On Christmas Eve morning, I pulled myself out of bed and had a long hot shower. When I got out, I could smell coffee—good coffee, now that Oona was in charge—and something cinnamon-ish.
“Dahlia?” she called from the kitchen. “Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes.”
In my bedroom, I pushed Lemondrop’s nose out of the duffel bag Oona had packed for me from the apartment and pulled on a pair of leggings and a fresh sweater from Alex’s closet. I padded barefoot into the living room with the last clean pair of Joey’s thick wool socks balled up in my hand.
Alex was sitting near the vintage silver tree Oona had dragged in and decorated, with the dogs at his feet. They gave me a hero’s welcome.
Someone had recently assembled some badly wrapped packages, lots of tape, under the tree’s shimmering limbs.
“Open that one,” Alex said, nudging a box with his slipper.
“It’s not Christmas yet,” I argued, plopping onto the sofa. But it was more than that, of course. In all the chaos, I hadn’t managed to get any kind of gift figured out for him, for anyone, and now here we were. I’d had a last-minute brainstorm for something Alex and Oona might both like, but it would take time. “Twenty-four shopping hours left,” I said brightly. “Still time for a Christmas miracle.”
“We already had one.” He picked up the box and brought it over, put it in my lap. Lemon nosed in to sniff the box. “You have to open this one, at least. For the show tonight.”
We were still doing the show, and I had a not small amount of dread to be back there, onstage, everyone’s eyes on me. Among the friends, the regulars, there would be gapers in the audience, no question, drawn by the blood in the headlines.
I ripped open the paper and stuck the bow on Lemon’s head. I pried open a cardboard lid to find a new pair of Western boots, mid-calf andblue, peacock blue, with feathery stitching in white. They were perfect. I couldn’t wait to put them on.
I pulled apart the ball of Joey’s socks, and a fat roll of twenties dropped into my lap.
I didn’t need to count it. The rent money, accounted for. In the toe of one of the socks was a ring. A small dark sapphire, white gold band, just as Sachin had described it. I held it out on the palm of my hand.
Alex frowned. “Is that…”
“I guess so.” We both stared at it. “His sister will be glad to get it back.”
I set it aside. Alex processed while I slipped the socks on my freezing feet. “You’re all right?” he asked finally.
“No,” I said. Lemon had knocked the bow off her head and was munching at it. I snagged it back. “But I will be. Eventually.”
After I’d modeled the boots, marching back and forth across the room with the dogs following behind, Alex pulled another packageout and handed it to me. It was bulky but squishy, light, reminding me of the package Sicily had tried to give me from the closet at Marisa’s. “Come on, dude,” I said. “I think you might be compensating for something.”
Alex flutter-blinked away from me. We’d cleared up a few things—like how I’d always thought he’d ditched me into foster care as soon as he could, a cast on my arm from Marisa’s neglect. He’d let me believe that, rather than admit I’d been hurt at McPhee’s, that he’d allowed Family and Child Services to take me afterward, all for the best, whisked off to my first foster placement still smarting. I’d been with him a few months, but the damage had been done to his confidence that he could protect me.
He’d closed the cellar up and got Marisa off the streets and into a recovery program. And when she had her wobbly Bambi legs under her and started to think, maybe, she could see me again, he’d let her convince herself not to. Could occasional visits be disruptive to me? Dangerous to her delicate sobriety?
I mean, probably, right?
No one knew the right thing to do. It was all suchguesswork, being a human.
The truth was that I could blame Marisa for a lot, but not everything. And Alex could fix most broken things—but not all. Some of this mess—
I’ll just gesture towardmyselfhere.
Some of this mess, I had to take responsibility for. Some of this, I would have to repair on my own.
The second gift from Alex was a proper winter coat, down filled, lots of pockets and zippers. It enveloped me, almost to the ankles. Oona came to the doorway and burst into giggles.
“I can’t be seen in this,” I said, grinning. “Alex, this is in no way rock ‘n’ roll. People will think I’ve gone soft.”
But it was a coat for going out into the world, a padding against life’s sharp edges. A girl could get used to being cared for, that’s all I’m saying.
59
“You use repetition for the chorus, right? But then expand the story as the verses go along,” I said. “And the listener hears movement in the story. By the time the chorus comes around the second time, they can sing along but it hits a little different—”
“God, she writes one decent song, and we never hear the end of it,” Lourey said.
