Sons from Afar by Cynthia Voigt

room and sat on the bed. Dicey pulled her feet down and turned around in her chair. She sat backward in it, with her arms resting along the top, her chin resting on her arms. “I’ve got papers to write, Sammy.”
    â€œI don’t care,” Sammy said. “Just telling me won’t take long, and then I’ll go away. That would be the quickest way.”
    She chewed on her lower lip, deciding whether to be angry with him. He didn’t let any expression onto his face. He figured she’d see the sense of it and tell him. He knew she’d rather talk than work on her papers anyway, which was why she was trying to get out of talking. That was the way Dicey treated herself. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Give me a minute to remember.”
    Sammy gave her all the time she wanted. She was looking at him but not seeing him, remembering. He looked at his sister, at Dicey: He knew she wasn’t perfect, but there wasn’t anything he’d change about her. Most people wouldn’t agree, but he thought she was fine looking; he liked the way her eyes saw things and reacted, he liked the way she held her chin high, he liked the way her body looked, lots of angles. Her desk was set right below a window that faced east, so that in daylight she could look over to the pines, beyond which the water lay. He liked the way Dicey liked the water.
    On one wall, she had a big bulletin board. Before she went away to college, that bulletin board had been filled, with notes and reminders from Dicey to herself—about what hours she was supposed to work at Millie Tydings’s grocery store, what school-work was due, things she wanted to be sure not to forget. There were also pictures on it: a photograph Jeff had taken of her moored sailboat; a couple of magazine pictures of big ocean-racing yachts, their sails trimmed against an ocean wind; and an old cartoon Jeff had given to her, years ago, its paper turningbrown with age, as if it had coffee stains on it. In the cartoon, there was a maze built in a box, but the mouse that was supposed to run around the maze to find food, or something, had chewed a hole in the floor and was busy tunneling its way to freedom. Sammy liked that cartoon. There were no pictures of people on Dicey’s bulletin board. Sammy knew why, whatever other people might think. He knew that Dicey carried her people close in her heart, and didn’t need any photographs to remind her. He looked back at her face. It was good to have Dicey home again.
    â€œAnd what’s so funny?” she asked him.
    â€œNothing, I’m just feeling good,” he said.
    â€œYeah. It’s so good to be here—” and her quick smile washed over her face. “I think, it feels so good I’m trying to make it feel bad with these papers. You know?”
    â€œThat’s really stupid,” he said.
    â€œTell me about it,” she said, and he laughed. “Okay, here’s what I know. It isn’t much. His name was Francis Verricker. He was a sailor, a merchant seaman.”
    â€œWe knew that. They probably called him Frank, don’t you think?”
    â€œThe policeman in Bridgeport—you never met him, did you?”
    â€œYou kept sneaking around,” Sammy reminded her. “You kept putting me to bed, and things.”
    â€œCripes, Sammy, you were only six years old. The policeman said, when they were trying to trace him, that he was wanted. By the police. I don’t know what for, but I remember once, in Provincetown, when you were maybe not even born yet or just a baby, some policeman came and asked Momma questions.”
    â€œWhat do you think he did?”
    â€œI never thought about it,” Dicey said. “I never thought about him much, if you want the truth. I never wanted to because—well,it wouldn’t do any good, would it? And if I did . . . it made me angry.”
    â€œWhat he did to Momma?” Sammy knew