I shrugged, looking forward, not wanting to meet his eyes. I could feel him looking at me, and as if he knew I couldn’t answer while he did, he turned and looked toward the house.
“A few times a year. I don’t know how often she did it when I was a baby. Or if she even did, though I suspect so.”
“Did you live close by?”
I shook my head. “Not close enough that it was a quick drive over. We lived on the other side of Baltimore.”
“And you’d just stand here? Like this?”
I nodded, though he wasn’t looking at me. I think hefeltit, though.
“Yeah. Sometimes she’d spew some bullshit about how it should be her and me living in that house. Most times she’d just look at it.”
“And what would you do?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. At first I didn’t understand why wecouldn’tlive there, if she said we were supposed to be.
“And don’t get me wrong, our house was no shithole. It was fine, perfect for just the two of us, really. My father supported me, just not…”
“In the style your mother thought you deserved.”
“She saw Betsy and Joey being raised in this house and she said I should be raised in something just as big.”
He waited for me to go on. “But at some point I realized it had nothing to do with me. It never did. For either of them. I was a tool my mother used, and a burden my father reluctantly bore.”
Jesus, here I was giving my hard-luck story to a townie who was forced to steal cars for a living. Well, maybe forced, maybe gleefully willing. Either way…
“Sorry. I usually don’t throw pity parties,” I said, embarrassed. I sneaked a peek at him out of the corner of my eye. He shrugged, still looking up at the house.
“I don’t know you real well, Jane, but you’re right, you don’t play the pity card. And you could. Definitely.”
I lifted a hand and dropped it. “Well, everybody’s got their shit, right?”
“Yeah, to a degree. But yours is knee deep and very public.”
“Not anymore. I put my foot down. Changed my name, went to boarding school. Tried to distance myself from the crazy.”
He was nodding. “That’s good. It seems to have worked for you. And that’s the one thing I noticed about you right from the start—or at least after I learned who you were.”
“What?”
“That you never played the pity card, and you nevereverplayed the ‘do you know who I am’ card.”
“Why would I play that card? I didn’t want anyone to know who I was.”
“Exactly. Not everybody in your position would want that. They’d play it to the hilt. Want to be on a fucking reality show or something.”
“God,” I said, the thought literally sending a shiver through me.
Stick lifted an arm, like he was going to put it around me, but then dropped it. Must have remembered that he intensely disliked me.
And then I remembered why I’d received Yvette—for services soon to be rendered.
“But it’s about to become that—a reality show.”
“Yeah, I guess it is. But you have something they want—your public opinion of your father.”
“I know, that’s why the car.”
