I shut the adults up with a cold blank stare; I beat the shit out of classmates who got too blatant, right up until the day when my sympathy points got used up and teachers started giving me detention for fighting. I needed to get home on time, to help Geri with Dina and the house—my father couldn’t do it, he could barely talk. I couldn’t afford detention. That was when I started learning control.

Deep down, I didn’t blame them for asking. It looked like plain salacious nosiness, but even then I understood that it was more. They needed to know. Like I told Richie, cause and effect isn’t a luxury. Take it away and we’re left paralyzed, clinging to some tiny raft lurching wild and random on endless black sea. If my mother could go into the water just because, then so could theirs, any night, any minute; so could they. When we can’t see a pattern, we fit pieces together until one takes shape, because we have to.

I fought them because the pattern they were seeing was the wrong one, and I couldn’t make myself tell them any other way. I knew they were right about this much: things don’t happen for no reason. I was the only one in the world who knew that the reason was me.

I had learned how to live with that. I had found a way, slowly and with immense amounts of work and pain. I had no way to live without it.

There isn’t any why. If Dina was right, then the world was unliveable. If she was wrong, if—and this needed to be true—if the world was sane and it was only the strange galaxy inside her head that was spinning reasonless off any axis, then all of this was because of me.

I dropped Fiona outside the hospital. As I pulled up the car, I said, “I’ll need you to come in and give an official statement about finding the bracelet.”

I saw her eyes shut for a second. “When?”

“Now, if you don’t mind. I can wait here while you drop off your sister’s things.”

“When are you going to … ?” Her chin tilted towards the building. “To tell her?”

To arrest her. “As soon as possible. Probably tomorrow.”

“Then I’ll come in after that. I’ll stay with Jenny till then.”

I said, “It might be easier on you to come in this evening. You might find it tough, being with Jenny right now.”

Fiona said tonelessly, “I might, yeah.” Then she climbed out of the car and walked away, holding the bin-liner in both arms, leaning backwards as if it weighed too much to carry.

*

I handed the Beemer in to the car pool and waited outside the castle wall, lurking in shadows like a corner boy, until the shift was over and the lads had gone home. Then I went to find the Super.

O’Kelly was still at his desk, head bent in a circle of lamplight, running his pen along the lines of a statement sheet. He had his reading glasses on the end of his nose. The cozy yellow light brought out the deep creases around his eyes and mouth, the white streaks growing in his hair; he looked like some kind old man in a storybook, the wise grandfather who knows how to fix it all.