Shelly drove in silence, back to the office, where she worked the phone madly while Duchess sat on an old wooden chair and watched hours pass by.
At three Shelly headed out and left Duchess under the watch of a couple of older ladies who smiled her way every ten minutes.
Shelly returned with Robin. He’d been crying.
At five they got a place. Shelly spoke without emotion, tired and beaten by a hundred other files, other cases, other lives just as lost.
“It’s a group home,” she said.
36
THE HOUSE WAS GRAND, GREEK revival, Doric columns so tall Duchess felt small beside them.
An acre of tended grass ran to quaking aspen bold green against spring sky. Duchess sat on a bench with Robin while planes wrote tracks into the sky. Shelly was inside, meeting with a large black lady named Claudette, and she seemed to run whatever it was that needed running. Youth Guidance Home.
Robin was quiet, resigned as they arrived at the house but nervous enough to keep hold of his sister’s hand.
“I’m sorry.” She said it with such sadness in her voice that he leaned his head on her shoulder for a moment.
There were other kids and they played a game of something complex, a ball and three hoops and a bat. Duchess watched for twenty minutes and couldn’t figure the rules. She knew the look in their eyes though, kids like her, the damned. They didn’t offer smiles or nods, just went about their day like it would be a miracle if they made it through. There was a lady outside on the street, holding on to a girl no bigger than Robin and staring at the house. She had the wiry strung-out look of a user.
A half hour later they ate together in a dining room that smelled of a hundred dinners choked down by a hundred kids. Robin pushed his food around.
There was a communal lounge, a TV in the corner running a movie. A couple of girls sat on a brown sofa and watched, eating popcorn but mostly ignoring each other.
In the other corner was a chest spilling with toys, ranging from stacking cubes to puzzles.
“Go play.”
Robin walked over, head down, and picked up a storybook far too young for him. He sat cross-legged on the floor, turning the page now and then, miles away from his sister and that room.
In the hallway she found Shelly.
“I know what I did. I know I fucked up too bad …”
Shelly went to rub her arm but Duchess stepped back. “What will happen now?”
“I don’t—”
“Just say, Shelly. Just tell me what will happen to me and my brother.”
“This home is for girls.”
Duchess shook her head.
Shelly raised a calming hand. “Claudette will let you stay with Robin, on account of his age.”
Duchess breathed again. “What about Peter and Lucy?”
Shelly swallowed, looked away, at Robin, at anywhere but Duchess.
“Did you tell them?”
“I had to. Peter … he’s a doctor. And Lucy, at the school. They, what you said about Mr. Price. They can’t risk the—”
“I get it.”
“We’ll keep looking. We just need to find the right fit.”
“I don’t fit anywhere.”
The look in Shelly’s eyes almost broke her.
Robin came out, they walked along the hallway and up the stairs.
They passed bedrooms with kids inside, a girl reading a story aloud and her sister listening intently. The walls were colored, pastel shades of pink and yellow. Pictures tacked to corkboards, family shots of fallen families.
Their room had white walls and the corkboard was bare, their time there unwritten. Two beds Duchess would later push together, the covers striped with rainbow colors. An empty closet and chest, a wicker basket for their washing. The carpet was squares that fit together like puzzle pieces, easy to lift out if they got stained.
“You want me to help you unpack?” Shelly said.
“I got it.”
Robin stood in the center of the room, looked up at the window then pulled the drapes to cut falling light. He switched on the lamp and then climbed on the bed and curled away from them.
“When will Peter come?” he said.
Shelly looked at Duchess and Duchess told her alright, she should go now. Shelly said she would be back the next day to see them settled.
Duchess went over to him and put a hand on his back. “Peter and Lucy.”
He turned then, sat up and stared at her.
She said nothing more, just shook her head.
He reared fast, cursed her with every word he knew. He lashed out and caught her cheek hard. She kept her hands down, just closed her eyes as he yelled and screamed the kind of truths that no longer hurt her. She knew them already. She was a bad sister. She was a bad person. He cried so much he shook, his face in the pillow, screaming for a life so close that for a few, blissful weeks, he had it in his grasp.
Duchess waited for him to cry himself out. It took a long time. She felt blood on her cheek where he had caught her.
When he finally slept she took his sneakers off and covered him over, and worried she had not brushed his teeth.
That night she heard noise, someone as new as them, across the hall in the small room. Crying, then Claudette and calming words.
Duchess scooted over into her brother’s bed and watched him. She thought of Thomas Noble and how he would not be able to find them now. She did not know his address to write him. She could ask Shelly but she knew she would not. She was nothing more than a footnote in his life, in Dolly’s, in Walk’s. She left no lasting impression, her impact ugly but mercifully brief.
“Duchess,” Robin sat upright.
“It’s alright.” She stroked his hair.
“I had a dream. That dream again. I can’t work out what the voice is saying.”
She lay him back down.
“Sometimes I forget where I am.”
She placed her hand on his heart
