“I’ll be leaving soon enough.”
“You are not welcome here.”
“Soon enough, Ms. Louise.”
“I was more than a Ms.” She jabbed a finger at his face. “Was that all I was to you?”
“‘Course not. You were as close to a mother as I ever had. All those years. I hated each one of them but you—. You I loved. And Mister. And Solly.”
The woman looked at him and shook her head. “Solly.” She stood up and leaned against the counter.
He nodded his chin and sniffed at once. “Where is she?”
“I have no idea.”
“Ms. Louise, I know you know. You always knew.”
“Not this time.”
“Where is she?” He pounded the table with his fist. “Where is Solly?”
She had one hand on her chest, and the other dangled at her side. “I don’t know.” She began weeping. He stood up to comfort her, but she waved him away as if he were smoke.
“This isn’t your doing,” he told her.
“I thought you’d be better. I told the women at the agency that I could make you better. I was a fool.”
“Well.”
“Your father. How a man could do that to a child.”
“There are many ways to kill a child.”
“But his. What he did to you. And to Solly.”
“I’m no better than he was.”
“Night after night.”
“I am keenly aware.”
“After your fire, they wanted to take her from me,” she told him. “They called me unfit.”
“What do they know?”
“They searched for you for years. They wouldn’t stop. And now you’re here.” Her face fell as if she’d just then realized who was standing before her.
“Did they take her?”
“No. I fought them.”
“I knew you would.”
“You knew nothing, Bobby. You knew nothing.”
He nodded. “I knew they’d die. I knew they’d suffer.”
“And the rest of us? Me? Your sister?”
He stepped back. “Where is she?”
“Solly’s dead. She took her own life.”
“You’re lying to me, Ms. Louise.”
“On Mister’s soul, I tell you the truth.”
He turned back to the table and sat down.
“She lived just across the river. Had an apartment in Lamberton. She and I talked up until the end.”
He shook his head and rubbed his chin. “Did she die alone?”
The woman didn’t respond.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
“You should do something about your soul, Bobby. You should do something.”
“I thought I was.”
“Your wife? You treat her well?”
He looked down. “I did my best. But my best was never all that good.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Well,” he said. “I think I’m going to leave you here so you can die in peace on some other evening.”
“You came here for your sister?”
“I came here for her. I thought she might tell me something I needed to know.”
“What’s that, Bobby?”
He found his hat and stood up. “I need to know if she feels it too.”
“Feels what?”
“This thing. I wanted her to name this thing.”
“There are doctors for that.”
“I’m not looking for a doctor.”
“You go home now. You go to your wife. You grieve your loss and then you pay for your sins.”
He nodded and bit down on the inside of his cheek.
“Bobby?”
“Yes, Ms. Louise?”
“Mister and I. We tried. Every day that you were with us, we tried.”
“Yes, you did.”
She shook her head and resumed her weeping, her hand on her mouth.
He left her there and went back to his truck, which he drove across the river and down the roads that in darkness might as well have been invisible. He was on a string pulled toward the char and ash, yard by yard. He slowed only slightly when he approached the address and grunted only once when he found not smoke and ember but new brick and glass, a man in the kitchen window drying dishes. He drove past it and did not stop again.