“I wish my mom would divorce him.”
“Your mother is not going to divorce your dad. Certainly not because of me.”
“Well, she should. Everything always has to be his way. I might run away.” His eyes narrow. “If you go, I go.”
“Look, maybe Pop’s just mad. Maybe he’ll get over it. If he decides to put me out for real, he’ll drag me into the den to tell me why fifteen times. I’ll have a chance to talk him out of it.”
“You’re right. He is angry. If you’d let me tell him about Frankie’s situation—”
“No! Marvin, everything with Frankie has to work just right.”
“But he couldn’t stay angry if he knows it’s all about Frankie.”
“Look, you and I, like, care a lot more about Frankie than Pop does; you have to know that. He’s been cool about taking him, but if it hadn’t been for Momma, things would be real different. So, whatever Wiz comes up with has to be our truth, okay? Just for now.”
“This is unjust.”
“Promise me.”
He sets his jaw.
“Marvin, I’ll kill you if you tell. And I’ll leave anyway.”
Surface tension keeps a single tear from falling. “I know. I’m not going to tell; I promised. I just don’t want you to leave. You’re the only person I really talk to.”
“And, he’d turn all that crap onto you.”
He leans back and kind of laughs. “There’s that.” He laughs harder. “Annie, if you abandon me I’ll be left in the driveway shooting hoops with that . . . that . . .”
“Yeah,” I say, “who wouldn’t want somebody between them and Pop. Look, if he boots me, you can meet up with me like I do with Nancy, and really piss him off.”
A hard knock. “Annie!”
“Yeah, Pop.”
“Is Marvin in there?”
Marvin’s head snaps up. I put my finger to my lips and point to my bathroom. He silently moves there under cover of my coughing fit. “No.”
“Well, if he wants in you tell him you’re grounded. From all conversation. I don’t want him tainted with all this. We have serious business to discuss.”
“I’ll tell him,” I say, staring at the door between two raised middle fingers.
Incoming text:
Walter: You watching the TV?
Me: No
Walter: Turn it on. Channel 6.
I hit the remote, click on channel 6, and there’s Frankie—or a picture of him—followed by a live shot of Wiz standing on the steps in front of his office building answering questions. The ticker at the bottom of the screen says, “Frankie Boots, once believed kidnapped, found alive and unharmed.”
Wiz fields questions, calm as can be, from the three network affiliates, public TV, the Spokesman-Review, and the Inlander. He received a text telling him to go immediately to the lobby, where he discovered Frankie sitting in a chair. No, the text wasn’t traceable; it came from a burner cell phone. Yes, the police have been notified, and later this afternoon Officer Graham and Wiz will hold another news conference. Frankie was calm; seems healthy, with no visible marks and no noticeable trauma. No, Wiz will not reveal Frankie’s whereabouts, will only say he’s in temporary placement while the department figures out the next move. The mother has not been notified because her whereabouts are unknown; finding her is a high priority. The department has no comment as to Frankie’s placement should the mother be found and will not comment on rumors there was a pending CPS complaint. And on and on.
I burst out of my room to get ahead of the curve, which gives Marvin a chance to slip out behind me. “Turn on the TV!”
Pop says, “I thought I told you—”
“They found Frankie! Turn on the TV! Channel six!”
Pop punches the remote in time to see old footage of Sheila pleading for his return.
“I’ll be damned,” Pop says. “How in the world . . .”
I stare at the screen and give him the short version of what I just saw in my bedroom.
The news dazed Pop to the extent that he put our war on hold. But just when I think I can coast under his radar a while longer, we end up in the den.
“Annie, do you have any idea why I’ve set up this meeting?”
God, who “sets up” a meeting in their own family? I glance around the den; déjà vu. The two overstuffed chairs sit face-to-face, Pop in one, the other waiting to be graced with my butt. I say, “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
Pop looks like I elbowed him, like, in the groin. “Excuse me?”
“No. You called me in here. Say it.” I see by the look on his face that Marvin or no Marvin, I can’t save this.
“Young lady, I’m pretty tired of your impudence.”
“I’m pretty tired of being imprisoned in my room . . . and I haven’t been impudent. I’ve been sneaky and I’ve been disobedient, but when it comes to impudence, I am not guilty.”
“Fine. Sneaky and disobedient it is. Before this evening is over, we’re going to take care of that.”
“Bet we don’t,” I say as I decide to get ahead of the curve. “You ‘called this meeting’ to throw me out of your house.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You know. Rumors. Thin walls. Heat duct between Marvin’s room and yours.”
“What? Has Marvin . . .”
“Marvin doesn’t know I go in there,” I say. “File that under ‘Annie’s Sneakiness.’”
He grits his teeth. I hope he’s thinking of all the things Marvin may have heard through that heat duct. But he does what he does best, which is to stay on task. “Actually, I’ve called you in to help you with some tough choices.”
“Which are . . .”
“Until this last year, we found solutions to our differences, would you agree? You followed general rules, didn’t just directly disobey my orders.”
“Yeah, if you don’t count the Boots thing. But we didn’t find solutions. You found solutions and I lied and agreed with you.”
“Well, your perspective is what it is, but while I didn’t call you in here to
