Franks. Different last name because she’s married to Karl with his stupid mustache. She’s older, with shorter hair, and darker skin from lying in tanning beds—but she’s got the black eyes, so wide and dark and deep they might be shards of the universe trapped in a person’s soul.She looks like Sunshine, sitting there with Chief Smith in his blue-and-gray uniform, writing on his notepad while Dad stands beside them and nods and watches and pinches his eyebrows. I’m sitting across from all of them and I’m being quiet because—Sunshine would be here if you hadn’t been stupid, if you’d walked her home, if you hadn’t done bad things like you knew you shouldn’t, you stupid ass. How could you be so stupid? Stupid is, stupid does, stupid is, stupid does. Nobody’s stupid. Everybody’s stupid.—But Ms. Franks really looks like Sunshine, with her petite build, her bird bones and bird fingers and the way her bottom lip trembles and she looks to the side when she talks. She’s sitting with Chief Smith on the nice leather couch in the nice hardwood living room of Sunshine’s very nice, very big three-bedroom townhome.
