mother’s first glass of wine. “If I want to have a little treat for myself in the afternoon, it’s nobody’s business but my own.”

“I didn’t say anything — ” Becky began.

“You didn’t have to! Don’t you think I can see?” Before Becky could answer, she plunged on. “I can see far better than you think I can.” Her eyes fixed accusingly on her daughter. “I saw you kissing that boy.” She spat the last word out as if it tasted bad.

“What do you mean, ‘that boy?’ ” Becky protested, mimicking her mother’s tone, and realizing her mistake too late to avoid it. “It was Matt Moore. You like Matt! You’ve always liked him!”

“Don’t you sass me, Rebecca Anne.” Phyllis had pulled back the curtain over the front window just far enough to peer out, as if to make certain Matt was no longer there. “Everybody knows what Matt did to his father and grandmother. And now poor Kelly Conroe’s missing — I feel so bad for Nancy Conroe, I can hardly bear it.” Her eyes glistened with sudden tears, and she picked up the decanter that stood next to her glass, pouring enough to raise the level in the glass past the halfway point. “How could you kiss him?” she asked. “If he gets the wrong idea about you — ” She shuddered, unable even to bring herself to articulate what might happen to her daughter.

But Becky had had enough. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about, Mother.”

“Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady.”

“Then don’t talk about things you don’t know anything about! Especially not when you’ve been drinking.”

Even now, Becky could remember the look of outrage that came over her mother’s face, a look so seemingly genuine that if Becky hadn’t seen it a hundred times before — when her mother had been so drunk she could hardly stand up — she might have believed it.

“How dare you?” Phyllis raged. “Just because I might have a little sip every now and then doesn’t mean — ”

“Fine, Mother,” Becky said, holding up her hands as if to stop the denials she knew might well go on for several minutes. “But you’re still wrong about Matt. He’s — ”

“He’s a killer, and a rapist, and God only knows what else! And when your father gets home — ”

That was when Becky had gone to her room, slammed the door, and flopped down onto the bed to study. Why bother to listen to it anymore? She knew what would happen when her father got home. He’d hear her