I wanted to bash him over the head with my paddle.
“Why are you trying to take Mona away from me?!” I said, almost shouting, sounding like one of those loony-tunes, doom-and-gloom street preachers who wildly accuse innocent passersby of contributing to the fall of humanity. “Can I not have one good thing?”
“Birdie,” he said in a pleading voice, holding out both hands as if he was trying to keep me calm. “I promise you—”
Whatever he was going to promise, it was lost when the door to the theater opened. Out came Aunt Mona, who trotted toward us wearing white pants, wedge heels, a blue-and-white striped shirt, and a navy blazer emblazoned with a hand-stitched gold crest that saidAHOY!Over a bobbed white wig, she wore a glittery sailor hat.
“Darling!” she said to me, breathless. “Is everything okay? You didn’t set the house on fire, did you? Are the two of you playing nice?” She gave Leon a questioning look.
“We’re completely fine,” he said, sounding like we were in the middle of a bank robbery and he was the level-headed one trying to keep us calm. “It’s all going to be okay.”
Speak for yourself, I thought.
“What’s wrong?” Mona asked me. “Is everything all right between you and our Daniel?”
I shook my head once, self-conscious.
Aunt Mona held up a hand to Leon, telling him to wait, and then pulled me back under the theater’s entrance. “Hey,” she said in a low voice. “Tell me what’s happened.”
“This isn’t a one-time thing anymore? You’re dating Leon again?”
She closed her eyes briefly. “It’s... complicated. We’re talking. That’s all.”
“Talking about what? He told me he was moving back here to the island, but was that a lie? Did he only come back to convince you to move to Texas?”
“And sweat to death in the summer? Not on your life.”
“Then what? I came over here because I needed to talk, and there he is, standing outside in the morning sun like he spent the night here last night.”
Mona groaned. “Okay, he did, yes. But it’s not what you think. Trust me, there’s nothing juicy going on. Not even so much as a French kiss. We just stayed up late talking and he slept on the sofa. I swear,” she said, holding up three fingers.
I still didn’t totally believe her. Or maybe what happened with Cherry this morning had completely stripped away all rational thought and turned me into a raving, panicking paranoid.
“Now, stop pouting,” she said in a calming voice, “and tell me why you’re here.”
Blowing out a hard breath, I tried to put Leon out of my mind while I gave her the short version of last night’s events: going to West Seattle, meeting Daniel’s family, the stupid gummies.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” she murmured with wide eyes. “Hugo’s going to eat me alive for letting that happen on my watch!”
“Are you insane? Don’t tell him! You want him to have a heart attack?”
“All right! All right,” she said. “Go on. Tell me the rest.”
And I did. About sleeping with Daniel on the couch. And about Cherry finding us.
“Jeez,” Aunt Mona complained. “Uptight much?”
“Actually, I’m not sure she is.” I certainly wasn’t going to get into Daniel’s issues while Leon pretended to watch late-Sunday-morning post-church traffic. “I think she’s just overprotective about Daniel. She’s actually... I don’t know. You’d probably like her. I think she’s a few years older than you. She was a magician’s assistant back in the late 1990s. She had a stage name and everything—Black Butterfly.”
Aunt Mona blinked at me. “No way.That’sDaniel’s mother? Holy shit. Hold on,” she told me. And then shouted to Leon, “Just a second, okay?”
Before I could stop her, she was racing back inside the theater. And while I gave Leon an awkward lift of the chin that saidI acknowledge that this is holding up your plans and that I was a total jerk to you a few minutes ago, but please don’t come over here and try to make good with me right now. Then I stared at the cardboard movie standees in Mona’s ticket window until she came back out—this time, carrying something.
“Look!” she said, holding out an old event flyer, affixed to a backing board and stored inside a clear plastic sleeve. The flyer’s design was silk-screened in black ink on neon pink paper. It advertised an event at a Seattle club in 1999. The Jim Rose Circus Side Show, with opening act the Great Albini and Black Butterfly.
“That’s her!” I said, pointing at the blurry, silk-screened people.
“I know! I saw this show with your mom when we were in high school! We were sixteen—I made us fake IDs to get inside, but they didn’t even check them. I tore this flyer off the wall as we were leaving the show.”
