Chapter 18

18

"Smell this," Riki said.

We were sitting on the floor of her room in the turret. Riki had led me straight up here without a word, shut the door, and motioned for me to sit down. From the look of her eyes, and under her eyes, I don't think she'd slept. There was a can of energy drink next to her bed and a huge mug of coffee on the floor. She took a small green glass bottle full of dark liquid out of her bag and picked out the rotting cork with a nail file. The bottle looked old to me. Something about the shape, the thickness of the glass.

She leaned over and held it under my nose.

"What is it?"

"Smell it," she said again.

I didn't want to smell what was in this old, highly questionable bottle, but as you can see from what I've said so far, I'll apparently follow along with anything. I sniffed it. My nostrils warmed and flared from the sweet smell and a slight burning sensation. Then I let out a juicy sneeze.

"This is some powerful, old-ass booze," Riki said. "This shit could probably strip paint."

"Why did you want me to smell it?"

"To prove something to you. To explain. The tales the locals who worked here always told about the Ralston kids—at least some of them—was that they drank a lot. It was illegal then—Prohibition—but it was also illegal from the family standpoint. Phillip Ralston didn't approve of alcohol. But because of all the bootleggers that traveled along the river back and forth from Canada—this was like the floating Costco of booze. You heard what Dr. Henson said about her grandfather and this island. The story was that the kids hid bottles all over. So this morning I went looking. I found these six..." She pulled five more bottles out of the shopping bag. "... in the boathouse. They were on beams, under loose floorboards. That's six I found just today."

"You went through the house looking for old bottles of garbage booze?"

"I'm looking for evidence that the rumors were true, and..." She waved at the bottles. "Proof. People said the kids drank a lot and hid it, and here are the bottles. So there was something to those stories. See... what I said last night was only kind of true. I did— I do want to preserve Dr. Henson's stuff for her sake. For her family. But also, for everyone. Because she did the most research on them that anyone's ever done. She's writing a book. Last night, I read it. Or a bunch of it. And I went through some of the stuff we found in her room."

She'd had a lot of coffee and whatever else. She was moving her fingers like she was playing an invisible saxophone.

"It's like The Daughter of Time ," she said. "There's the famous story everyone's heard, but Grant wants to know if it really happened that way. What if Richard the Third didn't kill his nephews? What if the stories were all bullshit, made up by his enemies and then passed along through history? Because that's what history is—passed-down stories, documents. And people choose the story they like the best a lot of the time."

"What," I said, "are you talking about?"

Riki let out a frustrated grumble, but focused. "The official story is that Max Ralston snuck out when his nurse was napping and drowned, and then Clara died of grief. But there's been a local story as well. People around town wondered about what went down at Morning House. These two kids die, then the family immediately skips town and never comes back. Some people thought that another family member killed Max."

"A family member?"

"Think about it," she said. "There are six kids, all adopted, all born at the same time, all raised together and regimented. All in a house headed by a raging eugenicist. Then a new figure appears—Faye, the new wife—and they have a little boy. These accounts in here, in these notes Dr. Henson has, say that Max was a nightmare. The textbook spoiled brat. Had huge tantrums, destroyed things, kicked and clawed at people. They hated dealing with Max. Plus he's the biological child. What if that was going to mess with inheritances? What if he was just too much of a nightmare to live with? Those are two solid reasons to want to get rid of that kid."

"That doesn't mean..."

"Then there's the one thing everyone said about that day—everyone was sleepy. Everyone. The family, the staff. Everyone seemed to be having a nap when Max snuck out. People talk about it like the curse of the Ralstons, like some spell came over them all. It wasn't normal for everyone in the house to fall asleep in the middle of the day. I always assumed that part of the story wasn't real, an excuse later for no one noticing a little boy wandering around on his own. Not our fault. Curse. Mysterious. But no. There are statements here taken after the fact, statements by staff. They all said it, the staff—that day was different . They said they really were sleepy, and that includes the family. Phillip Ralston was precise. The family followed the same schedule every day, no exceptions. Breakfast, then exercising. But that morning, they didn't exercise. They all came back in."

"Because it was hot."

"I looked up the temperatures," Riki said. "That wasn't the hottest day they'd had that summer. Phillip wouldn't have canceled exercise because of that. He canceled it because they all felt weird. I think people are telling the truth. They really did all fall asleep at once. How would you get a whole house full of people to fall asleep?"

No one had ever asked me this before. I had no answer.

"Drugs," she said. "You drug them. They all seemed to fall asleep after breakfast. They were dosed with something. That's what makes sense. And it's not like getting drugs would be hard. Phillip Ralston was a doctor—he had an office, cabinets full of drugs. Anyone could have accessed the supply."

"So you think someone... drugged everyone and..."

"Point two," she said. "Another thing people said was that Max hated the water. Hated it. It was a big deal. All the Ralstons were swimmers and Max was supposed to be too, but he would lose it if they made him go in the water. No one thought Max would go swimming on his own. Maybe he didn't go to the water on his own. Someone took him there. Possibly the same person who literally danced off the roof later that night. I don't think you dance off a roof out of sadness. I think you may do it if you've lost your mind because you just killed your little brother. I think this death at Morning House thing was a murder."