“Yes. My daughter, um, she needs a place to go to”—I paused, remembering my father’s long-ago words—“to get her head right. I assume that’s the sort of situation you treat there.”
“Yes. We treat young women who have developed a sexual confusion. One that goes against the teachings of the Bible,” he told me. “But you should know we have rules. Once you sign your daughter into our care, you entrust her well-being with us. Our treatment is quite serious and not to be taken lightly. One of the first things we require is that no one from the outside have contact for the first thirty days of admission—”
The door opened and closed downstairs, and I slammed down the phone. Rose’s feet came pounding up the steps. She rounded the corner and stopped when she saw me there, sitting on the edge of our mother’s bed. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
I lifted that torn newspaper article, showing it to her the way I had been tempted to do for days. “Who is this in the picture with you?”
“What picture?”
I stood, walked closer to her out in the hallway. “This picture. It was taken after you came home from being sent away. After the accident where Dereck lost his fingers. Who is that with you?”
Rose made a show of squinting at the photo, but I had the sense she wasn’t really looking. “I don’t know. I have too much on my mind for your egghead crap today, Sylvie. I’ve signed up for GED classes and I have homework to do. You, more than anyone, should be able to sympathize with that.”
“Franky?” I said.
“Who?” my sister asked, but I could hear a knowing quality in her voice.
“Frances? Frances Sanino, the daughter of Emily and Nick Sanino?”
Rose’s face took on a stunned look, as though she’d been slapped, a look she quickly tried to conceal, pinching her lips together and sucking in a breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Yes, you do. Because her mother has been the one leaving food here on the steps. And I know why you didn’t want us to eat it. It wasn’t because you thought it was poisoned. It was because you were saving it for someone else. Franky.”
“Shut up,” Rose said. “Shut the hell up, Sylvie. You think it’s easy for me? Do you? All I wanted was to be free of this place, and now I’m stuck here taking care of you. And what do I get in return? Nothing but a bunch of ungrateful back talk. I’m sick of it. So I’m going to my room. If I were you, I’d steer clear of me for the night, because now you’ve put me in a mood.”
“I know!” I screamed at her. “I figured it all out!”
“You didn’t figure anything out,” Rose said. “You are crazy. You told the police and the reporters and everyone else that you saw Albert Lynch that night. And it turned out you were wrong, because that old couple came forward. Now you are waving some newspaper article around and getting ready to make God knows what new accusation. You think you are so smart, Sylvie, but you are dumb. Really, really dumb.”
“You can say that all you want,” I told her, stepping past her and starting down the stairs. “But I’m about to prove you wrong.”
“Where are you going?”
I did not answer as I made my way to the first floor, then cut through the living room toward the door that led to the basement. The entire time Rose was right behind me. When I pulled open that door and stared down into the shadowy darkness below, lit only by that yellow glow, she stepped in front of me and said just one word: “No.”
“Yes,” I told her. “Now move.”
Rose lifted her hands and shoved me. I stumbled back, losing my balance and falling. The newspaper article slipped from my hands, landing in the space between us. I stared at my sister’s sneakers on her small feet, thinking of that day in the truck when I crawled around, scraping for the money I’d earned only to end up with loose change.