Page 51 of The Gallagher Place

From a few yards away, Nora kicked at a glass bottle. Her bare suntanned leg was a blur in the air. “Or maybe it’s a creepy old man. Who wears animal furs and hunts with a bow and arrow!”

Marlowe cracked a smile as Henry’s ears perked up. He loved when Nora came up with stories.

“What’s his name?” Henry asked.

It took barely a millisecond for Nora to respond. “Mr. Babel.”

They all shivered at the delicious streak of fear the name induced, even Nate.

“Mr. Babel fled into the woods years ago, after his wife and children died,” Nora declared.

“They perished in a fire!” Marlowe added, finally able to partake in the levity.

Nate rolled his eyes, but then he added, “I bet he’s got an old shotgun, not some measly bow and arrow.” He turned then, leading them all back toward the fresh pile of stones and the wheelbarrow they’d abandoned. He declared that they’d had enough rocks for the day—it was time to head across the street to the Flats. They talked of Mr. Babel the whole way back to the building site. Then they unloaded the rocks, and Marlowe beamed at the first few feet of the wall they’d built. It was so neat and tall and solid, nothing like the crumbling walls up in the woods.

They would build this one to last forever.

FRIDAY

NOVEMBER 30, 2018

TWENTY-SIX

Marlowe blinked against the hazy light filtering through her window, her head still heavy with sleep. She took a few slow breaths and then sat up too fast. The room tilted before settling back into frame.Right, she thought,morning.

She pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to recall when exactly she’d left her desk and lain down on her bed the night before, but the details were slipping from her mind like water through cupped hands.

Dragging herself to her desk, she pulled out a few fresh sheets of paper and gripped a pen. The day after reading Brierley’s notes, she was going to start keeping some of her own. Ariel wasn’t taking her theory about Pete seriously, which meant Marlowe would have to pursue it herself. She would have to be methodical, ruling out possibilities one by one. And she was going to have to consider something she’d avoided for years. Nora might have broken their oaths of secrecy. She might have told someone about their pranks. Or worse. She might have been seen by someone besides Dave, slipping in and out of places where she didn’t belong.

Marlowe tapped the pen against the paper, forcing her thoughts into order. Her head ached, but if she wanted answers, she’d have to push through.

At the top of one page, Marlowe wrote:Mr. Babel—Is he real? Is he Pete Gallagher?

On the back she wrote:Nate + Nora?

She had a million questions, but they all boiled down to the three she had written so far. If she could figure those out, it would lead her to answers about Nora.

She lifted her pen and began to write out the names:

Nate

Luke

Mike

Henry

Liam

She looked down. The boys who had been in the kitchen with her the night Nora disappeared, and who might have known more than they’d told Brierley.

Her mind moved to the other rooms of the house. It was like a game of Clue. There was someone behind every door.

Frank

Glory

Enzo