“Sure,” Quin said. He had tiny freckles on the bridge of his nose.
Have you ever been standing too close to someone and, like, the wind changes somewhere in Tokyo, the butterfly’s wings flap, whatever, and you’re suddenly surprised by how close? How small the room. How broad the shoulders.
Quin had felt the shift, too. A lock of his tidy hair had fallen over his forehead. The moment stretched out, our breath mingled, close, almost as if—
He took a step backward.
“Good note,” Quin said, clearing his throat. “No shaking your friend’s mom.”
I stepped back, too. He wasn’t the only person who could step back. Why was it so hot in here? “No shaking,” I agreed.
“Okay, um…” Quin said. “I’ll give my friend a call.”
“And I’ll call my… my friend, too.” I definitely needed to talk to Sis.
42
Okay, settle down. I heard it, too.
I called her Sis. So what? It saved me time.
I took the stairs to the apartment at a clip. I still had to get my guitar from my bedroom and a song fragment from my boot and get back to the band, but maybe avoid Quin in case of any more awkward interactions, butalsoget Alex alone and make sure he didn’t sign those papers. And then—
I remembered Sis outside McPhee’s, pounding on the vestibule door with her skinny wrist poking out of her puffy coat. Edith and her bank accounts had pulled Marisa into something bad, and Sis didn’t have a clue. That kid could knock on the door of some real trouble.
As I reached for Oona’s apartment door with my key, I had a premonition of the dark hall ahead of me, the empty kitchen. Not just Oona empty, butdogempty. I should have been relieved they’d still be at Alex’s house. I could avoid another awkward conversation here, too, with Oona in her bunny slippers.
But I had so easily grown accustomed to coming home to a hero’s welcome. That’s what dogs were good at.
Everything was about to change. Oona and the dogs would moveto the house permanently. Alex would sell the building tosomeone, and then I wouldn’t come to this door again.
I should have been happy to move on from this door, this halfway life. Happy to have Bear and Lemondrop tearing around a backyard. Lemon would be able to clear the fence and become a menace to the neighborhood, and Ilovedthat for her. As Bear got old, sweet boy, he wouldn’t have to climb all these stairs.
It would all happen, no matter what I thought about it. Marisa would come back or be found—I couldn’t let in any other possibility—and Sis would settle down to her accounting courses, or not. The band, that fragile thing, would hold together or wouldn’t, and all the girls would do what they planned: families, careers, ambitions that had nothing to do with homemade stages or who had financed which mic cord.
The future was one of those moving sidewalks, one that you couldn’t hop off. You had no choice in how fast it went. The distance would pass under your feet whether you walked or just stood there.
You know who I thought of then? Joey.
His life had been about to change, he’d told Heather. Maybe not in the way he wanted. That ring he had from his mom would have gone right back into his pocket.
But he would have liked being an uncle. He’d have taken Heather’s kid to the park, to the aquarium, to spoil his dinner with a Chicago hot dog or one of those seven-flavor rainbow ice-cream cones that melted down your hand and into your sleeve. Both. He would have taught the kid to fingerpick a banjo, to throw darts—eventually. To argue, to believe. To want things. To try, even though you knew you might fail. The future must have seemed like such a long, clear path to Joey while he was painting that nursery.
I really wished he’d had a chance to walk it. And Sis—I didn’t want her to find out this early in her life how hard it all could be.
Was that what being a sister was?
I inserted my key and heard galloping through the apartment andscraping on the floor. Lemondrop, that Clydesdale, reached me first by a wet nose.
“Hey, you knuckleheads.” I dropped to the floor and let them climb over me, slobbering and snuffling. Honest-to-god tears in my eyes! What waswrongwith me?
Oona poked her head around the corner. “Hey, there,” she said shyly.
“Hi.”
I found it easier to cling to Bear’s neck than to look directly at Oona, but I didn’t really have time to waste. Not just today. Again, ever. I looked up.
“I’m sorry—” I started.
