When he said this a couple of the men glanced at the boy.

Annie’s childish coyness was fueling Frank’s anger. “Why are you doing that with your hair?”

“Leave me alone,” she said. “Come on, Raj.”

“He’s not going anywhere.” Frank put his arm across the boy’s chest. “You go home now.”

“We’ve got a math test tomorrow,” Annie protested. “He’s helping me.”

Frank suddenly snatched away the hand with which she was holding her hair.

“Stop,” she cried, but they all saw it now, the swelling at her lip and beneath her eye.

Siggy cleared his throat to introduce his official sheriff’s voice. “Who did this to you?”

“No one. I just fell over,” Annie said. “Let go.”

Still holding her wrist, Frank turned to the Indian boy. “Who did this?”

“I just fell over,” Annie shouted. “Let go of me.”

With his other hand, Frank took hold of the Indian boy’s shirt and pulled him closer. “You tell me who did this. Was it Lewis?”

The boy just stared at him helplessly.

“Let go of him!” Punching her free hand down against Frank’s arm, Annie tried to pull loose.

“Francesco.” His dad attempted to calm him. “Francesco, come on.”

“Who was it?”

The Indian boy just closed up his body and Frank finally released him. He was still holding on to Annie’s wrist. Struggling furiously, she slapped him against the side of his neck.

“Frank,” his mom called. “Please.”

He let his sister go. She ran through the back of the store into the house. The Indian boy left out the front. Frank’s heart was racing. He looked at his dad, who was almost cringing beside him. He felt his mom’s hand then on his shoulder and she appeared before him.

“Frankie,” she whispered, “why you do that to Annie in front of these men?”

Still furious, he hooked his finger into the loop of cloth made by her missed buttonhole.

“It’s been so long,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I guess you’ve forgotten how to put on anything but your robe.”

She reached to the gap with a look of shock, and he left her there to do up her blouse in front of those men.

Frank went straight into the kitchen and phoned Jude’s place. Mrs. Kroger answered and he could hear her calling meekly for her son. She was the kind of person you forgot was in the room. She was like the bad reception of her own life, at the point of breaking up into nothing but static.

Jude got on the phone. “Hey, buddy.”

“D’you hear from your sister if something happened at school today?”

“Yeah. Nora said Annie would have got him but she got caught up.”

“Got who?”

“That Haliday runt—what’s his name? Seamus.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Whoa, Tonto, what you going to do to him?”

“Not going to do nothing to him.”

“Oh, come on, Buddy, Cal’s all right. Not his fault his brother’s—”

“You think he’s up at Woody’s?”