“And anyway,” Edith said, “since when do you care where your mother is? She’s been within reach this whole time.”
“I was akid. I’m not the one who should have been reaching.”
“You’re not a kid, Dahlia. You haven’t been a kid in a long time.” Edith leaned lower over the bar. “And have you asked yourself yet, whether it’s likely she really never tried to reach you? In twenty years? And what would have happened, if she had? Who might have stopped her?”
Alex. But he was only trying to keep me safe from—
The pink cocoon of Sicily’s princess room inserted itself into my mind. Then the photo on Marisa’s dresser of her arms around baby Sis. That closet full of Christmas gifts, years and years of wrapping paper growing brittle.
“These thick tavern walls have been quite the fortress,” Edith said. “Keeping people out, keeping people in.”
I checked through the pass-through, but I couldn’t see Alex. “He was just protecting me,” I said.
“You sure?” she said.
I remembered the fleeting fear across Alex’s face the night Marisa had showed up at McPhee’s. Fear of what? I had assumed he’d worried that Marisa’s mess would tumble back into our lives and be his to clean up again. Or he thought that his recovery could be endangered if subjected to Marisa’s. But that was the entire deal with recovery, wasn’t it? All those meetings.
He was just scared I’d be hurt again. AndIwould be his mess to clean up. Again.
It was the same as barring Joey from the pub, hurrying him away so I wouldn’t have to deal with him, right? Deleting the security footage so I’d never even know he’d come to bother me.
Protecting me.
Infantilizingme.
Iwasn’ta kid anymore. I had a right to make my own messes and the duty to clean them up, myself. It was selfish of Alex to keep me from…
And then I got it. I understood. Hewasbeing selfish. We were all of us selfish creatures, including Alex.
Alex wasn’t afraid of Marisa or her choices. He was afraid of mine.
If Alex kept me from Marisa, he never had to worry I’d choose her over him. He couldn’t be on the losing side of any decision I made.
I thought he’d been protecting my heart from being broken again, but he would have been protecting his own, too.
I always gave Alex so much credit for heroics, for strength, for keeping that little blue room for me, for being able to fix anything, withstand anything. But he was just a man. More than what some people saw when they looked at him, less than I’d built him up to be. A man who had built me a world here at McPhee’s Tavern I would never need to leave. That I would neverwantto leave.
And no one could convince me that Alex wanted to leave it, either.
I looked at the envelope on the bar. “You’re a vulture,” I said.
Edith’s chin jutted out. “I’m sorry?”
“Swooping in here to buy up the bar the second you smell blood.”
Quin and the Jims snapped to attention. They’d all been pretending not to listen, but only Silent Jim could pull off the act. Now Quin leaned on the bar with open interest while Lumpy Jim mooned into his beer, stricken at the news that the pub could be sold out from under him.
“If there’s blood, I didn’t draw it,” Edith said. “This neighborhood was bleeding out before I turned it around. This tumbledown tenement is the lone holdout for the entire block, bringing down property values for everyone else.” She tapped a finger on the envelope on the bar. “This is the best offer, maybe the last good offer, Alex is likely to get. We could make something of this place.”
“I like it the way it is,” Lumpy Jim mumbled.
“It’s already something to plenty of people,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” Edith said. “To miserable drunks. To those who’d rather be here than with their families.” She looked at me. “To those who need a stage they can’t get anywhere else.”
Ouch. MAXimumdamage.
“And ghost hunters,” she said with derision. “Treasureseekers. And those who would prey upon the delusional, whobelievethese fairy tales.”
