The Question

Gavin finally called back on a Wednesday.

"Sorry," he said. "Work has been — I have been busy. What is going on?"

She sat on the edge of the bed. She held the phone and she thought about what she wanted to ask him and she thought about what it would mean if he lied, and she thought about the fact that she knew, now, with the certainty of someone who had lived this long inside it, that lying was something people did when they were protecting something.

"Gavin. What is in the storage unit?"

The silence was long. She counted the seconds, the way she had learned to count things — the way she counted everything now, because counting was a way of staying present, of staying alert, of staying alive in a conversation with her brother that she did not know how to have.

"What are you talking about?"

"Unit 14. Route 9. It has been in Mom's name, and you have been paying for it, and Drake has been going there. What. Is. In. It.

"Liza." His voice was strange. Not angry — careful. "How do you know that?"

"Does it matter? Gavin. What is in the unit?"

He was quiet again. The silence this time was different — not the silence of someone deciding what to say, but the silence of someone who had already decided, and who was trying to figure out how to say it without making things worse.

"Things from the house," he said finally. "From Mom's things. From — from before. It is not what you think."

"It is exactly what I think. What is in the unit, Gavin."

"Liza, please. Can we talk about this in person? Please."

She closed her eyes. She breathed. She wrote in the margin of the evidence log: Gavin knows about the unit. Gavin does not want to tell me what is in it. He asked to talk in person.

"Okay," she said. "In person."

She hung up and sat on the edge of the bed and thought about her brother, who brought groceries and did not make it weird, and who had been keeping a secret, and who was afraid, and she thought: of what?