Island of Bones(111)

Frank let out a breath. “No, of course not. The Romans had a way of idealizing their crimes.”

Louis watched as Frank went over to a table and took off one of the chairs. He set it upright and sat down. His eyes were traveling slowly over the restaurant.

“The women weren’t abducted, not like most people might think,” he said.

Louis came in and set the Bible down on one of the tables. “How was it done?” he asked.

“When a del Bosque man came of age at eighteen, he was told to go off the island and find his wife. That’s how I met Sophie at the drugstore.”

Louis thought about the paragraph in Frank’s book about the Asturian rite of passage, how the young men would ride through the village symbolically beating the women.

“Emilio and I used to take turns going over to Pine Island to get the things we needed, and he was the one who saw her first,” Frank went on. “But I was the one she wanted.”

Frank was staring at the painting. “He never forgave me when we got married. But Mama told him he had to find his own wife. So he brought Emma back.”

Frank looked over at Louis. “I know you think it was wrong, that the women were too young, that they didn’t know what they really wanted. But they were happy here. They were loved and taken care of. They didn’t want to leave.”

“Shelly did,” Louis said.

Frank shook his head. “Tomas was mean. And he didn’t have the patience to find a woman who wanted to come.”

“So he abducted Shelly?” Louis asked.

Frank nodded. “And he raped her.”

“And then he shot her when she tried to escape,” Louis said.

Frank nodded again, more slowly. “That’s when I knew things were changing out here. That’s why I came back. I thought I could...” His voice trailed off and he ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know what I thought.”

Louis came forward to stand in front of Frank. “How in the hell could the women be content when you were killing their children?”

It had started to rain, drumming softly on the roof and sending a briny breeze through the restaurant. Frank didn’t answer or look at Louis. He was staring out at the open door. Louis knew he wasn’t going to talk. Frank Woods knew the “why” behind all of it, but he would never tell it. He hadn’t told Horton. He wasn’t going to tell now. He would go to his grave protecting his sick, twisted family. Suddenly, Louis just wanted to get out of there.

“I have something for you,” Louis said. He put the Bible down on the table in front of Frank.

Frank looked at it. “Where did you get this?”

“Your mother told me to give it to you.”

Frank ran his fingers over the worn cover.

“She told me to tell you something,” Louis said. “It sounded like ut sciat qui esset.”

Louis waited, but Frank didn’t look up. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Frank didn’t move.

“Fuck this,” Louis said and started for the door.

“So he knows what he is,” Frank said. He looked up at Louis. “Ut sciat qui esset. It means ‘so he knows what he is.’”

Louis shook his head. “So what the hell are you, Frank?”

Frank opened the Bible to the frontispiece. He pressed his palm gently down on the family tree.

“I had a sister,” Frank said. “I was very small when she was born but I remember her. I remember when she was born she had all this beautiful dark curly hair.” Frank didn’t look up. “But there was something wrong with her, her back was twisted. I remember hearing them talk about it, Mama and my two uncles. I stood outside the door one night and listened but I didn’t understand. Then the next day, Taresa was gone. When I asked Mama what happened to her, she told me that Taresa was God’s mistake and He had taken her back.”

Frank was silent, looking down at the Bible.

“Ana killed her,” Louis said. “That’s how this all started?”

Frank looked over at him and nodded. “Later, long after I left here, I figured out that Taresa probably just had a condition called spinal muscular atrophy.”

“But why the others?” Louis asked.

Frank stared out at the open door. “Mama was afraid they would be the same, their bones twisted. She was convinced our blood had become tainted somehow.”

“Why just the girls then?”

Frank covered his eyes with his hand.

“Why?”

Frank pushed the open Bible across the table. Louis came forward, pulled his reading glasses from his pocket and put them on. His eyes traveling over the names and the lines that linked them. Each del Bosque man was connected to his wife. Each child was connected to his parents.