“Just shut up, Annie,” she says.
“No. When this is all done you’re going to hate my guts again, and that will make me hate you right back. So I’m getting it said. You’ve got one shot, which means Frankie has one shot. Remember, you’re the one who said neither of us could afford to turn into Nancy.”
She drops her head and the tears fall straight to the floor. “I am fuckin’ Nancy.”
Leah pulls to the curb and turns around in her seat. “Not yet.”
“Leave me alone. You don’t know me.”
“Actually,” Leah says, “I’m starting to.”
“Well,” Wiz says, “looks like my long career pretending to protect children is drawing to a close.”
We’re gathered around a wooden table in a conference room at children’s services; me, Wiz, Walter, and Momma, who Wiz is still hoping will step up for permanent placement. We’re a day past the return of Sheila.
I say, “What happened?”
“Got ratted out.”
“By who?”
Wiz smiles. “Me.”
“Does this fall into the category of ‘sabotaging behavior’?” I ask, calling up a term Wiz used on me throughout my grade school years.
“I’m gratified,” he says, “that the entirety of my wisdom wasn’t flushed down the toilet with my job.”
“Does it?” I wait.
“Willful sabotage,” he says, and sits back. “You know how they say most criminals are caught because they don’t think of half the things they need to think of before they commit the crime?”
Great minds think alike. “Can’t tell you how many times I heard that when I was little, when Nancy was still with Rance.”
“I’m supposed to be smarter than Rance,” Wiz says. “I guess if I take them up on the five free therapy sessions included in my retirement package, I’ll discover I knew all along where this was going.”
“What happened, Wiz?” Momma says.
“Humphries, the Review reporter, did his job. Officer Graham was more than willing to let it die, but Humphries kept pumping in the oxygen.”
Walter says, “You being charged? Hell, man, let me take the hit for this. It was my doing.”
Wiz shakes his head. “Naw, this story is a snake eating its tail. No way I can extract myself from it completely, so there’s no reason for both of us to go down. I told RoyAnne, my supe, the whole story, without using your name, of course, and she’s sympathetic, but she had to do something; rumors were flying around the department like drones. If Sheila is going to have a chance to pull it together, we can’t let the public know definitively that Frankie was about to be removed. None of their business anyway, but you know what social media would look like. So I resign, RoyAnne says mistakes were made but the person who made them is no longer with us; can’t discuss any further because of confidentiality. If Sheila doesn’t get oral diarrhea, there’s no one else for Humphries to talk to. We’ll weather him and the TV folks for a few weeks and all will be well.”
“Except you are out of a job,” Walter says.
“Best part of it,” Wiz says. “I’ve got retirement built up, some in savings. Wife works, and she’s wanted me out of this business since before I got into it. Gives me enough cushion to get into a fast-track master’s program in education and go where I can do some real good.”
Momma says, “You wouldn’t say all this just to make us all feel better, would you Wiz?”
“I would,” he says, “but I’m not.”
Momma says, “Mmm-hmm.”
“Margie Waters has been assigned the case. Her fingerprints aren’t anywhere on it. If we can get Frankie into foster-adopt . . . well, that’s the best we can do. Sheila gets it together, she gets her shot. If not, he’ll be somewhere permanent.” He turns to Momma. “Which I was fantasizing would be your place.”
“And as I said earlier, my place may not be permanent even for me, but if you can hold off a little while, I’ll give you a better answer.”
“You set your play, then someone hikes the ball,” Wiz says.
Momma looks confused.
Walter says, “He just means a lot of plans don’t work out the way you expect.”
“I promised Jack I’d give therapy a chance,” Momma says. “That puts us on hold at least three months.”
“We can keep him that long,” Wiz says. “This is all on the QT, so we didn’t lose our foster license over it. I’ll be a stay-at-home foster dude for a bit. Shouldn’t be any new surprises.”
“No surprises except for maybe the smell,” Walter says.
ChapterSixteen
Wiz says one of the scariest things about human beings is what slaves we are to habit. He did all the things needed to give Frankie a running start before he resigned, and then the ball got hiked, right around the time Sheila went into substance abuse treatment.
Margie was walking Sheila and Frankie down the long road toward reunification with great care and great love, way more than anyone’s ever given her. Margie got her to agree that nothing good was going to happen until she was clean and sober, then placed her in inpatient treatment down in Yakima, where she could get away from all the people she’s been dirty and messed-up with.
For a month she was in blackout: no visitors so she could focus on herself and her treatment. She got one phone call a week, which she didn’t use because she didn’t have anyone she wanted to call.
How pathetic is that?
After that month she still doesn’t have anyone she’s dying to talk to . . . so my phone goes off.
“Hey, Sheila.”
“These assholes say I can have visitors now.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Great. Who would I want to see?”
“Me.”
“Don’t mess with me.”
I say, “I’m
