Dead to Me by Mary McCoy Page B

truth, just to keep from hating himself.
    By that point, I wasn’t listening anymore. I was thinking about the girl in the picture. I wished I could find her and take her someplace safe, someplace where none of them could hurt her
anymore.
    “I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said, cutting Alex off midsentence. I stood up and put the pictures back in my purse.
    Mr. Fleming walked me to the back door. Holding it open for me, he said, “I’m sorry.”
    “You didn’t do it.”
    “I’m sorry I raised a son who would do such a thing. I’m sorry you had to come here. I’m sorry you had to see the things you saw.”
    I wasn’t angry with Mr. Fleming, yet I couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes as I stepped out into the alley.
    “Yeah, me too,” I whispered.

I t was afternoon by the time I made it back to the hospital, and Jerry was waiting for me. Judging by the dark look he gave me, he’d been
waiting for some time.
    “Should I be impressed that you hung around here long enough to brush her hair before sneaking out?” he snapped.
    “I’m sorry I’m late, Jerry,” I said. “But—”
    Jerry raised a hand and cut me off before I could cook up a lie. He spoke softly, slowly considering each word he uttered. “I don’t even want to know where you’ve been this
time.” He rubbed his temples and winced, then looked back up at me, dark eyes blazing. “First you stage a break-in at your own house. Then you wander over to the Stratford Arms and
introduce yourself to Rex and Ruth.”
    My jaw dropped. “Were you
following
me?”
    Jerry ignored my question. “You are keeping me from my work, and you are putting yourself and your sister in danger. I know you want answers, kid, but what you are doing now is a
distraction, and I don’t have time for it.”
    I bristled. “Why didn’t you just tell me what you knew from the start?”
    Jerry rolled his eyes and enumerated his reasons on his fingers. “Because I have a job to do. Because you’re a child. And because, for some reason, I thought that after four years
apart, you might actually want to be here with your sister, not out playing detective.”
    “I just want to find out who did this to her.”
    “And I might know that by now, if I hadn’t been following you all over the city making sure you didn’t get killed,” Jerry said, giving me a disgusted look.
    Annie had been gone almost four years, and I’d never done a thing. I used to think it was because I didn’t know what to do, or how to help, or even where to start looking. But as I
sat by her bed that first night in the hospital, all I could think of was how none of that mattered. I should have tried. It was a bad feeling, but hearing Jerry’s words, I suddenly felt a
thousand times worse. Annie was half dead, her body broken. Someone had to keep her safe—someone needed to be here when she woke up, or when she didn’t. I was the only one who could do
those things for Annie, and I hadn’t been doing them.
    It was easier to look at it from a distance, to pretend it was a case from one of my detective stories. I wanted to believe I could look for clues, find the patterns, piece them together, and
save the day. Even if I could, it wouldn’t change things. It wouldn’t bring her back, or fix our miserable family, or make up for the years I’d spent without her, but that was
beside the point. I wasn’t a detective. Jerry was. He was the only other person trying to find out what had happened to Annie, the only other person who seemed to care about her, and all
I’d done so far was get in his way.
    Maybe it was the soapy coffee I’d had a few hours before, or maybe it was the guilt. I didn’t have time to pinpoint the exact cause of the queasy knot in my stomach before I was
doubled over the wastebasket heaving.
    Jerry cleared his throat, got up, and filled a cup of water from the tap. He handed me a handkerchief and patted me on the shoulder, offering comfort like he had seen it in