“Sweetheart,” I told her, “I know you must be so sad.”
She said, “I really do want my Granny.” I lay beside her and rubbed her small back, my mind unable to encompass how confused she must certainly feel, a little girl whose very circumspect world comprised of one older woman had burst into a cacophony of raucous kids and solicitous strangers.
I told her, “I know you are scared. For a long time, you were with Granny, but now you get to be with someone who’s really nice too, maybe even nicer, who is your mommy but you didn’t see her for a long time. Her name is Felicity.”
“I know Felicity,” said Sparrow. “I have her picture at my room.”
“We will go on the airplane to see her. Did you ever go on an airplane?”
“When I was a baby. Of course, I don’t remember. You don’t have memories from when you were a baby.”
“They’ll give you nice food and maybe some candy.”
“Oh dear,” she said, and I had to stop myself from laughing. “I’m not allowed to have candy. They say it’s very bad for you.”
“Just once in a while it’s okay. I’m a mom. I know.”
“Will you come too?” said Sparrow. “Do you know Felicity?”
“Yes,” I said. “She is... she is my best friend. I was her friend all my life, since we were little, like you.”
“I am not little though. I told you that.”
“When we were younger, like you. I’m sort of your aunt. Not really, but sort of.” She seemed to think about that for a while. She certainly remembered it. She has called me “Auntie Mommy Reenie” most of the time, even as an adult.
That night, the next thing she asked was, “When can I see my Granny?”
“I don’t know,” I told her.
“Is my Granny bad?”
What could I tell her? “She did some very bad things, but she thought they were the right thing. She might have something wrong in her brain.”
Ruth was under guard at Grace Hospital with significant chest pains. She would be transferred to Wisconsin for sentencing when she improved. Nell and Sam planned to plead Ruth not guilty by reason of a mental disease; all they could hope was that she would serve her time at Dawn Hill Hospital for Women operated by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. At the police station, Ruth was chillingly nonchalant when she described such things as Emil Gardener’s death throes and simply closing the bathroom door on Cary Church’s final seizure. Ruth “didn’t see any point” in describing how she got the man into the bathtub in the first place, beyond explaining that he was “initially reluctant,” so Nell suspected there had been a knife, or even a gun. Ruth refused to talk about that. Her attitude was the very definition of “in cold blood.”
Sparrow slept most of the way to Wisconsin. When we got into the airport, which now looked so small, she said, “I didn’t get any candy at all. I feel sort of bad about that. I think I should go on another airplane.” Sam and I bought her a big box of Dots, the kind you get in a movie theater, and a giant hot pretzel. The pretzel was a huge hit. Sparrow would ask for hot pretzels every time she saw me. I actually learned how to make them for her.
Sam and I decided that I would stay behind while he went to Fond du Lac to bring Felicity home. When she got there, my mother and I would take over.
Sam had so many details to work out while he was in Madison, and he needed at least to set the various wheels in motion. There was the matter of the insurance money: Felicity had not harmed either Emil Gardener or Cary Church, so she would ultimately receive the proceeds of their life insurance policies (Suzanne Church would attempt to sue her for those benefits but would have no grounds, as Cary Church could have chosen to leave life insurance benefits to a calico cat). Felicity offered to give money to both men’s families but Sam put his foot down, saying that might openthe door to speculation about a guilty mind. She also would receive a total of about one hundred thousand dollars from the state, county, and city for wrongful arrest and imprisonment.
In her direct way, Felicity had already decided she would leave the area as soon as it was possible. She thought she might build a house but wasn’t sure where. Sam was stunned by her forward orientation. For her first days, we agreed that if she was comfortable with it, she would stay with Sam and me and Miranda in Sheboygan. It was not ideal, but it was a place she was used to, where she had spent many nights, long ago, and where she could have privacy.
What Sam had underestimated was the tidal wave of media interest in this bizarre reversal. Not only did press throng the car as Sam pulled out of the prison parking lot with Felicity, but reporters also tailed them to Sheboygan, filming and trumpeting a narrative about a “homecoming” and a “more innocent time.”
By late afternoon, I had been up and down thirty times, scanning the windows, texting Sam, but, as they approached the neighborhood, I wanted to lock myself in my childhood bedroom. There was nothing I could say to Felicity, although, of course, I was mad with joy for her. But hadn’t I doubted her? I had doubted everything.
Then, she was there, standing on the front walk.
Sam turned to the reporters. He said, “Please, have some dignity. Let Miss Wild see her daughter. You can’t photograph a minor child anyway.”
Somehow, commandeered by Sally Zankow, who told all present to “back the fuck off,” it worked.
I held Sparrow’s hand as we came out onto the front porch. She might be big, but she held on hard. When Sam and Felicity reached the bottom of the steps, they stopped, and I said, “This is your mommy that you didn’t see for a long time, just like I told you.”
Her eyes filling, her tone rigorously upbeat, Felicity said, “Hi, Sparrow. I sure did miss you! I won’t try to hug you yet because you don’t really know me.”
Sparrow looked up at me. “This is Felicity? This is your best friend?”
