I looked over at her. “Wait, you haven’t?”
“Well, wedid, where we live,” she said. “They talk to each other, right?” She looked concerned they wouldn’t. “They said Mom was a grown-up and could leave her house anytime she liked and maybe she just needed a break. Abreak, for real. That’s what they said.”
Sicily flicked a stack of envelopes on the desk testily, and I reached for them, before she scattered them all over the floor again. Alex had a lock on where every piece of paper in this office should be and could spin out when he thought someone had messed with his system.
“Maybe she did need a break,” I said. “The holidays can mess people up.”
I looked down at the envelopes. A few of them looked official, bossy.
You ever seen that kind of envelope? If you got one, you know you owe someone money.
As I had noticed yesterday, some of them were for Michael Jordan. You wouldn’t think a guy that tall would be hard to find. But some ofthese were addressed to McPhee’s and from familiar sources. Vendor invoices. All of it unopened, which was weird. Very un-Alex, but then Alex had been very un-Alex for a while now.
If they were unopened, did that mean all of the bills were unpaid?
I found myself thinking about Edith Maxwell’s sly smile on that bus bench. If McPhee’s was in trouble, her best offer would be looking good indeed.
When I looked up, Sicily was scowling at me. “What?” I asked. “What did I say?”
“She wouldn’t just take off,” Sicily said.
“But this time of year is tough—”
“She loves the holidays.”
“Even for happy people,” I finished. “All the expectations high, all the prices and stressors and weather. But especially hard for people who, uh…”
“Who what?”
“Who are… you know.” I cast about for the right word. “Vulnerable.”
Maybe I’d said it like a swear. Maybe I’d only struck a bull’s-eye, and not just for Marisa. Sicily ducked her head, showing me the straight part in her hair.
Oh, man. I was terrible at tears. Generating my own, dealing with anyone else’s.
There were people finding out about Joey who wouldn’t have any trouble at all ginning up tears over his death. Heather, his sister. She would have heard by now. I would need to… call?
And here was this kid, who only wanted to know her mom was alive.
“Hey,” I said before I was quite sure what I would say. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”
Coffee is what Oona had offered me, and it had seemed like a nice gesture. One that I kinda wished I’d taken her up on. I wasn’t capable of making pancakes.
Sicily raised her head and smudged at her nose with her hand. “Iwantto find my mom. Will you help me?Please?” She sank back into tears. “Why won’t someone find mymom?”
At least she’d gone back to claiming Marisa for herself. I sighed and pushed a box of tissues at her. I was beginning to think I was nice.
IN A HALF HOUR WEwere in Sicily’s SUV heading out to the suburbs again, this time northwest from Jefferson Park toward the town where Sicily lived with her parents when she wasn’t at college. I had my hands under my thighs to keep my fingers warm—and to keep from wrenching the steering wheel away from Sicily as she drifted from her lane.
“What was the thing about the curtains?” Sicily said.
I was busy keeping the car on the road through sheer force of will. “What?”
“When you were on the phone, with the police?” she said. “You said you forgot about the curtains. What did that mean?”
“Concentrate on your driving.”
I was personally concentrating so hard I couldn’t even let Joey in right now. But, yeah, the curtains hurt. Cheap blue ones we’d got at Value Village, too long for our windows, like the red ones at McPhee’s that people were always tying up in awkward knots to get out of their way. At the apartment, though, we’d just let them pool up on the floor.
