This Must Be the Place: A Novel by Kate Racculia

needed to hear the sound of his voice. His good voice. Sounding like Arthur Rook, even if he wasn’t thinking like Arthur Rook.
You’ll go to sleep and wake up again and everything will make more sense; you just have to get to bed—just get to bed, Arthur.
Tomorrow it’ll make sense. Tomorrow, you’ll see.
    “I’ll tell Mona tomorrow,” he told Harry, who scampered ahead of him into the bedroom. “I’ll tell everyone.”
    Harry leaped to the bed and turned back.
    “No, you won’t,” he said, with Arthur’s voice.

    Arthur opened his eyes. Where was he and how had he gotten here?
    He remembered.
    Arthur gasped and shoved twenty pounds of feline off his chest and saw a framed poster beyond his feet, opposite the bed: a picture of neat wedges of pie and cake in meticulously ordered rows, the pastry equivalent of a military drill, and he thought, in quick succession:
    I am wearing sneakers in bed.
    This is the second time in two days I have worn sneakers in bed.
    I am—
    Amy is—
    Amy is hiding. Amy is here.
    You know where to look
.
    He gasped again, for air, for anything. Everything sang out: his head and his arms and his wrists and his ankles and his hips and his back. His chest. His stomach. His throat constricted, and he heard himself give a strangled little howl that terrified him.
    It was still dark. The clock on the dresser—an old-fashioned alarm clock, silver bells like double berets—told Arthur it was four-thirty in the morning. Arthur felt he could cut himself on this world; the air itself was sharp and razor-bright, and here he was: breathing needles into his body like a chump.
Well
,
maybe that wouldn’t be so bad
, he thought;
maybe it would feel good to bleed.
He shook his head and didn’t care that there were other people sleeping nearby and shouted, full voice, for Harry.
    Harry didn’t answer.
    “Come on, Harry.” Arthur swung his feet to the floor and stood up quickly and almost passed out. Running on fumes, he thought. When Amy worked late, she’d call on her way home from the workshop or movie set:
Tank’s empty, running on fumes—gonna hit the In-n-Out; you want?
    Arthur stumbled into the living room. Harry was on the coffee table, lying on the pink box, his tail dangling over one side and twitching happily. He was asleep and dreaming, and Arthur was murderously jealous of this cat—this
cat
—who could sleep atop the museum of Amy and have beautiful dreams. Arthur wanted beautiful dreams. Arthur wanted Amy, the best parts of Amy, that were hidden here if only he knew where to look; he wanted them for himself. And Amy
wanted
him to have those parts. Otherwise she wouldn’t have shown him the shoebox in the dark, wouldn’t have pointed him at Ruby Falls and told him to run. She had had almost
sixteen years
to send that postcard to Mona Jones, and she never did. If she really wanted to name Mona her heir, she would have.
    She didn’t. It was clear, it was so clear—Amy wanted Arthur to know. Amy wanted Arthur to use the contents of the pink shoebox to give himself beautiful dreams and, in dreaming, to solve the mysteries she’d left behind.
To know where to look.
    No, Arthur thought. No, that’s insane. Amy didn’t know. Amy couldn’t plan—wouldn’t want—
    Arthur Rook was good. But Arthur Rook was lost and shocked and more alone than he knew how to bear. When Amy, who hadn’t even said good-bye, spoke to him in signs and wonders, he grabbed onto them with both hands. He turned them over in his mind and saw that they were real enough, that they were what he wanted. They took away the red drone in his brain, the sound of crystal vibrating. Mona Jones, who had seemed so real for an instant on her front porch, was another clue, another sign, another wonder. He could use her to find what Amy wanted him to find—he could use her like he had used the postcard. Like he would use the photographs and the clippings and the bottle caps and the key chains. He would use them all