Sitting on her own perfectly made bed, Arie shakes her head at Izzy and continues to work the tip of a steak knife through the belt they found in Mrs. Richardson’s garage. Before starting, Arie had measured out the size of Patches’ neck as best she could remember so when she eventually works the knife through, they’ll be able to buckle the belt to create a loop that is the perfect size.
“Girls?” It’s Aunt Julia tapping on the door. “May I come in?”
The door opens and Aunt Julia walks into the room. Her face and neck are red and her hair is mussed on top. If she had been downstairs frying chicken, she’d be wearing her white cotton bib apron, but she’s not. Izzy sure was hoping for fried chicken.
“Do you girls need to talk about Elizabeth?” Aunt Julia says. “Do you have questions?”
Both shake their heads. They saw Elizabeth only a few times a year. Sometimes they would sit with her while Aunt Julia talked with Mr. and Mrs. Symanski, but she never spoke.
“Then I think we need to have a conversation about stealing?” Aunt Julia says.
Izzy and Arie had hoped Aunt Julia was going to tell them not to worry, that Uncle Bill would be home soon and that the argument was just a silly thing between grown-ups. That’s what they had hoped for. That, and a plate of chicken.
“I would have thought you knew better,” Aunt Julia says.
“Izzy did it,” Arie says, holding the knife in one hand and the belt in the other. The clear jewels on the small buckle shine because she cleaned them with a cotton ball and rubbing alcohol. Arie points the knife at Izzy. “I wasn’t even there.” And then she lowers the knife when she remembers she’s not supposed to ever point one. “Sorry,” she says, even though Aunt Julia didn’t see.
Aunt Julia exhales and blinks slowly like she’s tired of teaching the two of them a lesson. She waves Izzy off her bed, pulls back the bedspread, and begins straightening and smoothing her sheets.
“You didn’t have any,” Izzy says. “I checked all the cupboards. We needed it for Patches. I’ll pay him back.”
“I’ll help earn the money,” Arie says, already feeling bad for telling on Izzy.
Aunt Julia tucks two perfect hospital corners on Izzy’s bed, shakes out the blue spread, and lets it fall into place. “You’ll pay who back?” she says, then sits and cradles Izzy’s pillow in her arms.
“Mr. Beersdorf.”
“The hammer belongs to Mr. Beersdorf?” Aunt Julia fluffs the pillow and, holding it by two corners, gives it a good shake and props it against the center of the headboard. “You know you aren’t supposed to go that far.”
“No,” Izzy says. “That’s Mrs. Herze’s hammer.”
“Why do you have Malina’s hammer, of all things?”
Arie scoots to the edge of her mattress and lets her legs hang over the edge. She sets the knife on the dresser between their two beds and lays the belt over her lap. “We saw her pounding her flowers with it and she was going to blame us. She tries to blame everything on us. We didn’t do anything. We caught her and I took it so we could show you. We weren’t stealing.”
“So the hammer belongs to Malina?” she says. “Why, then, do you owe Mr. Beersdorf money?”
“I stole a can of tuna from him,” Izzy says.
Instead of whirling around to face Izzy, Aunt Julia stares at the belt spread across Arie’s lap. The buckle glitters where it catches the sunlight.
“I wanted to put out tuna for Patches because she loves it. It was my idea. All my idea. Arie didn’t even know. I tricked you into thinking I was Arie and I went to Beersdorf’s by myself.”
Aunt Julia says nothing.
Arie glances at Izzy and then at Aunt Julia. Arie wants Izzy to tell her what’s wrong with Aunt Julia, but Izzy doesn’t know. Aunt Julia stands and lifts the thin belt from Arie’s lap.
“Where did you get this?” Aunt Julia asks, pulling the belt through a loose fist. When she reaches the buckle, she runs her pointer finger over the tiny, clear jewels.
Arie is frightened because Izzy can feel it deep in her chest. Izzy can hear her own heartbeat too, and the inside of her mouth swells until it feels too small for her tongue. That means Arie is feeling the same.
“Mrs. Richardson was going to throw it away,” Arie says.
“It was with her trash,” Izzy says. “We only took it because it was trash. It’s going to be a leash for Patches.”
Izzy stands so she can show Aunt Julia where Arie was making a new hole in the thin piece of leather, but Aunt Julia jerks the belt away.
“This is not Mrs. Richardson’s belt. This is Elizabeth Symanski’s.” She waves the belt in Arie’s face. “Where did you get it?”
“That’s not right,” Izzy says, slipping around Aunt Julia to sit next to Arie. She takes Arie’s hand. “It was trash in Mrs. Richardson’s garage.”
“You stole this from Mr. Symanski?” Aunt Julia shakes her head as she says it. “I can’t imagine you would do such a thing. How could you?”
“No,” Izzy says.
Arie’s eyes are closed and she is shaking her head so she doesn’t have to look at the belt. “We’d never steal from Elizabeth, never steal from Mr. Symanski.”
Aunt Julia hugs the belt to her chest. “How will I ever explain this to him? His daughter isn’t even buried yet and you’re stealing from her.”
“We didn’t, Aunt Julia,” Izzy says. “We didn’t.”
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear. You are forbidden, and I mean forbidden, to leave this house. And I assume that hammer belongs to Mr. Herze, not Mrs. Herze. He’s just come home, so you’ll return it now. See that you apologize and then straight back here with you both. I imagine Uncle Bill will treat you to a whipping and then give you chores to earn money so you can repay Mr. Beersdorf.” Holding the belt against her chest with both hands, Aunt Julia walks from the room.
“We didn’t steal it,” Izzy shouts after her. “I promise, we didn’t steal.”
“In this house,” Aunt Julia says, pausing in the doorway, “your promises amount to nothing.”
Taking tiny steps so as to not trip over the curb, Malina walks faster, almost runs from Grace’s house to hers, ignoring the cars that drive past, all of them carrying husbands home to supper. Though her hair falls into her eyes, she can’t stop to brush it away because in her arms she carries three bags of clothes. By the time she reaches the sidewalk leading to her house, she knows she’s too late. Mr. Herze’s blue sedan sits in the driveway and on the porch-her porch-stand those twins.
Mr. Herze leans in the doorway like a younger man might do, his body loose, one leg crossed over the other. In his hands, he holds something and shakes his head.
“What are you two doing here?” Malina says. “You shouldn’t be bothering Mr. Herze.”
“Aunt Julia made us,” the one twin says. “She said we stole and we have to apologize to both of you.”
Malina walks up the stairs and positions herself between the twins, forcing them to stumble as they move aside.
“What on earth have you done?” she says, and drops the bags. Flimsy blouses and rumpled skirts scatter at Mr. Herze’s feet.
“Malina?” Mr. Herze says.
A shiny silver hammer with a brown handle lies in Mr. Herze’s open palm. It’s clean again, as if Julia scrubbed and dried it before sending the girls to return it.
“These girls say they took this from our backyard,” Mr. Herze says, holding the hammer out for Malina to inspect.
She touches the smooth brown handle. “Is it yours?”
“Not mine,” Mr. Herze says.
“She was pounding down her flowers,” the one twin says. It’s the loud one who is entirely too full of herself. “We saw her and she was going to blame us. She told us our cat was dead and that we ruined those flowers. She says we trampled them and peed on them. That’s why we took the hammer.”