Free The Long Sleep by Caroline Crane

He should have ended the meeting on time even if we hadn’t
finished getting the next issue ready. How did he expect to
get home?
    On Saturday morning I called the Dalbecks. A
woman answered. I assumed she was his mother but it turned out to
be a sister, Arianne. I didn’t know he had a sister. She sounded
hesitant at first, as though she knew my name and blamed me for
what happened. Or maybe that was my own guilt complex talking.
    I explained why a picture was needed. “If you
have a digital one, that would be great,” I said. “But even a
printed one, they can always scan it.” I knew Ben had a
scanner.
    “I don’t know,” she said, still hesitant.
    “We really need it so it can come out next
week. It’s the only thing we don’t have.” I should have done this
sooner. Desperation made me say it. “I suppose I could take one at
the hospital.”
    That got a reaction. “No, don’t do that! I’m
sure we have something. I’ll look around and get back to you.”
    “I was hoping to have it today. So we can run
it in the next issue.”
    She was still reluctant, but mention of the
hospital worked. She told me to come on over.
    The house was an oldish one on Northbridge
Avenue. It was dingy white with green trim, and carved wood
curlicues on the front porch pillars. Arianne was older than I
expected maybe early to mid-twenties. She had dark reddish hair,
almost the same color as Cree’s, and didn’t look much like Hank.
I’d hoped I could get some quotes, but she didn’t seem all that
friendly.
    She’d found a packet of photos taken last
summer at a family gathering. They were all group pictures but
there were a couple of nice ones that Hank was in. They would have
to be scanned and cropped. Ron was set up with PhotoShop, so he
could do the cropping.
    The mail was just in when I got home from
Northbridge. Ben grabbed it and went through it, looking for
college catalogs. His heart was set on MIT but he was realistic
enough not to put all his hopes in that basket.
    I took a look at the mail but mostly I was on
a cloud of my own, picturing Hank growing up in that old-fashioned
house with the gingerbread porch pillars. I imagined him as a
little boy, those serious dark eyes. I wondered how long he’d worn
glasses.
    Ben handed me an envelope. It was the right
size for a college catalog, but thinner, and I hadn’t sent for any.
I still had another year of high school. There was no return
address and the postmark was pale and illegible.
    “What’s this?” I asked.
    Ben shrugged. How would he know?
    I sliced it open and gasped. Ben had been
starting away but he came back to look.
    It was photos. Evan and me and some others.
In every picture, my image was marked up—a beard, blacked-out
teeth, and all the dumb, childish things that get done to photos.
None of the other people had been touched. I handed Ben the
envelope and pointed to the postmark. “Can you read that?”
    He squinted. “Nope. Can’t you figure out who
it’s from?”
    “I want to know where it’s from.”
    Most of those pictures, I was sure, had been
taken with a digital camera. I raced upstairs and turned on my
computer, going straight to email.
    Yep, they were there, too, with no message.
Only the attachment. I clicked Reply and asked, Why can’t you
move on, you dummy? I wouldn’t have been so confrontational
face-to-face, but this was Internet. And he really pissed me off.
It was so stupid to be so obsessed. If he thought he was showing
his control over me, it was just the opposite. The fact that he
couldn’t let go meant I had power over him. Don’t guys like
that realize how pathetic they are?
    I deleted the whole message, including the
images, and tossed the printed pictures.
    Ben was in his room, browsing through his new
catalog. I gave him the pictures of Hank for scanning.
    “Just send them to me when you’re done,” I
said, “and I’ll get them to Ron.”
    He thought The Tiger’s Roar was
trivial, but promised to take