Tell the Wolves I'm Home (44 page)

My father pulled a chair out and my mother sat down, looking defeated. I edged into the room, pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water.

Greta didn't answer, and my mother turned back to the two cops.

I walked over to Greta and knelt, handing her the glass. From down low, I peered up into her face. As the adults kept talking, I looked right into her eyes until I forced her to look back. For those few seconds, once our eyes met, it was like we were the only two people in the room. I put a hand on her arm, and with everything in me I tried to make her understand that it was all me. That none of this was Toby's fault. My eyes were begging her to save him. I would forgive every awful thing she'd ever done to me for this. For this one thing. I kept staring, waiting for some sign from her. But I saw nothing. It was Greta who could read people, not me. After a few seconds, she took a long slow sip of the water and turned away.

“The man's name is Tobias Aldshaw. Does that mean anything to you?”

My mother and father looked at each other like they'd just been told Martians had landed in the backyard.

“Toby?” my mother said.

“So you know the man?” said Officer Gellski.

“Well …”

“There's something else,” Gellski said.

Something else? Was Toby drunk? Had he been drinking when I made him drive out?

Gellski reached inside the chest pocket of his shirt.

“We found this in his back pocket.” He tossed a small navy-blue book on the table, and everyone stared. I gasped, then put my hand over my mouth. My passport. The confusion on my parents' faces was so deep by that point, I thought it might stay there forever. My mother picked up the passport and flipped to the picture page. She stared at it for a moment, then she looked at me. I stood, but looked away.

“June? This is June's passport. This is starting to really scare me,” my mother said, turning to my father. “I don't understand …”

I saw everything then. I saw how deep the trap was that Toby was in. If nobody said anything, if it looked like he was here on his own, like a crazy person, with my passport, with Greta, he'd get arrested. And maybe even more. Prison? Sent back to England? But if I did tell them everything—if they all knew he'd been meeting up with me, meeting alone with a fourteen-year-old girl in the city—I didn't know what would happen. To either of us.

“Greta,” I said, under all the adult voices.

She turned slowly and looked at me over her shoulder. She seemed older than sixteen, in a haggard way, and so tired I couldn't imagine how she was still sitting upright.

Please
, I mouthed.

The words
kidnap
and
AIDS
and
illegal immigrant
flew around the room, but I just watched Greta. She turned slowly back and for a few seconds she sat there, saying nothing. She wasn't going to help. She was going to leave me drowning in all this mess. She was going to let me watch Toby get everything she thought he deserved.

“Mom,” I said. She didn't hear me, so I said it again, louder. “Mom.”

“June, it'll be okay, honey. Don't worry.”

I shook my head. “No. No, it's just—”

Then Greta stood up. She stretched her arms at her sides and reached through her grass skirt and into her front pocket for a hair scrunchie. She twisted her hair into a neat bun, wrapping the scrunchie
around to hold it in place. Then she took a deep breath and, as slowly as she could, gently blew the air back out. She scanned the room, looking right into the eyes of each person there, and with a voice as loud and clear as the one she used in
South Pacific
she said, “It's my fault.”

The room went silent.

The yellow clock ticked.

My hands trembled so much I had to stuff them in my pockets.

As Greta started talking, the only thing I could do was stand and stare in amazement at that person who was my sister. At the way she could invent a whole story on the spot. She told them that she knew Toby. That she'd seen him once when she was in the city with her friends. She'd gone to Finn's old neighborhood, right past Finn's building, and there he was, walking out the front door. She said he recognized her, from the portrait, from pictures Finn had in the apartment, and he'd called her over. She said he explained who he was, and then she remembered him from the funeral. “It was the guy you pointed out, remember, Dad?” She described the whole thing in such detail. How she and her friends had all gotten drinks at Gray's Papaya. How she got the piña colada—nonalcoholic, she said, glancing at my parents—but the other two had mango, and she was about to throw her empty cup away when she saw him. She said she wasn't going to go over to Toby at first, but then she decided she would, for only a minute. And they started talking.

“It was stupid, I know it was,” she said. “But he looked so sad, and he started going on and on about how much he was missing Finn. How it was so lonely. It was just so totally weird and I didn't know what to say to him, so I ended up inviting him to the party. I said that maybe getting out would make him feel better and that there was this party.” She'd crinkled her brow, looking helpless. “I … I didn't know what to say to him.”

Nobody said anything, so she went on.

“I didn't think he'd come. I mean, I was just saying it, I didn't mean it, you'd think he'd have better things to do—”

“You would think that, wouldn't you?” my mother said, her lips pursed.

“Let her finish, Danni,” my dad said.

“But in the end, it was a good thing, wasn't it? I was drunk. Way drunk. If it wasn't for Toby, I might still be out in the woods, passed out in the pouring rain.”

“But the party was at the Reeds', wasn't it?”

“The
official
party's at the Reeds', but …”

She didn't look at me the whole time she was talking. It was like she was giving a performance. Like a perfect actress, pausing exactly long enough when she needed to make a point. Changing the expression on her face at just the right time. Choosing which person to glance at when she was saying a particularly hard thing.

“That doesn't explain anything, Greta,” my mother said. “A grown man with AIDS out in the woods at a high school party? No. Nothing makes that right. Nothing makes it right for him to be carrying my daughter across a parking lot. And June's passport. There's still that. Why on earth would he have June's passport in his pocket?”

