When I turned twenty-one, Alex built the stage at McPhee’s so that I would have a home base to perform anytime I wanted. The band came together over time, and then one night two years into playing at McPhee’s, a curly-haired banjo player named Joey came for the show and introduced himself—
But you know howthatworked out.
I had never meant to be Alex’s problem to solve again.
But the weirdest thing was, most of my life I’d thought that Alex had only managed to saveme. Now here in front of me, standing in my room, was proof of—well, it was proof of something, but I wasn’t sure what yet.
I looked Marisa over, head to toe. “Did you used to have red hair?”
She blinked up at me. “What?”
I don’t know why. I’d always pictured her with flowing red hair and a sort of Joan of Arc fierceness, despite everything. Like how Dolly Parton describes Jolene, you know? Flaming locks, ready to take what she came for.
“You didn’t remember what I…” Her voice gave out and she pressed her wrist to her nose.
I wassixthe last time I’d seen her. I’d got it so wrong. Where had that fierce image of Marisa even come from?
As little credit as I had given her, it was still too much.
“Well, thanks for stopping by after—” I checked my naked wrist. “Has it only been twenty years? We’ll get that door fixed so next time you can knock.”
Knock and keep knocking, but I didn’t have to say that part aloud.
“Couldn’t we spend a little time?” she said. “Catch up?”
“I’m busy.”
“I could take you to dinner—”
“I have a show,” I said.
“You have shows every week,” she said. “You could cancelone.”
“I don’t want to,” I said. “Cancelorcatch up with you.” There, she had forced me to say it. I would rather eat out of the bins in the alley than—
Wait.
I said, “If you know I have a showeveryweek…”
The look on her face—she had walked right into it, and she knew it.
“Why didn’t you come by last week?” I said. “Or anytime in the last five years?”
Or the lasttwenty. Alex had always known where I was. The number for the pub had never changed, not in probably sixty years, since Alex’s great-great-whatever put in the landline. I had not been difficult to find. Apparently.
“I should have come, you’re right,” Marisa said. “I tried to—I didask, but… I don’t know. Life got complicated.”
My neck was suddenly stiff with rage. “Oh, your life wascomplicated,” I said. “Why didn’t you say so? Did you have thirty-six cavities inyourbaby teeth the first time you were taken to the dentist?”
Twenty years, thirty-six cavities. Did it seem like I had been keeping count?Waiting?
I was hit by that knock-kneed shame I knew so well, stomach plummeting, cheeks burning like lanterns. I was that little girl again, listening to whispers as decisions about her life were made over her head, wishing her mother would swoop in and—
I turned and left the room, the dogs rushing to follow. In the kitchen, I returned the knife to the block on the counter and fetched my trash bag of belongings from the door.
Of all days to have my life balled up in a Hefty bag.
When I got back to my bedroom, Marisa hadn’t moved. The dogs discovered her all over again, butts wiggling vigorously. Traitors. I dumped my bag onto the floor.
