I tiptoed back across the yard to Mrs. Dutton's and told myself not to feel guilty for stealing. Beyond the fact that I'd earned it through years of abuse, a lot of it had been addressed to me. Well, Grandma had addressed it to Frances Anderson, but I knew who she meant.
I sat down at Mrs. Dutton's table and my stomach growled. It was nearly five and I was famished, but I had so much to do. I sorted the money into stacks of bills. I thought briefly about hiding most of it under the couch, but instead I put it in a drawer in the sewing table. I didn't have to hide things here. I tucked a few twenties in my front pocket and returned to the kitchen table.
I pulled the envelope out of my back pocket and removed the paperwork. I spread it out on the table and examined it carefully. I looked to see if there was an expiration date or anything, but it didn't seem like there was. All I had to do was fill out my name. Whatever I wanted it to be. I drummed my fingers against the tabletop, staring off into space for about five minutes. Barbie, Mary, Tawny, even Athena and all the other silly nicknames Kaia had tried on me, they all churned through my head. But nothing was right. Nothing was me. I rested my chin in my hand and stared at the blank boxes for another minute before I finally folded up the paperwork and put it away.
I drove Kaia's car to the mall, and I didn't kill it even once. I was practically an expert. I parked where we always parked, on the side furthest from Forever 21. This time, I wasn't there to drool over the guy at Baskin Robbins. I was there to talk to him.
Grady always worked Saturdays behind the counter at the ice cream shop, and even with everything that had happened, today was no exception.
He noticed me as soon as I walked in. He smiled at me, but it wasn't one of his thousand watt jobs. He looked tired. I waited until the line cleared out before I approached the counter.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi. Did everything go okay last night? How's Kaia?"
Of course he would ask about my problems first. "She's fine. Well, she's going to be fine. She'll have a monster hangover, but she'll be okay."
Grady didn't need to know the sordid details.
He nodded. "I remember her when she was in seventh grade and I was in ninth. She was a real sweet kid."
"She still is." A crafty thought stole into my brain. "You know, Grady…"
"Yeah?" he prompted me.
"I think after this weekend, she's going to want to give up drinking. For good. You said you do some Alateen meetings, right?"
Grady nodded, and I swear I actually saw a gleam in his eyes, but maybe that was only the fluorescent mall lights hitting them just right as he angled his head at me.
"Do you think maybe you could give her a call? Maybe see if you could get her to join you one of these times? I think she could use the support, and actually, I think you'd really like her. Way down deep, she's much nicer than me."
He laughed, a short, tired chuckle. "Yeah, I'll give her a call."
I leaned against the countertop. "Thanks. How about you? Are you doing okay? You look kind of
…
not so good."
"It was a long night," he replied. "Dad and I stayed up talking until six. Turns out he knew about you guys."
"I know, Joe told me."
"Joe knew?" Grady's shoulders slumped. "Great. I know I should be mad at them for not telling me, but
…
" he shrugged half-heartedly. "I'm just not. My dad came out of the closet when I was little, so I never experienced how hard it was for him. But I've seen some of the stuff he's gone through since then, and let me tell you, there've been some rough times."
I nodded silently.
Grady folded his arms on the top of the freezer case and leaned his chin on them. "Your dad was popular in high school. Mentally, he's kind of stuck there. He's still worried about what his high school friends think of him."
I sniffed. "That's pathetic."
"Is it?" Grady said. "I care what people think about me. I don't think that's ever going to change. Twenty years from now, I'll still care what you think about me."
"But that's different. We're friends."
"Those people were your dad's friends." Grady straightened up. "I've made my peace with it, and I'm going to move forward. Geoff and my dad love each other, and I love both of them, and that's what matters."
I pursed my lips. "Maybe."
"Give him a chance."
I sighed, sounding more aggravated than I felt. Grady's words were settling into my brain, and the longer they stayed there, the more reasonable they sounded. "Give me his address."
