Everything You Are(36)

“Good to know.” He leans his head back and closes his eyes. His damp hair curls around his face, softening him. Phee wants to put her hand against his cheek and counts her lucky stars that Celestine has thrust his head forward between them, blocking the impulse.

“What set you off?” she asks. She can think of about a million things, starting with the death of his wife and his son, and ending with his hands and the unplayed cello.

“It’s a long story.”

“Give me the short version. By the way, you might want to move before you are awash in dog saliva.”

He leans toward the window just in time to save his face and hair, the worst of the cascade landing on his shoulder.

“It’s Allie, mostly.”

“Not going well?”

“She hates me. For good reason. And she’s skipping school and is currently AWOL, probably with a boy.”

“Was she a sheltered type? I mean, helicopter mother and all that?”

“I wasn’t around to know, but even when she was five, she was . . . God. That kid . . .”

“What?”

“After my hands . . . before Lil kicked me out, I caught her making sandwiches for Trey because I was hungover and had slept in. She had to stand on a stool to reach the counter.” He pauses, then asks, “What kind of man lets his five-year-old cover for him?”

Phee aches for him, for Allie, with a physical bone-deep pain that feels like it will turn her inside out.

“Don’t ask me about the shit I neglected while I was drinking,” she says. “Here’s the thing, though. No more drinking now.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. Then: “What about you?”

Phee tenses, sensing dangerous questions ahead. “What about me?”

“What made you drink?”

It’s the opening she’s been waiting for, one of the things she needs to tell him, but she doesn’t take it. “Stupidity?”

As if the event that landed her in the ER with alcohol poisoning isn’t the reason why she is here with him, right now, trying to find a way to explain. Her grandfather, gone but never forgotten, has something to say about that.

“Ophelia Florence MacPhee, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Saving an alcoholic from himself. He can’t play if he’s sloshed all the time.”

“You have to talk to him.”

“Get out of my head. Go away.”

“You swore to me, Ophelia. An oath.”

“I was eighteen. What did I know?”

“An oath is an oath. You were of age.”

“You tricked me. And was Braden of age when he swore his?”

“He knew his own mind.”

“Are you okay?” Braden’s voice startles her back into the car, out of the nonexistent conversation with someone long deceased.

“Fine,” she says, but she hasn’t been less fine in years.

Braden’s expression says he knows full well she’s holding back. She waits for him to push her, to call her on her shit, remind her that “fine” stands for “fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.”

But he doesn’t. “Fair enough,” he says. “Since you’re the fearless leader of this band of adventuring angels, tell me, what do I do next?”

“I think the answer to that question is Chinese.”

“I . . . you . . . what, exactly?”

“Food. Do you like Chinese food?”

He shifts in his seat, whether to read her better or be ready to leap out the door as soon as she stops at a light, she can’t tell.

“Yes, I like Chinese food,” he admits, as if it’s a trick question.

Right answer. Phee has already called in an order to her favorite place. Whatever the fallout of this day, there will always be the consolation of egg rolls and crab angels.

“Awesome,” she says. “You asked what next, and Chinese food is the answer. Part of the old ‘don’t get too hungry, too lonely, too tired, blah, blah, blah’ from the original AA. Or in today’s lingo, don’t get hangry.”

“I am all of those things. Definitely hangry.”

He speaks lightly, but the shaking in his hands has spread to his whole body. There’s a glazed look on his face. Jean looks like that when she’s having panic attacks.

“Flashback?” she asks, taking a guess.

“Not quite.”

Silence, broken only by his breathing, rapid and shallow, Celestine’s panting, the traffic noise. And music. The same, haunting cello melody she’d heard the day of the funeral, only barely audible, a soundtrack for her thoughts.

“It’s not a proper flashback,” Braden says, as if he’s discovering words for the first time and is not sure how to piece them together. “There are memories, and there’s this . . . nothing . . . at the middle of them. Like, a black hole at the center of me that sucks in bits of information and won’t let them out again. When I bump up against that? Yeah. Panic. Plus, I’m worried about Allie. Her friend stopped by to tell me that, basically, I’m doing a shit job as a father and that my grieving daughter is out running around with a bad boy.”

“No wonder you want a drink,” Phee says. “I’d want a drink. If it’s any consolation, very probably the worst thing that’s happening to Allie right this minute is sex.”