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She swings from side to side. “My brothers.”
“Do they live by the river too?”
She lifts the doll to her ear and listens. “Shh, Beatrice. She’s a nice lady. She won’t tell the angry man.”
I go down on my haunches. “Is Beatrice scared of an angry man?”
“The man who made us move here. He came to see us at the camp. Beatrice says he’s scary.”
“Do you mean Mr. Russo?”
She only stares at me with a blank expression.
Straightening, I say, “I tell you what. Why don’t I help you wash up, and then you and Beatrice can help me make frosting for the cake?”
She shakes her head. “Beatrice doesn’t want to wash up. She’s scared of water.”
“She has nothing to be afraid of, sweetheart. I won’t let anything happen to her. But she has to wash up if she wants to help in the kitchen. We can’t cook or eat with dirty hands, can we?”
She holds the doll next to her ear. “Beatrice says no.”
“How about we find Beatrice a new dress to wear? Will she like that?”
Sophie glances at the dirty piece of cloth that’s knotted around the stick.
“I bet her hair is shiny when it’s clean,” I say. “It looks as if she can do with a good shampoo. Why don’t you wash her hair? Won’t she like that?”
After a moment of conferring with Beatrice, Sophie says, “All right, but Beatrice doesn’t like sticking her head under the water.”
“She doesn’t have to. You can rinse it in a bowl.”
“What about that, Beatrice?” she asks. “If you’re a good girl, you can have a slice of cake.”
“That’s right.” Holding out my hand, I say, “Come on. It’s nice and warm inside.”
Sophie puts her small hand in mine. Emotions tighten my chest as I lead the frail child inside. The boy who nicked the cereal and milk was a girl, and this poor girl lives with her brothers somewhere next to the river.
I need to alert Angelo. What will he do? Will he take the kids back to their grandfather? From the little Sophie told me, their grandfather doesn’t seem to care much about them. If he did, he’d never have left them behind to fend for themselves. How are the poor kids surviving alone in the open and in the midst of winter?
Sophie glances around. “It looks different.”
I stop. “Did you climb through the window to watch television yesterday?”
She averts her gaze.
“I won’t be angry, Sophie. I just need to know if it was you.”
“Why?” she asks, peeking at me through her eyelashes.
“If it wasn’t you, I’ll be worried. Then it means someone else was here while I was gone.”
She bites her lip. “Are you angry about the popcorn?”
“Of course not. I’m just concerned when I think that you could’ve burned yourself.”
“I know how to make popcorn in the microwave. Johan showed me how to do it. We did it a lot when we lived here.”
“You lived here?” I ask as my earlier suspicion grows. “In the house?”
