Page 87 of Whistle

“Didn’t take what?” Annie asked. “What did they figure out?”

“I was cleaning,” she said, ignoring Annie’s quest for clarification.

Annie opted not to press. She waited.

“The boy’s room...”

Dolores’s eyes rolled upward, her pupils half-hidden by her eyelids.

“On the floor... it was all set up...”

Her eyelids started fluttering.

“What was set up?” Annie asked. “His trains?”

“Went to move them... touched them...”

She was starting to shake. Worry crossed Daniel’s face. “This is worse than usual,” he whispered to Annie. “I think we should stop before—”

“Fire in their lungs!” Dolores screamed. “All of them burning from the inside out! They can’t breathe!Can’t breathe!”

Annie recoiled, horrified. “I’m sorry,” she said to Daniel. “She can stop. I don’t want to put her through—”

“Everyone dying!”

Daniel had squeezed himself next to his wife and put his arms around her, trying to stop her trembling.

“Mom, come see! It’s beautiful!”

Annie was on her feet. Daniel said, “You should go.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Just go.”

Annie backed out of the room, unable to take her eyes off the woman as Daniel encircled her in his arms, whispering to her that he was there, that everything would be fine, that the lady from across the road was going home.

Annie found Charlie where she’d left him, on the bottom porch step. He held out the plate, which had been scraped clean of peach pie. “That was really good,” he said.

Annie took the plate from him and weighed whether to leave it on the porch railing, or discreetly go back into the house and leave it in the kitchen sink.

I can’t go back in there.

Annie, sitting on the porch, had arrived at a decision.

She couldn’t say that it was rational. She couldn’t say it made any sense. But she was going to get that Tide box from the basement, pack up those trains, and return them to that shed. And if that padlock was broken, she would buy a new one.

Annie didn’t know how she would explain it to Charlie. All she knew was that since he had found that box of toy trains, things had not been right around here. Whistles in the night, phantom trains running on an abandoned line, spiders coming out of boxcars.

She had an even better idea.

She’d tell Charlie they were going to spend another day exploring, and while she was away, she’d have Candace’s handyman, ifand when he ever showed up to put chains on the doors, pack up the trains and take them away. Forget putting them back in the shed.

Get rid of them.

She would tell Charlie the previous occupants had been in touch. When they’d moved, they had forgotten that Tide box, and could its contents kindly be returned to them?

Yes, that would work.

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