“How’s that gonna be different,” Walter asks. “Puts him right back where he was.”
“Not if whoever’s got him now is willing to keep him. He’s got access to you there, and you’re who he ran to. He can have contact with Nancy, through you, and Sheila if and when she shows back up.”
“What if she gets clean?” I ask. “Won’t they just give her one more chance?”
“There’s that,” Wiz says, “but I’ve known your sister since I started working with you and I knew about her before that. How many true clean and sober days do you think she’s had in that time?”
I say, “Well, there was this one Wednesday . . .”
“Bad as her record is, we require a year. She blows it once, we terminate. At the same time, we do what Kennedy and the Russians called ‘back-door negotiations’ where on her good days she gets to see him.”
“God,” I say. “Sometimes I don’t even know if she wants to.”
“This plan gives us our best chance of finding out.”
Walter’s fingers drum on the table. “And if this doesn’t work? If somebody finds you out?”
“I take the heat,” Wiz says. “All of it. Your name never comes up.”
“You could go to jail. Prison.”
“I could,” Wiz says. “That’s the part that excites my wife.”
“I’m serious.”
“Seriously, I could go to prison, but there’s a far better chance I’d lose my job and be on probation. My kids are grown, my wife makes good money, I could get a job doing something useful. Plus, my lifestyle’s so damn tame I don’t break probation now, and I’m not on it.”
“Lot of ways this could go bad,” Walter says. “I don’t like puttin’ you in this position.”
“Hell with it, Walter. I should thank you. I’m tired of pretending to help.”
And like that. We have a plan.
ChapterThirteen
“Annie,” Pop says. “I need to apologize to you.”
I can tell by the tone, this isn’t a real apology.
“We’ve let this silly ‘losers bracket’ thing play out, even watched you sabotage your scholarship chances wasting time on sports you had no business playing. And look what it came to.”
Through barely un-gritted teeth, “What did it come to?”
“Ultimately, to the fiasco at the swim meet,” he says. “To Frankie’s disappearance.”
I sit forward. “It’s my fault Frankie’s gone?”
“I didn’t say that. But even you have to admit—”
I throw up my hands. “Just tell me the rules, Pop.” I can’t stand to hear the same old thing over and over.
“Fine. No more Boots,” he says. “No more sitting in the stands with them between games, no more sneaking off to coffee or shopping. No more chance meetings. If you run into Nancy or Sheila, you nod and walk on. I guess I should say the same about Rance, but he’s no threat to anything. I wouldn’t recognize the guy if I saw him on the street.”
I calm the feeling in my stomach. “If I run into Nancy on the street, like really by coincidence, I don’t walk past without saying something. I can’t make a promise like that.”
Momma says, “Honey, she has a point.”
Pop shoots a don’t defy me glare, then looks away. “Very well—one sentence of acknowledgement then; that’s it. Now, do we agree, or do I need to add consequences?”
And people wonder why kids lie.
I say, “I understand.”
“Good. Why don’t you spend the rest of the day in your room, thinking it over. Let’s be sure we don’t have this conversation again.”
The one thing he’s said that I agree with.
Momma is massaging her temples.
I’m nervous about Frankie’s reappearance. It’s like the good guys in all those cop shows say; when you set out to commit the perfect crime, there are a hundred things to consider and you’re lucky if you think of seven. DNA trails and security cameras and smart phones and dumb people saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can trip you up at any point. I’m not part of the planning of any of this, but I could fit into that last category if the stars line up right. Plus, I’m carrying some anxiety around because, as much as she pisses me off, I worry about my sister. She can come off mean as a snake, but when she goes down, like to depression, anything could happen. Plus, I don’t want Walter to go to jail or Wiz to lose his job, or Frankie to end up on the foster care merry-go-round. And I really worry that it could all end up being because of me. Much as I hate the way Pop puts it, if I hadn’t had to have it both ways with my two families, hadn’t been the catalyst for bringing Frankie into the Howards’ lives, this would never have gotten so complicated. But I swear, when I look back remembering who I was as that little kid trying to figure out how to get back to a mother who couldn’t take care of me, a sister I banged heads with hourly, and a ghost dad, I can’t see what I could have done differently. The draw alone has always felt like what I imagine addiction to be. When anxiety reaches a certain level, you’ll do anything to bring it down.
I can’t mess up my little part.
So I’m dutifully in my room, helping keep the peace in the Howard household, when my cell pings.
Walter: Meet for coffee?
Me: Sure. Give me an extra half hour. Kinda grounded. Will be on my bike.
Walter: Never mind. We’ll do it another time. Don’t get in trouble.
Me: Wouldn’t feel right without trouble. Leaving now. See you there.
So much for keeping the peace.
Walter’s buying, so this must be serious.
He says, “We’ve got a small problem. Might need your help.”
“Sure, Walter.”
“I didn’t want you involved in this. . . .”
“Hey, I’m, like, the author of it.”
“The calm I said Frankie was experiencin’ is starting to crack. He loves seeing me every day, but it’s not enough; he needs more familiar faces.”
“Think I should go see him? I can
