The next day, the twins woke from their nap the way they always did. Singing. Kate thought she was hearing things the first time one of their voices cracked through the baby monitor. “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain” it was that time, perfectly on key with the words half pronounced. How had Andrea kept this from her? When she’d brought it up, Andrea had smiled and said she always left it as a surprise, because wasn’t it “lovely”?
It was lovely. These two little boys who could sing One Direction songs in perfect harmony. That day, it was “Story of My Life,” an apt choice if ever there was one. Kate got to their room as they were breaking into the chorus, standing up in their beds, swinging their hips.
“Sing, Aunt Kwait!”
Kate sang the rest of the song with them, but she still couldn’t get the picture of her family out of her mind. She’d barely slept after she’d seen it. Something about it was getting to her in a way she couldn’t explain. Franny was a part of it. That was for sure. The fact that she was sitting at a table with Joshua and the girls. How her hand was draped over Josh’s arm as if it belonged there . . .
Why did she suddenly care? She’d left. Left all of them behind without so much as a backward glance. That was the truth. She’d run away from them to end up looking after someone else’s children. To live on the fringes of someone else’s life.
“What next?” Steven asked. “What song next?”
“How about . . . ‘Little Things’?”
“I. Won’t. Let. These. Little. Things . . .”
Willie swung his hips. “Slip out. Of my mouth . . .”
If she was done with that life, if she’d actually moved on, then she shouldn’t care that Josh looked happy in the photo. That the camera had caught him with a soft expression on his face. An indulgent look, which Kate knew too well. She shouldn’t care that Cecily appeared ferocious, as if she were protecting one of her own children. And she shouldn’t care about Franny Maycombe. Certainly not about her, most of all.
“Kate? Where are you?”
Kate could’ve sworn that she actually saw Willie roll his eyes as Steven called, “Up here, Mommy. Having a dance party!”
Willie launched himself at Kate, landing half on her back and half on her head. And so went the next five hours. Being the boys’ personal jungle gym, while she did her best to wipe that picture from her mind.
Kate didn’t sleep that night. Instead, she watched a spider crawl across her ceiling. She counted a thousand sheep. She repeated all the reasons she’d left Chicago. She tallied up all the hurt she’d cause if she went back.
When her alarm pushed her from bed, she wasn’t any closer to an answer. She’d made one fateful decision. One. But it seemed undoable. It seemed permanent.
Later, she was sitting at the kitchen table with the iPad when Steven padded in.
“Aunt Kwait!”
“What’s up, muffin?”
He held his hands up over his head. Kate reached down and brought him onto her lap.
“You have an iPad.”
“Mommy said I could use it.”
“It’s not iPad time.”
“There are different rules for grown-ups.”
Steven cocked his head to the side. “That not fair.”
“Nope.”
“You are funny, Aunt Kwait.”
Kate put her face into his hair. How she loved that little-boy smell. These little boys.
“Those girls look sad,” Steven said.
She’d been staring at the picture again. Franny with Josh and the girls. JJ and Em. Her special names for them. She wondered if anyone called them that anymore. She’d been so fixated on the adults that she hadn’t spent as much time looking at them. Not in the way she should’ve. She could see it now. JJ wasn’t looking right at the camera. Her eyes were cast sideways. And though it was hard to tell, it seemed as if she was looking at Franny’s fingers, gripping Josh’s arm. Her lip seemed to be quivering. There was a slight blur to the photo on the lower part of her face.
“Maybe they’re sad.”
“I don’t like being sad.”
“Me, neither.”
Steven looked at her, and then back at the iPad. “That other girl looks like you.”
His fat finger pointed at Em. No one ever said that she and Emily looked alike, but that was back then. When her hair was a different color and her face had a different shape. Now there was a resemblance. It was like looking at a memory of herself as a child.
“She kind of does.”
“Are you a mommy, Aunt Kwait?”
And that was the question, wasn’t it?
The real question she’d been asking herself this whole time.
Interview Transcript
TJ: Why would you say that, Franny? That this documentary isn’t about your family?
FM: Because it’s supposed to be about . . . You said it was about three families and how the compensation process affected them. Three families a year after October tenth.
TJ: That’s right.
FM: So who’s the third family? I mean, you’ve got the Graysons and the Rings, but who else are you talking to besides me?
TJ: That’s it.
FM: I’m not part of a family?
TJ: I didn’t say that. Of course you are.
FM: And that’s why you keep asking me questions about my adopted family?
TJ: That’s part of it, yes. It’s also to get a better sense of who you are as a person.
FM: I don’t want to talk about them.
TJ: I understand that, Franny, but I’ve explained to you how this works. We shoot several long interviews, and then the narrative will be shaped from that. We’re asking these questions to all the participants.
FM: They’re not my family.
TJ: I’m sorry you feel that way.
FM: I have a new family now.
TJ: Did you want to elaborate on that?
FM: Elaborate?
TJ: Expand. Tell me more about it.
FM: No, I don’t think so. You’ll see.
TJ: What am I going to see?
FM: Now that would be ruining the surprise, wouldn’t it?
Chapter 25
Where Does the Time Go?
Cecily
Two years ago, there was a story floating around our neighborhood. A man—a black man or a brown man, some people would say, lowering their voices—was walking around at night, peering into windows. Someone’s dog had kept him from entering a house, went one story. Two teenage lovers had scared him away another time. Other rumors had less detail, but the point was always the same—something had to be done about this before something bad happened. The police were called and the cameras were checked and nothing could be found. There were no fingerprints on the windowsill the dog had supposedly defended. No footprints beneath the window where the man had supposedly been seen.
“A ghost,” Tom called him (if it was a him). “Our very own Halloween ghost.”
“But Halloween’s not for forever,” Henry said.
“And Halloween is for losers,” Cassie said.
“I’ve always loved Halloween,” I said.
Cassie rolled her eyes, and Henry, who was on the cusp of maybe not trick-or-treating though I knew he wanted to, gave me a smile, and Tom shook his head at all of us.
“You’re not scared?”
“Tom!”
“It’s nothing, Lil. A bunch of overhyped, hysterical people who think too much.”
“Are you speaking of me?”
“Of course not.” He winked at me. “You know what they’re like, that playground crowd. One black guy takes a walk and . . .”
“Tom.”
“You know it’s true.”
“What’s true, Dad? Are you talking about racists? We learned all about that during Black History Month.”
Henry started hopping on one foot and patting the top of his head at the same time—a coordination exercise his baseball coach had introduced him to that he continued doing after the season was over because it drove Cassie nuts.
“Dad! He’s doing it again.”
“Henry, you know that makes your sister crazy.”
Henry stopped jumping.
“So, is that what it is, Dad? Racism?” Henry was speaking as if he were in a museum. Like he was looking at a diorama meant to explain what it was. A kid in a hoodie, a man stopped for “driving while black,” another senseless police shooting.
“Yes, son. That’s exactly what it is.”
“Why are people racist?”
“People are afraid,” I said. “If something’s different or they haven’t experienced it before.”