He reached out and patted her hand again, her hand and the gun. “I depend on you so much,” he said. His mouth opened as if for one last thought, and then he fell asleep.
Sitting on the edge of her father’s bed, Franny unloaded the revolver. Unloading, cleaning, reloading, that was all part of their childhood education. There were six bullets in the chamber and she put them in the front pocket of her jeans and stuck the gun in the back of the waistband beneath her shirt. Her pants were snug around the waist these days and for once she was glad about it.
When she came back to the den Caroline and Marjorie were watching The Man Who Came to Dinner. Caroline pushed the mute button while Monty Woolley tyrannized the secondary characters from his wheelchair.
“How’s your father?” Marjorie asked.
“Asleep.” Franny could feel the cold of the metal pressing into the small of her back. It was ridiculous, walking through the room with a gun and not mentioning it, but she didn’t think the gun was anything Marjorie needed to know about, nor did she need to know about his request. She would tell Caroline in the morning, but there was nothing more that needed to be said tonight, not one more conversation. Franny said she was going to get into bed and read.
That night, after putting the gun in her suitcase and the bullets in a sock, Franny dreamt of Holly. It had been so many years since they had seen each other but there she was, still fourteen, her straight dark hair divided into pigtails, her cropped yellow top knotted halfway up her skinny white torso. She was still a girl, freckles unfaded, braces on her teeth. They were back in Virginia, back at Bert’s parents’ house, and they were walking through the long field that lay between the house and the barn. Holly was talking, talking, the way Holly was always talking, explaining the history of the commonwealth and the Mattaponi Indians who had once lived along the banks of the river. The Mattaponi, she said, had fought the English in the second and third Anglo-Powhatan Wars.
“Right here,” she said, holding out her hands. “There weren’t many of them to begin with, and between the two wars and all the diseases the English brought with them most of the Mattaponi died. Do you remember how Cal would look for arrowheads? Our grandfather had a dish of them on his desk but he’d never give us any. He said he was saving them. What was he saving them for do you think? An uprising?”
Franny looked out over the green slope of grass. There was a shallow pond beyond the barn where the horses liked to wade on hot days, where they themselves had ventured in on some occasions despite the thick, sucking muck at the bottom. She looked at the distant line of trees that rimmed the field to the left and the stand of hay to the far right that the Cousinses leased out. She was trying to take in how beautiful it all was—the grass and the light and the trees, the entire valley. This was where Cal had died, where Holly and Caroline and Jeanette had run through the field once they realized what had happened, back to the house to get Ernestine, Caroline telling her to stay with Cal in case he needed help. Why had Caroline told her to stay?
“You took the gun then, remember?” Holly said. “You brought it back to Caroline later that night.”
Cal’s eyes were shut but his mouth was open like he was still trying to pull in air. His lips were thick and swollen and his tongue was coming out of his mouth. Franny stood over him, looking back in the direction of the house and then looking down. When she remembered the gun she pulled back his pants leg. There it was, stuffed in his sock and tied to his calf with a red bandanna. Franny got it in her head that Ernestine or the Cousinses or whoever was coming out to save her shouldn’t find the gun. They would all get in trouble for that. “I don’t know why I took it,” she said. She really didn’t.
Holly shook her head. “You couldn’t have left it there. We were all so obsessed with the gun. It was all we ever thought about.”
Franny had untied the bandanna and, carefully, pointing the gun away from herself and away from Cal, unloaded it the way her father taught her. She put the bullets in the front pocket of her shorts, holding the open revolver up to the light, spinning the cylinder and looking down the barrel to the sun to make sure it was empty. She tied it up in the red cloth but there was really no place to put it. She tried to put it in her waistband but of course it showed. Finally she decided to hide it behind a tree nearby. When everyone was gone she would go back and get it and take it to the house. She would get Jeanette to come with her and they would put the gun in Jeanette’s purse. No one would think that was strange because Jeanette always carried her purse. She remembered being glad to have something else to worry about, something other than Cal.
Franny looked over at the barn. “I always thought I did the wrong thing.”
“What would the right thing have been?” Holly put her arm around Franny’s waist. “We had no idea what was going on. We didn’t even know he’d been stung by a bee.”
“We didn’t?”
“Not until later. We did that night when Dad came back from the hospital, but before that we didn’t have a clue.”
“I loved it here,” Franny said, though she had never known it before.
Holly looked surprised. “Did you? I hated this place.”
Franny looked at her. Holly had been such a pretty girl. Why had she never noticed that? She thought of her as a sister now. “Why did you come back then?”
“To make sure you were going to be okay,” Holly said. “We always stuck together. Don’t you remember that? We were such a fierce little tribe.”
“Listen,” Franny said, looking up. “Do you hear the birds?”
Holly shook her head. “It’s your phone. That’s what I came to tell you. You shouldn’t worry.”
“About the birds?” Franny asked, but then Holly was gone and the room was dark again. She could still hear them.
“Answer your phone,” Caroline said from the other bed.
The room was dark except for the light of her phone. She picked it up, even though nothing good ever came from answering the phone in the middle of the night. “Hello?” Franny said.
“Mrs. Mehta?” a voice said, a woman’s voice.
“Yes?”
“This is Dr. Wilkinson. I’m calling from Torrance Memorial Medical Center. Mrs. Mehta, I’m sorry to tell you that your stepmother has passed away.”
“Marjorie’s dead?” Franny sat straight up, the news pulling her awake. How was that possible? When had she gone to the hospital? Caroline got out of her bed and turned on the light on the table between them. There was only one person who was going to die and that was their father.
“What?” Caroline said.
“Mrs. Cousins,” the doctor said. “Her heart monitor alerted the nurse a little after four o’clock this morning. We attempted resuscitation but it was unsuccessful.”
“Mrs. Cousins?”
“Teresa died?” Caroline said.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said again. “She was very sick.”
“Wait a minute,” Franny said. “I don’t think I’m understanding what you’re saying. Could you say this to my sister?”
Franny gave the phone to Caroline. Caroline would know what questions to ask. The digital clock on the bedside table said it was 4:47 in the morning. She wondered if Albie would be awake by now, if he had set his alarm. He was taking an early flight to Los Angeles to see his mother.
8