The one won’t move out of the way. Grace knows this. Because she didn’t tell the police. Because he knows her as he does. Because he took Elizabeth and now the twins. Because she wouldn’t let Orin fire. Because he feels he belongs, the one won’t move. The others will, and they do. As Grace starts down Alder Avenue, stomping on the gas so the car gains speed, the other two scatter. One of them is probably the kinder man with the tired eyes. One dives to the left, one to the right, where Mr. Symanski stands. Only one stays his course, not moving from the middle of the road. He’s daring her, wanting to make a fool of her, wanting to prove she can’t change what has happened and that some part of him will always live inside her. She jams her toe to the floorboard. Had James been in the seat next to her, he would have braced himself. There is a loud thump. The silhouette flies up and away. It’s gone.
The car is still now. Inside, the air is warm and thin as if she has used it all up and there is nothing left. The only voices are muted but slowly they become louder. There is yelling, screaming. She lies across the seat, one hand on her baby, waiting. She closes her eyes.
One of the officers stares down on Julia, his shoulders square, his black shoes planted wide. Another stands behind her, a hand on her chair as if afraid she might try to run from the house. He has written down the name Maryanne in his small notebook. A third stands in the front room, occasionally speaking into a radio that crackles and hums. Grace must have closed the door as she left, because a burst of air blows through the house and out the kitchen window when someone opens it again. Small feet run across the linoleum entry into the kitchen. Julia lifts her head. The twins rush in, bringing with them the smell of outside-sweat-stained shirts, dirt under their nails, unwashed hair. They run to Julia, throwing their slender arms around her neck, smothering her with their warm bodies.
“Aunt Julia.”
She can’t tell which one is which because they’ve buried their faces in her hair. She wraps an arm around each. Bill stands behind them. He wears a white shirt buttoned at the collar and cuffs. He waits there, making sure they are well and then turns to leave.
“What did you do?” Julia says, the girls’ slender bodies pressed to her cheeks, one on either side.
An officer holds out a hand, signaling Julia should stay in her seat and Bill should not move.
“What did you do to them?” she says again.
The two girls back away from Julia. “He found us, Aunt Julia. Don’t be angry.”
“Your mother’s place,” Bill says, and then he faces the officer, talking to him and not Julia. “Few miles north on Woodward and east a couple blocks.”
“You’re lying,” Julia says, standing though the officer behind grabs her shoulder.
“No, Aunt Julia.”
One of the girls hangs from Julia’s wrist, but Julia yanks it away and the twin stumbles.
“It’s him,” Julia says, pushing back from the table and standing. Her chair topples. “Tell them, Bill. Tell them you killed Maryanne.”
“Mrs. Herze said we’d never find Patches,” one of the girls says. “She said our cat was dead and that we ruined her flowers. We didn’t. We didn’t ruin those flowers. We went to find Patches. We went to Grandma’s to put out our flyers. Mr. Herze made them. Every one exactly the same. But we didn’t know which street to take. We couldn’t find her house.”
“Tell me, Bill,” Julia shouts.
Hair hangs in the girls’ faces in stringy clumps because they never took that bath. One is crying. It must be Arie. The other has red cheeks and her fists are clenched. Izzy.
“Stop it, Aunt Julia.” It’s Izzy. Arie is crying too hard to speak. “Uncle Bill found us. He was there at Grandma’s. He knew he’d find us there.”
There are more officers in the kitchen now. Too many. It smells like vinegar and the black leather shoes they wear. The stiff soles click across the floor, probably will leave black scars. And those blue uniforms. They are too heavy in this heat. The officers sweat in them and their sour odors fill the house.
“I was glad,” Bill says.
He lifts his eyes to Julia.
“God help me, Julia, but that morning, when you found Maryanne. For an instant, I was relieved.”
Julia falls back into her chair.
“It exhausted me. All those nights. All that crying.” Bill turns from Julia to the officer at his right. Talking one man to another, he says, “I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t stop feeling that way. God, for an instant, I was relieved.” He coughs into a closed fist. His voice breaks. “What man feels that? What father? What kind of a father feels such a thing?”
The curly-haired officer stands at Bill’s side. Outside, the shouts for Izzy and Arie have stopped. No more footsteps on the front porch. Upstairs, a door shuts and water begins to run. The twins are gone.
“I didn’t hurt her, Julia,” Bill says. “But I think it’s worse, what I did. What I felt, the relief, I think it’s worse.”
The officer with the brown hair pulls on his hat, tucks his pad of paper under one arm, and walks from the kitchen. Bill stands alone, his arms hanging heavy at his sides. His hair is matted and his neck is speckled with red spots where he’s scratched at bug bites.
“How did you know to find them there?” Julia asks, staring at the small chip in her red tabletop.
“Didn’t know for sure. Figured it was that damn cat of theirs.”
“I felt it too, Bill.”
“No, you didn’t. That’s a lie. Don’t you tell me that lie.”
Julia shakes her head. “I did. It was as if I hadn’t exhaled since she was born, and then I did. It was that quick. Every day, I think about the things I didn’t know, about the things I could have done to help her.”
He is crying now. Softly, like sometimes a man does. His eyes red and wet, his face streaked with the sheen.
“I’m no kind of father.”
“You’re as good a father as I was a mother.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is, Bill. We’re peas in a pod. No different.”
“I can’t do it again.”
Julia stands on her toes and wraps her arms around his neck. The night air is tinted with smoke. Fireworks or perhaps somewhere a neighbor is burning yard waste. The shirt Bill wears must be his brother’s. The soft cotton smells of a day drying on the clothesline. Outside, a crash rings out. There are shouts again and running feet. There is a loud pop, as if a car has backfired, and the police run from the house. Izzy and Arie appear at the bottom of the stairs, or maybe they’ve been there all along. And then Arie says, which is surprising because Julia would have thought Izzy would be the one to say it, “Sounded like a gunshot.”
A Few Days After
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
On hands and knees, Julia dips her sponge in a bucket of warm, soapy water and squeezes with both hands until it runs dry. She crawls a few feet, presses the clean sponge to the baseboard, and begins again. Leaning on her left hand, she scrubs with her right until her shoulder burns. She straightens, dips the sponge in the water again, which is quickly becoming cold, squeezes and wrings it, and rests it on the side of the bucket.
The baseboards haven’t been cleaned in three years. The oak wood shines, almost looks yellow where she has scrubbed away the haze of dust and dirt. She pulls off her rubber gloves, turning each inside out as she tosses them to the floor. The crib is the only thing left in the room, and Grace is the only person who might have use of it. Many of the ladies have given Grace things over the past several months-clothes, quilts, diapers-but Julia never offered. Even though the crib was used only a short time, what mother would want to lay her child in such a bed-one where another baby died? Or would the kiss be the thing that stopped Grace from accepting the crib? That’s what Julia thought during the three days Grace was in the hospital. But then she was released, still pregnant with a healthy baby, and came to see Julia.