The computer flickered and hummed, and Ana imagined the many Facebook friends who must be curious or devastated, saw the static hands stretching out from the screen—Password.
She tried a few: “Finn.” “Finneas.” “12345.” Then she froze herself out; too many failed efforts. She was helpless against the electronic locks, truly disconnected.
Ana added to her mental list: password retrieval. She knew the law: There would have to be a death certificate. But Sarah wasn’t dead. It could take weeks or months, then.
She turned off the computer.
Ana removed three frames from the walclass="underline" one of Finn as a baby in a bathtub; Finn as he looked now, but with shorter hair, wearing blue overalls, his chin covered in whipped cream, grinning. The third showed the three of them together, heads touching, Sarah’s eyes squinting with laughter. The camera was close to their faces, as if held at arm’s length, taken by Sarah or Marcus. The background was blue, unrecognizable. Ana studied the picture for clues and then placed it with the others in her briefcase.
Ana changed back into her skirt and blouse, folding Sarah’s clothes into the suitcase. She would wash and return them before … what? Where is this going? Ana had never done well without a deadline. She still looked at every completed report at work as a potential A. She sometimes accidentally said: “Can I get an extension?”—the vernacular of a model student. This, in the end, was why she had chosen law. The organization, the binding of the fat books, the long, determined answers, and passes and fails. And to be paid! Ana still couldn’t quite believe how well compensated she was simply for making sense out of chaos, which she would do for no money at all.
Ana pulled the duffel bag onto the front porch, placed the garbage in the bins at the side of the house. She put a laundry basket of toys in the trunk. A small brown rabbit smiled up at her. She turned it on its side.
When she was safely in the car, with all the doors locked, she let out a long, soft whimper, a sound she was getting used to hearing.
On the way home from daycare, Finn had stories to tell, about bananas and a soccer ball that went missing and Elijah and Kai and Ella B. and Ella P. They walked side by side, Finn stopping every few steps to pick up a broken straw or a leaf, past the eyes of the old Portuguese men on their porches, their compressed bodies upright, hands on knees.
James pulled a narrative out of the streaming chatter, repeated it back to Finn: “You told Ella B. not to take your Jingo block?” Finn nodded, continuing the story.
They stopped in the park. Finn climbed the jungle gym while James stood below him like a human mattress.
It was dark already by the time they reached the sandwich store on the corner surrounded by houses with wrought iron fences and birdbaths.
“Should we get some sandwiches for dinner?” asked James.
“For Ana?” James was surprised. Had Finn said her name out loud before? He nodded.
The boy ran ahead, pulling the heavy door of the sandwich store open with determination. He instantly homed in on a dusty jellybean machine in the corner and stood twisting the dial.
“Do you want a sandwich?” James asked Finn.
“Girl cheese.”
“We can get that at our house. These are veal sandwiches.”
A girl a little older than Finn came in with her mother and installed herself at the jellybean machine, too, hitting the top of it with her fist. Her mother glanced at James, smiled distantly.
“I called …,” she said to the man behind the counter. He went to retrieve her food, leaving the woman and James side by side, each regarding a child.
“Lilly, no banging. Don’t bang. That little boy was here first.” The girl scampered to the pinball machine and began hitting the glass instead. Finn followed, staring at her.
“Lilly, don’t bang!”
“Give me a quarter!” yelled Lilly.
“No, not now. Dinnertime,” said the mother, tucking her bag of sandwiches under her arm.
“No! I want to play pinball!” screamed the girl.
The mother glanced at James woefully.
“He looks like you,” she said.
James wanted specifics on this comment. “Really? You think so? How do you see that?”
But there was a flurry of activity at the counter, paper bags crumpling and a loud cash register churning, and when James had finished paying, the woman and the girl were gone. Finn stood at the pinball machine, tapping it lightly.
James felt smug that they had made it through the ordering, the waiting, and the paying, without incident. He followed Finn, the bag of sandwiches in his hand, the little boy running ahead then turning back to check on James every few moments, just in case.
The sun was setting, and the fall light stained the rooftops of the houses caramel. At the top of James’s street, the curtains in the brothel house fluttered as they walked past, as if someone had just backed away from the window. James knew Ana’s theories but had never seen anyone come or go from there. He glanced at the recycling bin on the curb, bottles of vodka and Diet Coke. Nothing edible.
Finn ran from the sidewalk into the brothel’s muddy front yard, pocked with cigarette butts.
“Come on, Finn. You can’t be up there,” James said, trying to sound casual. Finn kept going, up the stairs, as if he lived there, as if he might reach up and turn the knob, step inside to some other life awaiting him there.
From the sidewalk, James yelled: “Finn, get down! That’s not your house!” Finn ignored him, focused on his repetitious ascent and descent of the stone staircase. Again, the flutter and shadow in the front window. James stormed the walk.
“Finn! I’m talking to you!” He grabbed the boy’s wrist—So light! A wishbone!—and pulled him. Finn’s body buckled. He yelped, making himself liquid. James was forced to drop the sandwiches and grab Finn, who kept slipping from his hands. He finally located two solid parts and hauled his smallness over his shoulder, trying to squat down and grab the sandwiches, all the while half running away from the brothel house.
Finn squawked like an injured bird. James glanced back to see the door to the brothel open and a woman’s shape appear. She was transparent, the tops of her bare legs covered by a long T-shirt. She held a cigarette by her hip. James moved quickly away.
They approached their house like this, with Finn wailing, a slab of snot and tears across James’s body, his legs kicking. Ana opened the door to them.
“I heard you coming,” she said, glancing up the street toward the other houses, their insides lit up in the dusk. Noise traveled between the houses and got trapped, like a tunnel.
James dropped Finn on the couch. The boy lay on his back, still screaming and kicking. Electrocution. Drowning. Ana hovered in the doorway.
“Is this normal?” She had to shout to be heard.
“I don’t fucking know!” screamed James.
“What are you going to do?”
He glanced at her. She was shivering; she looked barely born.
James went to Finn, squatting down, trying to pin him like a wrestler.
“It’s okay! Finny! It’s okay!”
Finn’s arms flailed, and his small right fist jutted upward, clocking James in the eye. James reeled back; Ana screamed, and at that sound, Finn went still and silent at last, shocked to hear Ana scream, shocked to see James, his hand over his eye, staggering backward in a stream of fuckfuckfuck.
Finn sat, bewildered, his face streaked.
Ana was upon James, pulling back his hand, looking at his eye, a small trickle of blood.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“His fingernails are too long,” said James.
“His fingernails!” gasped Ana, reaching for the blood. Finn watched from wide eyes as Ana quickly stroked James’s hair, then hurried to the bathroom for supplies.