“Did he live there?” Grace says, pointing at the Filmore. She squints into the freshly cleaned window just as Mr. Symanski had squinted when she first opened the door. As she stares across Alder Avenue, she wipes down the marble sill with her soggy newspaper. “Is he here on this street? Have you ever seen him?”
“I am never looking.”
“I wish I could have helped you,” she says, knowing the man is back on the street because she was too afraid to tell the truth. “I wish I could have said something to the police, told them something that would have stopped all this.”
From his seat on the sofa, Mr. Symanski stares down at the sliver of toe poking through his sock. “You are helping me now,” he says. “You are being a good neighbor. And always so good to my Elizabeth. Always so good. You’ll be having your own soon and knowing how wonderful a daughter is to love.”
After scrubbing the kitchen window, wiping down the counters, and promising to deliver a roast in a few days to fill Mr. Symanski’s empty refrigerator-or possibly a stuffed chicken if he has tired of a roast every week-Grace walks with Mr. Symanski to the front gate. Once there, she hugs him lightly and pushes on the gate’s latch. It sticks, so she gives it a second jostle. Down the street, near her own house, one of the twins walks toward her. From this distance, she can’t tell which one.
“The police came to see me today,” Mr. Symanski says. “Just before you are here, they came.”
Grace lets the gate fall closed and whirls around to face Mr. Symanski. “Oh, no.”
The twin is a half block closer. Because her head jerks from side to side as if she’s afraid of her surroundings and because her shoulders droop, Grace knows it’s Arie.
“Yes,” Mr. Symanski says. “It was being the river. That is all they are telling me. Today they are finding her. It is being the other men who tell them it is my Elizabeth.”
Grace reaches out, squeezes Mr. Symanski’s wrist, pulls him into her arms. “What can I say? It’s my fault. All of this. My fault.”
Mr. Symanski, hunched over at an awkward angle because of Grace’s large stomach, rests his head on her shoulder. “This is not being true,” he says. “My Elizabeth, she is being at peace?”
Grace dabs at her eyes. She wants to ask how it happened, what the police found, but Arie is only a house away and she shouldn’t see this or hear this.
“Can I help you inside?” Grace says, glancing back at Arie. She has walked a few yards closer and stopped. She stands at the sidewalk that leads to the Archers’, who live next door, and has wrapped herself in both arms. Even from this distance, Grace can see Arie is crying.
“Go,” Mr. Symanski says. “Go and see to the child.” Halfway up the sidewalk, he stops and turns back. “It is being hardest to be the only one left.”
Grace watches until Mr. Symanski reaches his porch, then she bangs on the latch again and once through the gate, she rushes toward Arie.
“Arie, dear. What is it? What’s wrong?”
Arie’s lips roll in on themselves and she backs away. She shakes her head but doesn’t speak.
“Honey, please. Why are you crying?” Grace takes another few steps closer, but this time, she moves slowly.
Arie must know about Elizabeth’s death. Grace should be crying too, but she’s known all along things would come to this end.
“It’s Izzy,” Arie says, still cradling herself with her own arms. “I’m afraid what happened to you is going to happen to her.”
When Mrs. Richardson reaches out to cup Arie’s shoulder, Arie stumbles away. It’s rude, and Aunt Julia would be disappointed, but something bad happened to Mrs. Richardson in that alley, something so bad she hasn’t even told Aunt Julia, and Arie doesn’t want to be touched by it.
Again, Arie says in little more than a whisper, “I’m afraid what happened to you is going to happen to Izzy.” She sniffles and drags her hand across her nose.
Mrs. Richardson doesn’t try to come any closer. Her white hair glows in the bright sun. None of it breaks free of the band holding it from her face or frizzes at her temples like Arie’s hair always does. In the street, a car drives by. Mrs. Richardson doesn’t smile or wave even though it’s the neighborly thing to do. Now she is the one afraid to get too near.
“What do you mean by that, Arie? What do you think happened to me?”
After Arie had finished cleaning up to go to church with Aunt Julia, she had run downstairs, her sneakers in hand. Sock-footed, she skated into the kitchen. Empty. She shouted into the backyard. Nothing. Lastly, she looked out the front window. The driveway was empty. Aunt Julia was gone, and so was Izzy. She ran back upstairs, and from her bedroom window, she scanned Alder Avenue. Every door along the street was closed. Most of the driveways were empty. She crawled over Izzy’s bed, a rumpled mess because she never makes hospital corners or smooths her quilt, and looked out the side window. She looked past the roofs and antennae and overhead lines, and at the far end of the alley, she saw a person. She couldn’t say she saw Izzy because the person was too far away, and yet, she knew it was Izzy because an arm stretched into the air and waved in broad strokes.
Arie watched the alley for half an hour. It was early, she told herself. Not until five o’clock would Mr. Schofield set up his chair again. Like everyone on Alder Avenue, Mr. Schofield knew the colored men came at ten and five, or thereabouts. Surely Izzy would be home long before that. But then one o’clock passed, and two o’clock and soon, Aunt Julia would be home. Arie had to go looking.
The street had jumped to life while Arie was upstairs watching the alley. Cars drove past, whipped into driveways, and ladies scurried to their front doors. Arie had clung to the banister with both hands as she walked down the stairs to the sidewalk and she waited for one of the ladies to shout out to her and tell her to get back inside. But no one noticed her or scolded her. Three times Arie walked up and down Alder. Cars continued to drive down the street, but instead of more ladies, it was their husbands, home at an odd hour, and because they, too, hurried inside without tending to their trash cans or setting out the sprinkler or using the daylight to mow the lawn, and because time was slipping away and five o’clock would eventually come, fear welled up in Arie and she couldn’t stop that fear from spilling out as tears when she saw Mrs. Richardson a half block away.
“I asked you a question,” Mrs. Richardson says, grabbing Arie’s arm. It’s the same spot she grabbed when she thought Izzy and Arie started the fire. “What do you mean? What do you know about what happened to me?”
Arie stares down on Mrs. Richardson’s hand. Her fingers pinch but Arie doesn’t pull away.
“The bad thing that happened to you,” Arie says. “The bad thing that happened in the garage.” She lifts her eyes. “I can’t find Izzy and I’m afraid the same will happen to her.”
Mrs. Richardson’s hand softens and drops from Arie’s arm. “Come,” she says, taking Arie’s hand, gently this time. “That looks like your aunt’s car. Let’s get you home and then we’ll find Izzy.”
Mrs. Richardson smiles at Arie and talks with a smooth, steady voice. She is trying to sound like she’s not scared, but red patches grow where her white collar rests on her neck and sweat collects on the soft hairs above her top lip and on the tender skin under her eyes. And instead of walking toward Aunt Julia, Mrs. Richardson almost runs, dragging Arie along behind.
Up ahead, Aunt Julia’s car rolls into the driveway. Uncle Bill doesn’t like for her to drive it because he says it’s on its last leg, but Aunt Julia said first leg or last leg, she had to drive it today because the bus wouldn’t do. She parks the car where the back bumper is left to stick out into the street, and without closing the door behind her, she walks toward Arie and Mrs. Richardson, slowly at first and then more quickly when she sees Mrs. Richardson is in a hurry.