“Well, this might be new information for you,” I said slowly. “The reason your mother came here is because she’s, uh… She’s my mother, too.”
There was a beat of silence while the girl didn’t understand me, and then she did. She folded herself away from me: body, expression, hope, and trust, all removed. She slid off the stool and backed away. Bear hopped up to accompany her to the door, but she ignored him. “You’re a bitch,” she said. “I’m asking for your help and you’re—I don’t know what you’re doing.”
I checked my glass. Empty. Probably for the best. “Telling you the truth, buttercup,” I said.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Well, I don’t know your name,” I said.
“I’m not going to tell you. You’re a psycho.” Her eyes were darting all over me, noticing things she hadn’t noticed before: the wild bedhead hair tangled from the wind, the pajama pants stuffed into moon boots. The tats peeping out from under my jacket sleeve.
Sure, okay. I don’t exactly read as trustworthy.
“I’m not everyone’s brand of whiskey, I’ll give you that,” I said. “Our mother, for instance, couldn’t stand me.”
“Stop saying that. Stop saying she’s—” The girl looked a little queasy. Was it so terrible to learn you had a half sibling? Some people might be—
Nope. It was almost always going to be a shit story.
“Look, I’m sorry I had to break some news to you that you obviously didn’t want to hear,” I said. “Let’s stick to the facts, what you came for. Your mother came in yesterday to see me. She was here for a couple of hours, tops. And then she left. She’s not here. I haven’t seen her or heard from her since last night, either. But then since I hadn’t heard from her for the twenty years before that, I wasn’t expecting to.”
The girl held herself steady, one hand on the bar. I’d seen it before. Timber!
I slipped off my stool and went behind the bar to pour a glass of water, then slid it along the bar to a safe distance from me. She came up and sat again, and took the glass in a shaking hand. “It’s true,” she said. “What you’re saying.”
“It’s true.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she said.
“Congrats,” I said. “It’s a girl?”
11
The girl scowled and tucked herself deeper into the neck of her puffy coat. “That’s not funny,” she said. “Thisisn’t funny.”
“No,” I agreed. “I don’t find it funny, either.”
I felt numb. Maybe this girl and I were feeling disappointment with the situation, each from our own direction. She was suffering from surprise, from the family tree seeming a little crowded all of a sudden, and maybe she thought my existence meant something for her that I couldn’t begin to guess at.
I was suffering from something else entirely, and glad I didn’t have to go into the music shop today. The smallest mercy. I grabbed the whiskey bottle to put it away.
“Can I have one?” she said. “A drink?”
I peered at her more closely. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.” Her chin jutting out.
“No, you’re not,” I said. I’d already done the math, trying to figure out when MarisaYounghad pulled her life together enough to care for someone other than herself. “How about a Coke?”
“How about you piss off?” the girl said.
It was a great line, delivered perfectly, except she didn’t storm offafterward. I pulled a diet cola on the soda gun—a guess, since all the little skinny broads ordered diet—and placed that glass in front of her, too.
She shouldn’t even be allowed to sit at the bar. If Alex walked in, I was going to catch some hell. My version of hell, anyway, where Alex plunked me down in front of the Illinois Liquor Control Commission website again.
“Let’s go sit down,” I suggested.
She sipped from the soda, made a face. “I’m sitting down now.”