I let Grady get back to work, but I didn't leave the mall immediately. I bought a new outfit at Forever 21 and wore it out of the store, my old clothes from last night in a shiny plastic bag that I slipped around my wrist. It had taken a lot of willpower to not spend every cent I had on cute stuff, but I was determined that I was going to put some freaking gas in Kaia's car now that I had a little cash in my pocket.
It's a good thing I did, because the car was almost on empty and it turned out my dad's apartment was all the way across town.
He didn't seem surprised to see me. Maybe Grady had given him a heads up. Or maybe it was Joe who told him I might be stopping by. Or maybe, he figured we'd had such a connection over the shrimp buffet he'd offered me last night that he knew I would let bygones be bygones. I don't know.
As soon as I sat down on a barstool in the kitchenette, he started talking, his words coming out faster than I'd heard him speak in years. "I'm sorry for everything, Baby," he said. "I know I didn't treat you well. But being in that house, I felt like I was suffocating every time I stepped through the door. I didn't function well there. At all."
I stared at the hardwood floor, then took a sip of my Coke and raised my eyes to his. "Why did you stay?"
He shifted uneasily in his chair. "Your mother, she was in contact with everyone. She said if I paid the bills and stayed married to her, she wouldn't tell anyone about me being gay. But she kept sleeping around and getting pregnant. Even after Joe was born and I put my foot down-"
I swallowed some of my soda wrong. "You what?"
Dad rubbed his eyes angrily. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."
"Well, it's out there now," I said grumpily. "You might not have wanted kids but you really,
really
never wanted me, did you?"
Dad put his hand overtop mine. "I might not have been jazzed about it when you came along, but you turned out pretty great."
I blinked my eyes a couple times, fighting the stinging sensation.
"I know I can't take any credit for the person you've become." Dad's voice got really quiet. "But I'm proud to call you my daughter."
This seemed as good a time as any to bring up a totally awkward subject. "Are you?" I swallowed. "My father, I mean? Like, my actual father?"
Dad closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead hard. "No," he said softly, his eyes remaining closed. "I'm not."
I swallowed again. "Did you have a paternity test or something?"
He opened his eyes and shook his head. "Baby, I hadn't slept with your mother for more than a year when she became pregnant with you. She tried to get me to a couple of times, but I just
…
"
I held up my hand. "No, stop. I don't want to hear about it. Seriously."
"I'm sorry."
"No, it's not that. It's just
…
ew." I shuddered and criss-crossed my arms across my chest, hugging my body. I raised one foot up so that it rested on a peg near the top of the barstool, and I laid my folded arms on my knee. "Um
…
do you happen to know who is?"
Dad shook his head. "Your mother wouldn't tell me. Honestly, I didn't try too hard to find out. I was trapped, and I was angry."
"Yeah, I get that. But, you know, I kind of want to know."
Dad pursed his lips and looked at the ceiling, obviously thinking. Finally, he locked his gaze to mine. "I had suspicions, of course. But I don't know anything for sure."
"I'd take suspicions. They're better than nothing."
He sighed. "Your mother and your Aunt Laura used to be fairly close, you know."
I stopped breathing. "No, I didn't know that," I whispered, using all the air I still had in my body to get those words out.
Dad nodded. "They didn't always hate each other. Laura, she would watch the kids, your older sisters and Joey, sometimes Mark and I would go fishing. Seems like a million years ago."
"What happened?"
Dad shrugged and held out his hands, palms up. "I don't know. Not for sure. One day when I got home from work, the word 'whore' was spray painted in three-foot letters on the front of our trailer. I never saw Laura or Mark again, outside of the occasional awkward run in at the grocery store."
"Didn't you ask Mom what happened?"
"No. That was the same day she told me she was pregnant. I had other things on my mind."
I laced my fingers together and stuffed my hands between my knees. I couldn't get any words out, but I nodded, and Dad seemed to accept that. He stayed quiet for a couple of minutes, and finally I cleared my throat. "Well, I guess I'd better go."
"Joe's moving in here with me," Dad said, before I could rise from my barstool. "It's a three bedroom apartment, and I don't really need a home office. I could shuffle some stuff around. What I'm saying is, you're welcome to stay here too, if you'd like."
