Chapter 6

Margaret took hold of Noah and tried to pull him toward the bedroom.

He tore his arm free so violently that she went down. Brownish liquid seeped through one leg of her pants.

Noah pinched his nose shut, disgusted.

"When Ethan told me you were sick, I figured he was making it up to get me home," he said, cold. "I had no idea it was this bad. Your memory's scrambled and you can't even keep yourself clean."

Then something occurred to him, and one corner of his mouth pulled up.

"Although this time your illness did me a favor."

Ethan's spirit was still in the room. When his mother fell, he reached out for her without thinking.

His hand went through her.

He looked down at his own fingers and something like a smile crossed his face.

He'd forgotten.

He was dead. He was never going to take care of her again.

Two years ago, Margaret had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

At first it was small confusions. Then it got worse, until she couldn't live on her own, and her memory settled and stopped in the weeks after her husband's death, ten years back.

In the world she lived in now, Noah was always about to leave for Curtis, and Ethan was always somewhere in the house, furious about it.

Day after day, she was trapped in that one afternoon.

Just as she was now, flat on the floor, dragging a fallen couch cushion into her arms and murmuring to it as though it were her elder son.

"Ethan, don't be angry with Mom. Noah's my baby, I have to give him the best I've got. You're his big brother. Would it be so terrible to stay here with me and take care of me? Would it?"

Ethan had heard that speech more times than he could count. It still made him cry.

He'd always known his mother loved him. When boys at school picked on him, she went down there and made them sorry. When he nearly died protecting Vivian, nobody was more frightened or more outraged than she was.

But her love had always been a selfish thing.

She'd read his journal without asking and told Vivian what she found in it. She wouldn't let him study abroad, wouldn't even let him leave Chicago--she wanted him tied to her side.

And she sent his brother chasing a dream with everything the family had, and never once counted the cost.

Ethan had known since he was a boy.

It wasn't that his mother didn't love him.

She just loved Noah more.

The same way Vivian did.

Something in his chest peeled slowly away from the bone. Ethan stood and looked down at his mother, shaking on the floor, and finally spoke.

"Mom. I don't blame you. I really don't."

I don't blame you.

But I'm not going to be here anymore, either.

Ethan turned and went.

Downstairs, Vivian was taking a call from the police.

"About the reexamination," she said. "It won't be necessary after all."

But the detective's voice came back fast and urgent.

"That's not why we're calling, Professor. There's been a development. We have a name on the fan who abducted Noah Shaw--Corey Vance. We searched his residence and we found human remains.

"Testing indicates they're the hands and feet missing from your unidentified victim."

By the time Vivian got to the medical examiner's office, the place was in chaos.

The abduction and the mutilation homicide were now one case.

Daniel sighed over what they'd recovered. "The hands and feet were dumped in concentrated acid. There's not much left, but there's something. We're not getting out of here tonight."

Then he glanced toward the door.

"Oh--Professor, I texted your husband that you'd be here overnight. He hasn't brought your things by yet?"

Vivian's forceps went still in her hand.

She worked at the university; the county office only called her in for the difficult ones. Whenever a case kept her here overnight, Daniel would text Ethan, and Ethan would come with a change of clothes.

He always brought more than that. Food, coffee, enough for every detective and examiner pulling the same shift.

He couldn't speak, and he was afraid of interrupting her, so he'd stand near the door and watch her from a distance.

And when their eyes happened to meet, his whole face would open into a smile.

This time he hadn't come.

Was he still angry about Noah?

That crawling unease rose in her again, and she made herself set it down.

"Let's begin the second examination," she said.

She was about to step into the morgue when a commotion broke out in the hall.

It was Tessa. She pushed past everyone trying to stop her and came straight at Vivian, white-faced.

"Vivian, it's bad. Noah and Ethan are all over the internet."