I nodded. Elsa blinked hard, handed me the dress. From the front it looked perfect. You wouldn’t know. But when I turned it over there was no mistaking the small tear in the darker blue fabric underneath, and the stain that radiated out from it. Like Elsa’s pictures. Carmine 12 shading to cinnabar 14.

Fourteen

We asked Dan to take Vee out.

“Vee,” said Dan as she entered the room. “Vee, what say you and I go for a walk?”

“I’m fourteen, Dan.”

“Which means what? You don’t do walks?”

“Which means there’s nowhere to walk to. Literally, like, nothing.” She looked at Elsa, suspicious, then at me. “What are they planning?”

“What about that Viking grave?” I said.

“It’s barbed wire and dead grass,” said Vee. “Maybe some skater goths drinking beer and smoking weed.”

“Sounds edgy,” said Dan. “Let’s go.”

“Thanks, Dan,” I said.

“It’s not edgy. It’s lame.” Vee looked at me, then at Elsa. “Fine,” she said. She walked from the room, angry.

“Thirty minutes?” said Dan.

“An hour would be good,” said Elsa.

We drew the bed away from the wall, but Vee had hidden nothing there beyond the dress. I pulled the sheet from the mattress, pulled the cover from the duvet. Elsa rifled through Vee’s diary. I searched Vee’s schoolbag. We searched every drawer, opened every jeweled box.

Nothing.

Elsa stood on a chair and ran her hand across the tops of the wardrobes. Nothing more than dust.

We put everything back exactly as we’d found it. We agreed that I would speak to her, but when Vee returned something went wrong. I heard shouting from the kitchen, and when I walked in Vee was in tears and Elsa’s eyes were white with fury.

“Fucking hypocrite,” Vee spat at her mother. She turned on her heel and strode out.

“I’ll take this,” I said.

“I think that might be best,” said Elsa.

Vee was sitting on the bed. I sat down on the floor, facing her.

“Unbelievable,” she said. “Can you believe she would do that?”

“Do what, love?”

But Vee was looking around at the bed, at the bookcases, at the wardrobe. She could tell.

“She searched my room, Dad.”

“We searched your room, love.”

“Oh.” She sat for a time examining her foot, rubbing her thumb across the side of the arch. Her voice, when she spoke, was very small. “What did you find?”

“Vee, you know what we found.”

She nodded as if to herself.

“I know I have to take the dress to the police,” she said, her voice small.

Then she got up and sat down beside me on the floor. I put my arm around her and we sat for the longest time, saying nothing.