Help for the Haunted(128)
Instead of looking out the window, I went to the answering machine and pressed Play. “Sylvie, it’s Sam Heekin. After you left that message last night, I did some digging. I uncovered some things you should know about. Call me right away.” While that played, I pulled the newspaper article Dereck had given me from my pocket and stared at that picture again, my father’s words about values ringing in my mind.
Rose had yet to walk through the front door, so I slipped down the hall to her room. Quickly, I slid open her nightstand and dug out that laminated prayer card she had saved. Clutching it, I went down the hall to our parents’ room again and picked up the phone on their nightstand.
“Saint Julia’s Home for Girls,” a man’s voice answered after I dialed the number on the back of that card.
It felt like ages since I’d made those survey calls, but I summoned that grown-up voice I used to interview all those people. “Hello,” I told the man on the other end. “I’m looking for a school for my daughter.”
I waited for a moment to see if he would ask how old I was. But he did not. “Well, this isn’t exactly a school. You know that, don’t you?’
“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.”