He shrugs again. “I’d have brought ’em back in the morning, I guess. I don’t know, I didn’t have a plan. Maybe I’d have said I was in the neighborhood and I found ’em wandering outside. That I took ’em home.”
“But they’d say . . . they’d tell me. Frankie would have told me that wasn’t true.”
Even as she says it, she knows she’s wrong. Frankie adored his daddy, would have said whatever Frank had told him to. And maybe they wouldn’t even remember right, would think it was a dream—going to sleep in their own house, waking up at Frank’s place.
All those interviews. Those statements. The police, looking for a careful, clever plan. Herself wanting to believe in a careful, clever stranger, in someone watching them all for days.
And all the time: just Frank.
“After you put . . . them . . . in the car, what then?”
“I put the kids in the back and got out the same way I got in—took the handbrake off and pushed the car to the end of the street, then got in and just drove home. It was that easy. I carried ’em up to my room. Gave ’em some comics. Grape juice.”
And now she has to look away. She can’t look at his face and listen to the rest of it.
But he just says, “I never meant to hurt ’em.”
And then, “How did you guess?”
Here it is: the thing she puzzled over for so long, the question she prodded like a sore, refusing to let the wound heal. Now the poison is coming out. The filthy truth.
“Someone fed them after I did. It had to be someone who . . .” She can’t make herself say the word. “Someone fed them and took care of them. Why would anyone else feed them?”
He nods and his breath eases.
“It’s funny, nobody even noticed what I did with the stroller. But the food, I didn’t even think about it.”
“People never notice what you think they will. I told the cops that I was in bed by midnight and that I never woke up till you called me in the morning. But you told ’em about the call I made to you at three a.m. I realized I slipped up. I got scared. Worried they’d check the phone records. But you know, they never picked up on it. Or if they did, they didn’t care. They were so set on you being guilty, ’specially when you wouldn’t take the lie detector test.”
She blinks. Answers almost automatically, “You didn’t take it either.”
He nods. Says, “Yeah, but they never asked me. And after you walked out of the test, the cops hardly noticed me at all.”
Clears his throat.
“Anyway, I fed ’em. I went upstairs to get them some juice and when I came back, Frankie was awake again. He needed to pee, then he said he was hungry. I asked him what they had for dinner—know what he said? He said, ‘We haven’t had nothing, Daddy.’ ”
“I fed them. I fed them! I gave them veal. Veal and canned beans and milk. Just like I told the cops. Only . . . only they wouldn’t eat it. The meat was chewy and Frankie said he didn’t like it.”
She has no idea why it seems so important to make him understand this.
“I told them there was nothing else and they’d have to go hungry if they didn’t eat it. Frankie threw his plate on the floor and I . . . I was so tired . . .”
Frankie’s stubborn face, lip stuck out, his cheek glowing from her hand. Cindy crying but refusing to eat when her brother wouldn’t. Wanting to be just like him.
“They were hungry, Ruth. And I didn’t want them grousing and whining, so I made mac ’n’ cheese and they ate some of it and went back to sleep for a while. But when they woke up, Cin started to cry.
“She said she wanted her mommy. Wanted to go home. I kept telling her to hush, to calm down, but the more I told her, the worse she got, until she was howling. Then Frank Jr. started up, yelling at me that he was going to tell his mommy, that she would be mad at me.”
She feels as though her throat has closed up. Can’t breathe.
“I was panicking, scared the guys down the hall would hear them, so I slapped Frankie and I picked Cin up and shook her. That just made it worse and she started screaming. She was red and screaming and her face was wet—I didn’t know what to do. I put one hand over her mouth and the other on her neck. And then I don’t remember much else, ’cept she was lying there, limp, and there was a sort of . . . foam coming out of her mouth. I shook her again, but there was . . . there was just nothing.
“And when I turned around, Frankie was huddled up on the couch, looking at me. I reached out a hand, but he wriggled back further right into the wall, and that made me real mad.”
His eyes on her. Burning. “You made him afraid of me. My own son.”
“I said, ‘It’s okay, Frankie, it’s okay,’ and he shook his head and he started rocking. He said, ‘You hurt Cin. You hurt my Cin.’ And he kept saying it, over and over, and I couldn’t stand it, so I had to quiet him too.”
His voice falters a little and for the first time he looks away.
“I had to make him quiet.”
She stares at him, looking for a glimpse of the man she’s known for more than half her life. She looks for the humor, the tenderness she knows is in him. And they’re not there.
She loved this man, once. Carried his children.
She wants to vomit.
Their father.