We walked in through the varnished wood front door, then stopped. I think my mouth dropped open, and the boys were stunned into silence.
“Is this a real house?” Marco asked.
“Of course, it is,” Frances said, but then he looked up at me. “It is, isn’t it? Are we going to live here? Can we touch the furniture and sit on it?”
Mrs. Penn was smiling broadly. She squatted down to look both boys in the eyes. “This is going to be your house — at least, for a while,” she said, glancing up at the officer. “You can touch the furnishings, but always with clean hands. And if your clothes are clean, you can sit on the chairs and couch. But no rough housing. Okay?”
“Okay,” Frances said, “but what is rough housing?”
“No kicking, screaming, wrestling or ball games inside,” I told them.
“That’s what Mom always says,” Frances told us, then remembering that she wouldn’t be saying that anymore. His lower lip began to tremble, and his eyes filled with tears that he quickly wiped away.
“I wonder if there are bedrooms for you boys,” I said, hurriedly, hoping to give Frances a moment to recuperate.
The boys sprinted ahead, running up the stairs so they could be the first to peer behind each closed door of upstairs. “There’s a bed in this one,” Carlo said.
Frances was already opening a second door. He let us know that it, too, had a bed. A third room held another. The boys started hopping up and down in their excitement. “Do we get to sleep in a real bed?” Frances asked.
“Not until you’ve had a bath,” I told them, sternly. “Let’s check out the bathroom.”
Their eyes got big. “You mean there’s a bathtub inside?” Frances said, his voice sounding hoarse from the surprise of it.