“Those passports are in a locked box in our bedroom,” my father said to Officer Gellski. “It doesn't make any sense.”

I wanted so badly to have the kind of brain Greta had. I would have given anything to step forward with some elegant explanation of why the man called Tobias Aldshaw had my passport in his back pocket. But all my thoughts seemed to blur and mingle. The possibility of a sensible story coming out of my mouth was zero.

“No. It's just plain ridiculous. On every level,” my mother said. “Why on earth would that man have June's passport in his pocket?” she repeated.

I looked at Greta. I thought she'd been flustered by the passport thing, because she didn't say anything. I kept watching her until I saw something change. I actually saw the exact moment when she switched on a guilty face. She looked down at the floor, then back up, peeking through her bangs, as much like a little girl as she could make herself. Then, cool as anything, she told the whole room a story about making fake IDs to buy alcohol.

“I'd made one for myself a while ago. It's wrong, I know, but June wanted one too. I thought she was coming to the party. I said I'd try to make something for her, and …”

Both cops stood there, nodding their heads.

“We've seen this kind of thing, Mrs. Elbus,” the younger one said. “I know it's difficult to believe when it's your own kid.”

“Are you saying Toby was helping you make fake identification, Greta?”

“No, no.” Greta shook her head hard. “The passport must have fallen out of my pocket. He must have picked it up for me.”

My mother and father looked stunned. It was hard to tell if they were believing Greta's story. But then, I thought, what else was there to believe? That this dying man was trying to kidnap Greta and me? Would they want to believe that? Could they really think Finn would be with someone that crazy?

“Well, where is he now?” my father asked. “I think we need a word.”

Officer Gellski didn't answer right away, like he was considering something.

“We have him in the cruiser.” Everyone's eyes went in the direction of the living room window, the one that overlooked the driveway. Toby was out there. Right outside the house.

My father took a step, but Officer Gellski put out his hand.

“I don't think now's the time, Mr. Elbus. We'll get him down to the station. Let us talk to him first, then maybe in a day or two—”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

“Go ahead. Quickly,” my mom said. “You're in this too, June.”

I left the kitchen, and what I wanted to do was run right out the door to Toby. I wanted to apologize over and over again. To say sorry until I was sure he believed me. Until I was sure he knew it was coming from the deepest part of my heart. But I couldn't do that. I had to keep my head straight.

I snuck away to the cellar as quietly as I could. I got a big white cardboard box, and on the side I wrote,
DON'T TELL THEM ANYTHING!!!!!!!
with a fat black marker.

You could see the driveway from the living room but also from my bedroom. I tiptoed up the stairs and cleared my windowsill of the fake candles. Then I threw the window wide open.

There was the police car, and there was Toby sitting in the back. His
arms were bare, his hair still wet, and even from inside the house I could see that he was shivering. All I wanted to do was walk down the hall and get one of my father's big coats and wrap Toby up in it. I wanted to pull all the blankets off my bed and run to the car and cover him up so tight that he'd stop shivering on the spot. But I couldn't. This was all my fault. He was right there and still I couldn't take care of him. I flicked my light on and off a few times to get his attention, then I pressed the box up to the window. I held it there for a few seconds, hiding my face behind that sign. Then I lowered it.

Toby tipped his head slightly, his thin face framed in the police-car window. Then he looked away, embarrassed or angry with me for getting him into this mess.

They would not be able to charge Toby with anything. Not after everything Greta said. That's what Officer Gellski told us. He also told us that Toby's name would be passed on to immigration. He said it looked like Toby was years over his visitation limit.

My parents thanked the cops for bringing Greta home safely and then they both showed them to the door. They watched as the cops walked down the front steps and out to their car.

“I almost feel sorry for the man,” my father said, staring out at the police car.

“I know, but you can't,” my mother said. “He's the kind of person who's bound for problems. Look what he did to Finn.…” Her voice was cracking.

“It'll be okay.” My father put his arm on my mother's back and they walked upstairs, looking like they'd both been through some kind of epic battle.

Greta had already gone up, leaving me alone downstairs. I wandered from room to room, turning off the lights.

In the living room, I stopped to look at the portrait. There we were. Those same two girls. Illuminated. I thought that it wasn't that bad. The stuff we'd added. There was beauty in it. There was at least some small beauty in what we'd done.

I flicked the light off and we disappeared.

Fifty-Nine

Upstairs, I brushed my teeth, then sat on the edge of the bathtub, looking at the coat. There it was, dead wolf, all the beautiful scents of Finn washed away. I touched it, lightly at first, petting it with my open hand.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered, stroking the coat harder, over and over again.

Even though it was dark and way past midnight, that Saturday would not let itself end. It stayed, keeping me up, making me drag it right into Sunday. I lay in bed, over and over again running through what Greta had done for me. For Toby and me. And then over and over again I thought of Toby and hated myself for the trouble I'd dragged him into. I wondered if they had him all cold and wet, sitting in that small jail cell in the police station in town. The one they made our whole class squash into when we went there on a class trip in fourth grade. “This is where you don't want to end up, right, kids?” the policeman said. Everyone except Evan Hardy nodded. Evan stood there with his hands on his little-boy hips and said, “Yeah, yeah, I do.” I remember being afraid for him. I remember thinking they might just keep him in there if he kept talking like that. And now it was Toby, and all I wanted to do was run through the streets of town, right to that cell. I wanted to bring him dry clothes, and I wanted to tell him how sorry I was.