I smiled at him, as genuine a smile as I could muster. "Thanks. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do, I've got some options. But really
…
thanks."
It was dark out when I walked outside. I knew I had to take Kaia's car back. I wanted her to see that full gas gauge, damn it. And I needed to see Uncle Mark. I needed to look him in the face. If I stared at him hard enough, maybe I could see all the way into his DNA. Was he my father? How do you just casually ask something like that?
By the time I parked the car in Kaia's driveway, I'd totally chickened out. I locked the car up and went to the front door, intending to slip the keys through the gold mail flap in the bottom of the door. The porch light was on though, which kind of ruined my whole stealth plan. As I tiptoed up to the front step, the door opened and Uncle Mark stepped onto the front porch. Obviously he'd been watching for me. His eyes locked on mine.
"I'm sorry I took the car," I mumbled, pressing the keys into his hand. I whirled around but before I'd taken two steps, he halted me with his voice.
"Wait."
I stopped, but I didn't turn around.
"Here."
I looked over my shoulder. He was holding the keys out to me. I stared at them, wondering if my eyes actually bulged out of my head the way it felt like they did.
"Kaia's grounded. Indefinitely." Her dad grimaced. "But she remembers bits and pieces of what happened last night, and
…
I'm sorry. About the way my wife and I treated you. Thank you for being there for Kaia. She could use a sister like you to keep her out of trouble."
I turned to face him fully. "Good thing she's got me for a
cousin
then," I said. I tried to catch his eyes. Were they mine? Is that where the amber flecks in my brown eyes came from? Or were they from my mother's side? Kaia had them too. But she could have gotten them from Aunt Laura. No, she couldn't. Aunt Laura's eyes were as blue as my mom's.
But Uncle Mark's gaze was shifty, and the light was bad. I couldn't tell anything. He glanced at the closed door behind him, and from the look on his face I suspected that Aunt Laura was probably hovering just inside the door and maybe she wasn't feeling as charitable towards me as he was. That or my staring was making him really uncomfortable. Probably both.
"You're welcome here at our home, whenever you want to come over," he said.
"Thanks."
Nice offer, but that would be never.
"Kaia won't be needing her car for the foreseeable future. As a way to say thank you for helping her, it's yours if you'd like to drive it."
I was
almost
a complete idiot. I
almost
told him I wasn't sixteen and didn't have my license yet. But somehow I controlled myself and let him place the keys in my hand. "Thanks," I said again, staring at my own outstretched palm, then curling my fingers around the keys.
I suddenly had a hysterical mental image of myself adding the words "Uncle Dad" to the end of that thank you, and I quickly turned away, pulling my arm out of his grip. He didn't resist. I walked toward the car, but then something occurred to me. I still had a cousin—and best friend—to watch out for. "Oh, hey?" I said, turning.
His hand was on the doorknob, but he paused. "Yes?"
"Kaia's grounded, so she can't go anywhere, right?"
His eyes hardened. "Right."
"Could you make one exception? Just one, and I swear that's all I'll ever ask."
Her dad blew a short burst of air out of his mouth. "I don't know. What is it?"
"A guy named Grady is going to call. I asked him if he'd take Kaia to an Alcoholics Anonymous group for teenagers, and he said he would. Can you please let her go to that?"
He thought about it for a couple of seconds, then gave me a curt nod. "Fine."
I slid the car key into the lock.
Dude, Kaia, I totally hooked you up! You are so in.
* * *
It was close to midnight by the time I got back to Mrs. Dutton's house. I parked the car in the driveway, grateful that you couldn't see her driveway from my trailer. I let myself in her house, dropped the Forever 21 bag in the sewing room, and exited out the back door, closing and locking it behind me.
I had more investigating to do. Earlier, when I'd gone through the tubs of mail in my parents' shed, I'd just been looking for official documents and cards. But there had been thousands of other pieces of mail that I'd skipped over. Maybe something in there would have a clue. A letter from a boyfriend, or a bill from a motel, anything
…
any scrap of information that I could dig up could be what I needed to unravel the mystery.