At six o'clock on Monday morning, Bron woke to someone pounding on the front door. He got up groggily, looking for his pants, mind swimming.
He remembered the lessons he'd dreamt about at night, playing songs over and over. The dreams had left him exhausted. He lay back down.
Mike came to the bedroom, whispered urgently.
"What?" Bron asked, unable to focus.
"The police are outside," Mike repeated, nearly a shout. "They want to talk to you."
"What about?" Bron asked, baffled. He wasn't thinking straight. He wondered if Melvina was pressing charges over the stolen peaches, or if perhaps after all of these years, one of his relatives had come forward.
Then he remembered the car chase, and sprang wide awake.
When Bron got to the door, Deputy Sheriff Walton stood on the porch with his hands on his hips. A second officer stood at Walton's back, down closer to the car. True to form, the car's lights strobed red, white, and blue in the pre-dawn.
"Here he is," Mike told the officers. "What can he do you for?" Bron simply nodded, determined not to say anything that might get him in trouble.
Olivia came in from her bedroom, put an arm on his back. Bron glanced at her, in her long nightgown, and felt reassured.
Officer Walton came straight to the point. "Bron, do you know where Galadriel Mercer is?"
"What?" Bron asked. The question caught him by total surprise.
"Did you see her yesterday?"
He didn't dare tell about last night.
"Uh," Bron said, "sure. She came over with her mom and brought a fruit basket."
"I'm talking about afterward, smart ass," Walton said.
Bron shrugged and looked back to Mike. "No, I was here all night." Bron still wasn't awake. He blinked his eyes and shook his head, trying to snap out of it.
"Do you have anyone who can corroborate that?" Walton asked.
"Um, I was up until midnight, practicing the guitar with Olivia." He looked back to
Olivia hopefully. She nodded.
"What about after that?"
"I was in my room all night," Bron said, "asleep."
Officer Walton looked to Mike, who just shrugged. "As far as I know, he was in his room."
Olivia chimed in. "I woke up in the night and went to the restroom. I heard Bron singing at about 1:00 a.m., and peeked in his room. He was singing in his sleep."
Officer Walton turned away angrily, as if to cuss, then whirled and glared at Bron. "You were the last one to talk to that girl. What did you two talk about?"
Bron's heart pounded.
Had the silly girl gone skinny dipping and drowned—or been attacked by a wild animal?
Bron held silent. He couldn't tell them that Galadriel had suggested a tryst. In part he didn't want to ruin her reputation, but mostly he didn't think Walton would believe that he had turned her down.
But Bron did want the Mercers to find Galadriel, no matter what stupid thing she might have done.
Olivia touched Bron on the shoulder reassuringly, as if urging him to speak up.
"She told me that there was a pond out on our property," he suggested. "She said that she was thinking of going swimming out there, in the dark."
Officer Walton squinted suspiciously as his face darkened with rage. "For such a short conversation," he said in a voice as hard as gravel, "it sounds like you sure led that girl down an awful dark path. What else did you two talk about?"
Bron bit his lip. He didn't dare say anything more, not when Officer Walton would twist his words against him.
"Sheriff," Olivia said, "you can fish for confessions all day long, but that won't help. Maybe we should look down by the pond?"
Mike told the sheriff, "I'll unlock the gate for you."
Walton's eyes were like magnifying glasses on a hot day, and Bron was a small creature, burning beneath their cruel attention.
Mike trundled in that hunched way of his back to the gate and unlocked it while Deputy Walton grimaced and stalked to his car. When the police officers got through the gate, Mike ducked his head and folded himself into the passenger seat. They drove down an old trail that probably only saw a tractor three times per year.
Bron wondered if he should have gone with them. He wanted to help them find the girl, if only to clear his name.
"Don't you worry about them," Olivia suggested. "You come in the house, and help me make breakfast."
Bron followed her into the kitchen, where she fired up a griddle. He molded sausage patties and sliced cheese while she toasted some muffins, then fried the sausage to make sausage-egg muffins.
Work helped a little. Bron kept imagining the worst—Galadriel floating naked in the pond, with Officer Walton certain that she had been murdered. Or maybe someone had cut her open, flayed her like that calf, and her guts would be lying out in a steaming pile.
Walton would accuse Bron of course, but there wouldn't be enough evidence to convict. After all, Bron told himself, how could they convict me when I haven't done anything wrong?
So Bron focused on putting together the sausage-and-egg muffins, and the room began to fill with heavenly aromas.
Back at the Stillmans', Bron had been ordered to make pancakes just about every day. Bron hated pancakes, especially ones made from mixes. The ones he'd eaten in that house had tasted as bland as cardboard, and probably were just about as nutritious.
But breakfast here at the Hernandez house was special.
When the table was all set and the food steaming hot, Bron looked around nervously. It had been half an hour. The sun would be up soon, and Bron needed to get ready for school.
"They should have been back by now," Olivia said. "That pond isn't more than five feet deep at this time of year, and not a hundred feet across. It wouldn't take five minutes to search it."
Bron shrugged, and she gave him a piercing look, as if to draw him out. When she saw that he would hold silent, she shrugged and said, "Let's eat."
Bron felt guilty about eating without Mike, but they really had no clue when he might return.
Something is going on, he reasoned. Either they've found Galadriel dead, or they're searching around the pond. Otherwise, they would have come straight back.
He worried about Riley and that creepy old man. Had they come to the house in the night, found the girl, and killed her for sport? Were they trying to terrorize him and Olivia?
Maybe the police had found her corpse, and were trying to put together the clues.
The two ate in silence for several minutes, and Olivia said, "There's something that you didn't tell Officer Walton. I could see it in your face, and I'm sure that he saw it, too. Is there something more that you wanted to say?"
"Not to him," Bron said. "He already thinks I'm a creep. Anything that Galadriel told me, he'd twist it around in his head."
"So this Mercer girl, she told you something that bothers you?"
Bron ducked his head a little, swallowed a bite of muffin. "She told me that she was bored," Bron admitted, "and she asked if I've ever thought of running away. She said that she was thinking of going to Las Vegas, or maybe Hollywood."
"So she might have run away?"
"Maybe," Bron admitted.
"Did she want you to go to the pond with her and go swimming last night?"
"Yes."
"Did you go?"
"Of course not," Bron said vehemently. "I didn't touch her. I wouldn't. I just wish that I hadn't even talked to her. I wished that she'd—I don't know—I just wanted her to ... quit wanting the things she wants."
Olivia nodded. "She's a dangerous girl, especially for someone with your past."