Chapter 2.

2.

I’d told my sister that I wanted to get an early start, and she’d agreed to be ready at six in the morning. Tammy lived in a big complex of condos called the Preserve at Saddle Brook Crossing. The units were clean and quiet and full of people who worked for a living and went to bed at a decent hour. She had a two-bedroom apartment with an entrance at ground level, right off the parking lot.

I rang the bell and her door was opened by a little girl dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. She was maybe nine or ten years old with an army-style crew cut, like she’d just completed her basic training at Fort Jackson. “Hi, Mister Frank.”

A lot of my sister’s foster kids struggle with my last name, so Tammy tells them to call me Mister Frank. But I was certain I’d never seen this one before. She was kind of weird-looking, with a round, flat face and eyes that were too far apart. Like someone smooshed her features with a rolling pin.

“Who are you?”

“Abigail Grimm, with two m ’s.” She unlatched the screen door and pushed it open. “Miss Tammy says you better come inside. She says she’s not quite ready.”

My sister’s condo has the vibe of an overly cluttered Hallmark store. She’s always burning candles that smell like vanilla or pumpkin spice, and her walls are decorated with lots of framed quotations: “You Are Special.” “When You’re Here, You’re Home.” “There’s Always Room at MY Table.” Little cutesy sayings to help her foster kids feel like part of a family. But Tammy wasn’t supposed to be hosting anyone all summer; she’d been keeping her schedule clear in anticipation of Maggie’s wedding.

Abigail sank into the sofa and returned her attention to the television. She was watching the local news station out of Allentown. At her feet was a small black suitcase identical to mine. The bag used to belong to my wife, but after Colleen passed away I gave it to my sister. And now it seemed like Tammy had given it to Abigail Grimm.

“Are you waiting for a ride?” I asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Is someone coming to get you? To take you to another foster home?”

She scratched the side of her head, like a puzzled character in a comic strip. “Miss Tammy didn’t say anything about that. She said we were waiting for you.”

The girl kept scratching her scalp and then studying the tips of her fingers, like she was searching for traces of something. I crossed the living room and called upstairs to the second floor. “Hey, Miss Tammy? Can you come down here, please?”

Heavy footsteps shook the ceiling. It sounded like my sister was rearranging her furniture. “I just need five minutes,” she called back. “Why are you here so early?”

“I’m not early.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Tammy, I told you I wanted to leave at six o’clock. But I took my time because I knew you’d be late, and now it’s six-fifteen and you’re still not ready.”

Over on the sofa, Abigail smiled, revealing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth.

“Have some coffee,” Tammy said. “It’s in the kitchen.”

I didn’t want coffee. We had a three-hundred-mile drive ahead of us, and I didn’t want to make a ton of bathroom stops. So I just sat on the sofa and watched the local news with Abigail Grimm. There’d been a house fire in Allentown and two brothers had died from smoke inhalation. A news anchor explained that nine Americans died every day in accidental fires. He was interviewing the lone survivor, a middle-aged woman wrapped in an emergency blanket. The poor woman’s face was covered with soot and ash and dirt, like she’d just clawed herself out of the wreckage, and her voice was shaking. “This is the worst day of my life,” she said between great shuddering sobs. “A horrible, horrible day.”

I looked around for the remote control and discovered that Abigail was holding it. “Could you turn this off?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s awful. I don’t want to watch it.”

The woman on the television turned to face the camera and stared helplessly into my eyes. “From this day forward,” she said, “nothing will ever be the same.”

Abigail switched off the TV and the screen went dark, and then the kid looked expectantly to me. Like it was now my responsibility to entertain her. But I was happy to just sit and wait.

“Mister Frank, do you want some pie?”

“No, thank you.”

“It’s funnier if you say yes.”

“What?”

“It’s a joke. It’s funnier if you say yes.”

“Yes?”

Abigail shook her head, like I was still missing her point. “We need to start over from the beginning, okay? Now listen: Mister Frank, do you want some pie?”

“Yes.”

“Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine!” She was laughing before she even finished her joke, falling back on the couch and hugging her knees and shuddering with delight. “Is that enough pi, or do you want some more?”

I shouted upstairs to my sister. “Tammy! Can you please come down here?”

“I memorized pi to the first thirty digits,” Abigail explained. “But the joke is funnier if you only say five. I’m gonna tell Maggie, when we get to New Hampshire.”

“You are?”

“Miss Tammy says Maggie has a great sense of humor.”

My sister’s suitcase came cartwheeling down the stairs, tumbling end over end before crashing into a wall, and then Tammy came hurrying after it. “Careful,” she called, a little too late. She was short and pear-shaped with curly black hair, and she was easily the nicest, kindest person I’d ever known. Tammy worked as a home health care aide with a full roster of elderly and infirm patients, and she was paid to prepare their meals, change their clothes, sharpen their minds, test their memories, exercise their tired muscles, and clean their privates after they soiled themselves. It was a tough, tough job; I wouldn’t last a week doing it and neither would you. And frankly, I didn’t know how much longer Tammy could keep doing it. Since turning fifty, she’d seemed increasingly tired, like the work was finally catching up with her.

