I handed him the old black-and-white photograph. The man dressed in the Nazi uniform was, I’d been told at first, the Butcher of Lodz, a monstrous war criminal who had killed hundreds, maybe thousands, during World War II. But it wasn’t. At least not entirely.

The face belonged to the paramedic with the sandy hair and green eyes.

For a long time, I had been bewildered by this—how could a Nazi from World War II have been the paramedic who wheeled away my dad? But sometimes the simplest answer is so close to us, we can’t see.

The paramedic’s face had been Photoshopped onto the Butcher of Lodz’s body by the Bat Lady.

I still had no idea who he was.

“Sure,” Spoon said. “What about it?”

I put my finger right on the picture’s face. “You know he’s not really the Butcher of Lodz, right?”

“Right.”

“Is there any way you can figure out who he really is?”

Spoon studied the picture. He started to nod slowly. “I think maybe I can. Let me work on it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Spoon put the photograph in the drawer next to his bed. “You better let Ema in now. What do you think I should tell her?”

“The truth,” I said.

I looked down at him, in that bed, paralyzed below the waist. I was blocking on that. It was the only way to stay upright. But suddenly I felt the tears building again. Spoon looked up at me and then turned away.

“Arthur?” I said.

“Don’t call me that,” he said.

“Spoon?”

“What?”

I swallowed. “How are you? Really.”

He gave me the big smile. “Terrific!”

I just looked at him and waited. The smile faded away.

“To tell the truth,” Spoon said, “I’m a little scared.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I get that.”

Silence.

“Mickey?”

“Yeah?”

“After I talk to the girls, do you think you can hang in my room for a while?”

I managed not to cry. “For as long as you’d like.”

CHAPTER 15

Ema went in next, leaving Rachel and me alone for the first time since I knocked on the door and told her the truth about her mother’s death. For a few minutes we avoided each other’s gaze. I stood there feeling ridiculously awkward, shuffling my feet, casually fake whistling. I had no idea why I was fake whistling, but that’s what I was doing. I bounced on my toes. My hands felt really big and like I had no place to put them. I jammed them in my pockets.