A Girl in the Dead Ice House Says My Brother Never Took the Money

"Mama. There's a girl in the ice house window. She's been watching us since supper."

Josie said it the way she'd announce the school bus. She set her bowl of Cheerios on the sill, and Cori crossed the kitchen with her wooden spoon in hand. Across the wet gravel alley, a yellow bug light burned over the loading dock of my family's dead cold storage - a building with power cut since 2011.

A small figure stood in the second-floor window in a red hooded coat, dry and still, holding a dented thermos. Sixteen years ago my brother Dean was run out of Farling over money stolen from that building, and everything I've built sits on what I know about that night.

"She says her daddy didn't take the money," Josie said, climbing down from the chair. "She says you know who did."

"I don't know her." I said it before anyone asked me anything. Cori didn't look at the window anymore - she looked straight at me, said my name once, and let the silence break us wide open.