The Mystery of Hollow Places(52)
I could forgive my mother for being cursed, and lonely, and troubled waters. All of that made sense. But I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive her if she’s happy.
After a while, after my fingers have stiffened around the paper and drifting snowflakes have dampened and bled spots of ink, a car pulls up and parks in front of number fifty-six. A tall black man in a crisp trench coat and red knit cap climbs out.
I think about sweeping off my strawberry hat so I’ll be taken seriously, but I’m not sure I could raise my arms high enough if I wanted. While I’m weighing my options, the man shuffles up the front walk, head down against the snow. Flakes cling to his cap and the shoulders of his coat. Fishing his keys out of his pocket, he stops just in front of the stoop. “Can I help you?”
My lips are numb, and I have to scrub my gloved fingers across them to get them warm and working. “I’m waiting,” I chatter, “for Sidonie. She lives here, doesn’t she?”
He squints against the wind as snowflakes pearl his long eyelashes. “How long you been out here?”
I twitch my shoulders upward.
“Okay, but . . . I think you’d better wait inside. It’ll be a little while. She’s at her class.” Unlocking the front door, he chuckles and says, “You’re not a process server or an assassin or anything, are you?”
“I’m actually kind of her long-lost daughter?” I try to throw my arms up casually, like, What can you do? but my limbs are so stiff with cold and my winter gear so constricting, they just flop fishlike by my sides.
He blinks at me, frozen, one boot through the door. “Seriously?”
SEVENTEEN
While Todd Malachai stuffs our winter gear into the closet, I stand in the doorway to the living room and examine their home.
It’s cozy. Artsy. The walls are a warm color that makes me think of caramel drizzled on ice cream. In no particular line or order, big paintings splatter the walls. Animals, forests, beaches. Most are impressionistic. Above the brown leather couch there’s a horse with a bulbous head, like you’re looking at it from inside a fish bowl. All over, there are green cotton-ball trees and oceans so choppy, they’re triangular. I put my nose up to the closest painting and read the scratchy signature in the corner of the frame.
“They’re Sid’s.” Todd comes up beside me. “She’s in her art class now. Just a little group they got going on the college campus. Meets Wednesday evenings . . . but I digress. So. You’d be Joshua’s daughter?”
Shocked, I turn to him. “Do you know my dad?”
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean . . . I just, I knew Sid had a past before we . . . How did you find us? Not that—I’m not sorry you did. I’m not . . .” He spreads his arms. “I’m not too sure what to say. Never been in a situation quite like this.”
I give him a weak smile.
“Some tunes while we wait?” He crosses to a bookshelf next to the couch and bends over a sleek black box on one of the shelves. With a long finger he presses a button, and a lid pops open, revealing a record player like the Prices have, though theirs hangs on the wall in their den. Todd thumbs through a stack of records beside it, plucks one out, and slides it below the needles. Fast saxophone ripples over the speakers. “Art Pepper.” He holds up the sleeve. “One of the greatest. Don’t suppose you’re a fan of West Coast jazz?”
“Um, not really.” I reach out and touch the frosted-glass shade of a lamp on the side table, pluck a tile coaster with a big M on it off the neat stack next to the lamp. It’s cold and heavy in my hand. “Dad’s a classic-rock guy. Twisted Sister and stuff. He calls it hair metal.”
“He seems like a cool guy,” Todd says. It occurs to me that technically speaking, I’m talking to my stepfather. I resolve at once not to like him, though that resolve mushifies when he asks, “You hungry, Imogene? I was just about to make myself a snack.”
All I’ve had since dinner last night was the fistful of vending machine crackers and mini cookies. I can feel my stomach grumbling at the mention of food. “I’m fine.”
He shakes his head. “That’s too bad. I don’t think I can eat the whole box of pizza bites myself. At least join me for moral support.”
Their kitchen is small and buttery yellow and smells like cinnamon, which could just be an air freshener, but makes me hungrier anyhow. My mother cooks in this kitchen. Todd shakes frozen pizza bites onto a foiled cookie sheet, and pops a whole second tray of spicy pot stickers into the oven without asking me. I touch the handle of the silverware drawer. My mother eats yogurt with the spoons she keeps in here. It all seems preposterous.
“You like cranberry juice?” he asks. I nod, inspecting my technically-stepfather-who-definitely-isn’t-likable-or-handsome while he roots around in the fridge. Except he is handsome. Gone is the old flat-top haircut of prom night. Now his curly black hair is shaved close, sprinkled with gray. His skin is rich red-brown, and a light blue sweater tugs across his broad shoulders when he grabs a bottle from the back of the fridge. I remember that he’s years younger than Dad, and if his shoulders are a little less stooped, why shouldn’t they be? He got the girl.
He plunks a glass down on the counter in front of me. “Does someone know you’re here? I don’t suppose your father dropped you off. I don’t even know how you made it out here.”