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hoping someone who saw something will come forward,” Raoul told Dad. “Plenty of people use that river path in the mornings, walking their dogs, jogging, fishing. If they don’t come to us first, we’ll look for them. Sometimes people just don’t want to get involved.”
    I ran my hands along the edge of the table. Somebody saw something, I thought. Somebody could have seen everything and is telling me he did. And Raoul will find out.
    Mom brought in two paper grocery bags and held them so Raoul could slide the towels in.
    “Rumors are buzzing, thick as flies in summer,” he said. “And those don’t make it any easier for Mrs. McCandless, or for the Generos either. When we get it all straight, we can put a stop to those.”
    “What sort of rumors?” Mom asked.
    “Oh, well, Otis McCandless wasn’t exactly loved around here. You know that, Brodie?”
    When he spoke my name, my heart plunged. Was he going to say one of the rumors was about me? That I’d made them fall off the Toadstool,fall back screaming into the river?
    “Brodie, take care of yourself,” Raoul said. “You did a brave thing and the whole town knows it.”
    I didn’t look up. Raoul shifted the two bags under one arm and rubbed the back of my neck. “You always were spunky, even when you were little. Remember when you slid home and broke your wrist? Was that in second grade?”
    “Third,” Dad said, and smiled at me.
    “Yeah, third. Winning run. Last game against the Pirates. Man, you were proud of him that day.”
    “I’ve always been proud of him,” Dad said.
    Raoul grinned. “I know. Well, Jenny, David, I’ll be by in the morning. I’ll call first to make sure it’s OK. And Alex, you look out for Brodie too.”
    “I’m looking out for him all the way,” Alex said.
    Dad walked Raoul to the door, and Mom said I should go straight back to bed, that I didn’t look so good.
    “Alex, could you carry up those
Sports Illustrated
s for him? Oh, and Brodie. That nicegirl. The one who works with her father on the bats…She brought over a book for you.”
    “About bats?” Alex raised his eyebrows.
    “I don’t think so. It’s called
Beyond the Western Sea.
She says if you start it, you won’t be able to think about anything else.”
    I doubted that.
    “I’ll bring up some soup later. Chicken noodle. Maybe Alex would like to eat with you in your room?”
    “Cool,” Alex said.
    I lay in bed with the pile of
Sports Illustrated
s on one side of me, shaking under the covers, pretending to read
Beyond the Western Sea
, reading the first line over and over. “Just before dawn, the moment when time itself seems to stand still. Just before dawn, the moment when time itself seems to stand still.” I couldn’t make sense of it. Time itself was standing still. I willed Alex to go, to leave me alone. He’d flung himself down on the other bed and lay staring at the ceiling. One leg was bent, the other over it. His dangling foot jiggled and jiggled. It was making me crazy. But at least he wasn’t talking.
    “Your parents are real nice to you,” he said at last. “I guess that McCandless guy had a dad just like mine. A real magician. An expert at the disappearing trick.”
    I turned a page, wrinkling my forehead as if I was really into the reading. The wrinkling was another mistake. My stitches pulled and stretched.
    “Do you think it was that newspaper dude—Best in the West?” Alex asked.
    “What?”
    “Do you think he’s the one who left the towels? He’d just gone. He might have had them in his car. He could have run back, put them on the step and took off.” Alex lay back, considering. His foot jiggled. “Naw, not Best,” he said. “He couldn’t have seen us at the river.”
    He sat up and leaned across the space between the two beds. “You know who it could have been? Somebody else who definitely was there, someone besides us. Someone who knew how it went.”
    I lay absolutely still. “Who?”
    “Otis McCandless.