But that morning she was all smiles and sunshine. “Good morning, little brother!” She wore a blue blouse with a white butterfly pattern, khaki cargo pants, and pristine white Keds—all new clothes that she’d purchased for this weekend. She’d always been self-conscious about her appearance, so I made sure to tell her she looked great.

“Thank you, Frankie. Now, have you met Abigail? And did you hear the good news? She’s coming with us!”

“We should talk about that. It’s pretty late to start adding guests.”

“I would have told you sooner but she just got here. And the kicker is, DHS left her without a suitcase! No coat, no sneakers, just the clothes on her back. So last night we spent three hours shopping in Walmart—” She was interrupted by a gentle ding! from the kitchen. “Oh! That’s the muffins.”

“What muffins?”

“I made us breakfast. Come on, you can help.”

I followed her into the kitchen. Tammy pulled on a pair of oversize mitts before reaching inside her oven. The muffins were baked to perfection—crispy golden crowns studded with fat, juicy blueberries. Tammy poked one with a toothpick and beamed when it came out clean. “These little babies are ready,” she declared. “Would you like one or two?”

I ignored her question and closed the pocket door that separated her kitchen from the living room. “Tammy, listen to me. You cannot bring that kid to the wedding.”

“I don’t have a choice, Frankie. Hortensia was stuck and she begged me. She had another family all set to take her, but then they flaked at the last minute.”

“Why?”

“Because people are stupid, Frankie. There’s nothing wrong with Abigail. She’s just a sweet kid in a tough situation.”

My sister says the same thing about every foster kid who walks through her door, even the toughest cases. Like Emmalou, the little girl who pooped in my bathtub because she was afraid of “man toilets.” Or Michael Jackson (seriously, the genius parents named their kid Michael Jackson), a sixth-grade boy who couldn’t be trusted with sharp objects. One night he got into Tammy’s thumbtacks and we had to call an ambulance. My point being, Tammy never brings home little orphan Annie singing “the sun’ll come out tomorrow.” She specializes in emergency short-term foster care, which means a lot of her kids are fleeing seriously dangerous situations. They’re the children of drug addicts, criminals, white supremacists, and worse. Many were raised in poverty, and an appalling number have been sexually abused. Yet Tammy always maintains there is nothing wrong with any of them.

And I understood what she meant, but you have to understand my side, too, right? This wedding was a big deal for me, and I didn’t want Tammy’s big dumb heart to ruin it.

“Please be honest with me,” I told her. “Why didn’t the other family take her?”

“She’s got a very small touch of pediculosis.” I stared at my sister until she clarified what this meant. “Head lice.”

“Oh, Jesus! Tammy!”

“She’s already been treated.”

“I don’t care. These are my in-laws!”

“The eggs are completely dehydrated. If anything new hatches, I’ll see it right away and put mayonnaise on it.”

I pressed both hands to the sides of my head to keep it from exploding. “Please, Tammy, listen to yourself. We’re not bringing mayonnaise to the wedding. We can’t do this.”

“How many times can I say it? I don’t have a choice. She’s already in my custody. So I bring her, or I miss the wedding, and I am not missing this wedding. Maggie’s my niece. She’s my family, too.”

I was struck by a flash of inspiration—a last-minute Hail Mary loophole. “But the wedding’s in New Hampshire,” I reminded her. “Isn’t it illegal to take your foster kids out of state?”

“Normally yes, but Hortensia got us a special dispensation. Her boss signed off on it. As long as we’re back by Sunday, everyone’s willing to look the other way.”

“But if anything goes wrong, you’ll never foster again. You’ll lose your certification. I can’t believe you’re willing to take that risk.”

She wrapped a muffin in a paper towel and placed the bundle in my hand. “If you knew Abigail’s story, you’d understand. This poor kid’s been through the wringer—”

I held up my hands, cutting her off. “I don’t want to hear the story. We’re already late.”

“Then let me save you some time, Frankie. I was there for you when Colleen passed, remember? I helped you with Maggie all through high school. While you were busy making money, I got that kid everywhere she needed to be. And when you guys had your big blowup, I never questioned you. I never left your side. So now I need something from you. This is important to me. Can you please be okay with this?”

And I felt like a real jerk for making her ask. Of course I could be okay with it. I was never going to say no to my sister. After all the ways she’d helped me, I would be repaying the debt for the rest of my life.

“It’s fine, Tammy. I’m sorry. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

“I can see that. You look really tired.” Then she opened her refrigerator and passed me a jar of mayonnaise. “Now put this in my bag, okay?”