Chapter 21: Ask Me

Mason's POV

On Sunday morning Jo took me to the Pennock Wing with a crowbar in her hand.

The boards over the east door had been up for twenty years.

She stood in front of them in work boots and an old Home sweatshirt, and she held the crowbar out to me.

"You're the tall one," she said.

"I'm told I'm also the one who owns the tools."

"Today you're the one who holds the other end."

I took the crowbar.

It was nine o'clock, and half the children in the Home were watching from the hall.

The little girl with the rabbit sat on the floor with a pancake in each hand.

I pried the first board loose and the nails screamed.

Jo took the second.

We worked down the door together, and she was faster than I was, and she didn't wait for me to catch up.

Behind the last board there was a kitchen.

It was a large room with a wall of tall windows and a black iron range with its doors hanging open.

Dust lay thick on a steel table, and the air smelled of old flour and cold iron.

Jo walked in ahead of me.

She went straight to a pantry door in the far corner and opened it, and stood very still.

I came up behind her.

On the inside of the pantry door there were pencil marks, dozens of them, going up the wood in a column.

Every mark had a date beside it and one initial.

J, age six.

J, age seven.

J, age nine.

The top mark was at the height of my ribs.