the beginning — the boys were so withdrawn and terrified in those early months. The mothers were friends, and had been widowed at the same time, so they stayed close at first.”
“What do you mean, at first?”
“Well, I think friction started arriving with the reversal of their circumstances.”
“The mothers’ circumstances?”
“Yes. Everyone always talked about what a great guy Gene Ryan was. His best friend in grade school was a poor kid. Gene’s family wasn’t the richest one in town, but they were upper middle class. Compared to Julian’s folks — who had moved here during the Dust Bowl migrations — the Ryans lived like kings. Gene was an only child, and he sort of adopted Julian as a brother.”
“But Gene went on to college, right?”
“Yes. Gene’s family could afford it, Julian’s couldn’t. So everyone talked about how kind Gene was, because even when he came back here to set up his practice, he was hanging out with his old buddy Julian.”
“Julian was a trucker?”
“He started out as a driver. To tell you the truth, I think he was the smarter of the two of them. He was making more money than Gene when he died.”
“As a truck driver?”
“He owned his own trucking company by then — and was managing it very well. He didn’t spend the way Gene did. He had a different attitude toward money.”
“So when the men died, Eva found herself poor—”
“And Francine found herself rich. Julian had a huge life insurance policy, all sorts of investments, and she got the trucking company to boot. She ran it for a few years, then cashed out and moved to Las Piernas.”
I sat up straighter. “Las Piernas? Why?”
“The boys wanted to go to school there. They were pretty young — too young to live in a dorm, as far as Francine was concerned, and I think she was right. Bret graduated from high school when he was fifteen. Sam was sixteen. I’m not sure why the boys picked Las Piernas, except that Sam was accepted by the community college and Bret by the university there.”
“The boys,” I repeated. “Let’s go back to that — you said Sam left his family?”
“Yes. Francine — Bret’s mother — was the more nurturing of the two women. Sam started staying overnight at Bret’s house. Soon he was living there. Later, Eva was so embarrassed by the revelations about Gene, and so involved in her courtship with her second husband, I think she was happy not to have Sam around. And Francine loved Sam.”
“But was it good for them to be together so often?”
“I was against it, but Eva and Francine were the ruling parties in that case. They kept saying that the boys had already suffered enough loss and separation. A speech therapist can only exert so much pressure. And the boys proved quite obstinate. Neither one of them would give you any cooperation if they were alone.”
“Did they ever talk to you about what happened to their fathers?”
She shook her head. “No, that was taboo. Even when we got them to talk again, they made it very clear they wouldn’t discuss it. Bret once told me that their fathers’ murders had made them freaks — that even if they hadn’t been mute, the other kids would have looked at them differently. And Sam — until those articles about his father came out, I thought we were making progress. If not for Bret’s loyalty to him, I don’t know what would have happened to him.”
“So Bret was the leader of the two?”
“No, actually, I think Sam was. They had a remarkable lack of discord between them, though, and I wouldn’t say that Sam bullied Bret. Bret can assert himself. They each had different skills, and they weren’t jealous of one another.”
“How did you get them to start talking again?”
“Well, it didn’t just happen all at once. At first, we were just trying to get them not to be so frightened of the world around them. They were so scared. Francine told me that except for their secret language, the only time she heard their voices was when they were having nightmares. They didn’t have as much trouble with women as with men. Bernard stopped by the office one day to take me to lunch, and the boys ran and hid. Bernard felt so bad. Fortunately, the only man they ever allowed near them came by just then, and he was able to coax them out. He even got them to shake Bernard’s hand — you don’t know what a breakthrough that was. But this man was very patient. He was a police officer — the one who found them in the basement.”
I was glad for the darkness. I leaned back into the shadows. “The boys liked him?”
“Oh, yes. His name was Frank Harriman. He came by fairly often at first, until the news about Gene. He busted the guy who gave the police the information on Gene’s gambling problems. Sam — he was pretty upset. He started leaving the room when Frank came over. Bret must have reasoned with him, though, because that passed. Pretty soon Frank was helping him with homework again, playing catch and….” She frowned. “But I don’t know. For some reason, it seems to me that Frank saw less of them after that.”
“You’ve got it all mixed up, Regina,” Bernard said, coming over to us. “It wasn’t the news about Gene that caused the problems, it was that witch he almost married.”
“That’s right! I must have blocked her from my mind.”
“I don’t know how you could have.” He turned to me. “This woman called me at work, said the reason Frank came by to see the boys was to hit on Regina. I told her she was full of crap. I guess she didn’t know I had met Frank. The guy is working with Regina, spending time outside of work trying to get these kids to talk — I mean, I had seen how the kids responded to him. But this woman must have had him by the short hairs, because he stopped coming by not long after that.”
“I had forgotten about her,” Regina said.
