“Stop. Okay?”
He’s on the end of the bed with his back to me and I hear him sniffle as he gets up to walk out. Dang! “Come here.”
“I’m okay.”
“Come here.”
He comes back and sits next to me on the edge of the bed. I pull back the covers and push him down beside me, put my arms around him from behind. “Sleep here,” I whisper. “We’ll both feel better.”
ChapterTen
“So now you can say you slept with a girl,” I tell Marvin at breakfast.
“Do I get to brag?”
“If you want a fat lip to go with your fat head.”
Pop is at work and Momma is upstairs getting ready to go to hers.
“What are you doing today?”
“Passing out fliers for Frankie later,” he says. “First I’ve got three lawns to mow, but that shouldn’t take too long. How about you?”
Marvin shames me when it comes to the world of work. He doesn’t just mow lawns; he’s like a full-care lawn service. He pulls this makeshift trailer behind his bike, with his lawnmower and an edger and a hedge trimmer. I filled out the application for a job cleaning up at the multiplex when I turned sixteen, but Pop thought he could finally talk me into turning out for club basketball and the application was never turned in. At some point I need to kick the employment thing into gear. If I had my own money, Pop would have less control.
“The police asked me to stop by so I’m headed over there, then over to social services,” I say now.
“Whoa. You scared?”
“Why would I be scared?”
“You know; they might ask questions that put your family in a bad light, Sheila at least.”
“My family doesn’t need me to shine light on them, bad or any other kind. They shine their own lights.”
“Why are you going to social services?”
“Mr. Novotny asked me if I could stop in. That’s cool; he’s one of the good guys for sure.”
Marvin places his spoon in his cereal bowl. “What can I do?” He seems . . . desperate.
“Marvin, we’re just gonna have to feel this way until something happens.”
“You’ll let me know, though, right? Like if they think of a new place to search where kids can be of assistance?”
I hold up my phone. “You’re at the top of my contacts.”
He rolls his eyes. “Contacts are alphabetical.” He stares at his cereal.
“The Quakers went to a lot of trouble to make that,” I say. “Eat.”
He sinks his spoon in.
“Then go do your fliers and make the neighborhood neat and green again.”
Marvin finishes his oats, places his bowl in the sink, and starts for the garage to get his mower. “Listen,” he says at the door, “thanks. For last night. I was afraid of my impending dreams.”
Impending dreams. “Welcome to my life,” I say. “Anytime.”
“I can sleep with you anytime?” Marvin is getting his sense of humor back.
“Go forth and mow.”
“Your sister’s a piece of work,” Officer Graham says.
I say, “Half sister.”
“Bet you wish it was a smaller fraction,” he says. “At any rate we’re hoping people who know her can fill in some blanks. What’s the best way to get in touch with her mother?”
“Create an app where you can get rich blaming other people for your crappy life.”
He smiles.
“And if you think my sister is a piece of work . . .”
“Apple and tree?” he says, then catches himself. “I’m sorry. That was . . .”
“You’ll have to work harder than that to offend me,” I tell him. “Yeah, apple and tree. That apple didn’t fall. I fell and rolled.”
“You were in the pool when your nephew disappeared?”
“Uh-huh. Embarrassing as it is, I’m the reason everyone was there.”
“How so?”
“My entourage,” I say. “Or entourages. I have followers from both the Montagues and the Capulets. They were all there to watch me swim.”
“You must be a pretty good swimmer.”
“Let’s don’t go there.”
He nods. “So you had a different point of view from the others.”
“I did, but I never saw Frankie. By the time I finished my race, the chaos was on.”
“We talked to the librarian and some of the kids from your book club,” he says. “She was helpful to the point that she could be. She said you all had been reading a book about a swimmer, so they all came to watch you.”
“Yeah. The swimmer in the book is the exact opposite of me.”
He writes in his notebook. “I understand Frankie spent quite a bit of time with your foster parents, the Howards?”
“My sister used to bring him . . . brings him over when she’s headed out to do other-than-motherly things,” I say. “It’s her way of staying out of the line of fire of CPS.”
“They have no problem taking him?”
“No. I mean, they’ve got me, and I can get him to behave—well, kind of behave—when I’m home. Plus, he likes my foster mom; and their son . . . my foster brother.”
He puts down his notebook. “Do you have suspicions? Any gut-level stuff, fears gnawing in the back of your mind?”
“Maybe one . . . kind of a general one. My sister had this asshole boyfriend—a guy named Butch—carbon copy of the last ten. I saw a pretty nasty bruise on Frankie’s arm that I think he put there, like he punched him. He’s supposedly gone now, but my sister gets into relationships with these weak, angry guys who are usually afraid of her.”
Officer Graham says, “That’s interesting. . . .”
“Yeah. Most of them, except for this last guy, Butch, would be afraid to fight her, like, physically, but I’ve never seen her with a guy she wasn’t trying to humiliate. Maybe one of them decided to get even.”
“That’s a stretch,” he says, “but worth looking into. We didn’t think to ask her specifically about past boyfriends. Maybe we can get some names.”
“If she can remember them.”
“Can you help us with any?”
“No,” I say. “I’ve always stayed away; I get way too mad. Of course, if you have a list of small-time drug dealers who live with their mothers . . .”
“Look, Annie, we’re trying to move fast on this. We know timetables. If you think
