I found Addy at her kitchen sink, washing the breakfast dishes. She would no more let plates sit dirty than I would have left my service rifle caked in mud. I picked up a towel decorated with sunflowers and started drying the plates in the rack.
“Cyndra asleep?” I asked. She nodded. Addy and I had been edging around one another for two days. Sea urchins under the same rock. She hadn’t said a word about everything I’d confessed to her, not that I wanted or needed absolution. Our brief conversations had stuck to the neutral topic of Cyndra.
“I’ve been talking to Tachelle Tyner,” she said. “Cyndra’s foster mother. I told her that Cyndra followed her father up here without his knowledge, which at least keeps me on the side of honesty.”
“They must be ready to chew live scorpions,” I said.
“Between summer vacation and the natural defense network of Cyndra’s fellow teenagers, Tachelle only realized she was gone a couple of days ago. I was informed that Cyndra has been a challenge.”
“As the kid would say: Duh.”
“Miz Tyner and I made the informal agreement that Cyndra would stay here until her father is well enough to travel south. Sparing them the trouble of fetching her.”
“I’m sure she jumped at that.”
“In a flat second. I don’t care for that woman at all.”
I leaned against the counter next to the sink so I could see more of Addy’s shining, wrinkled face. “You don’t want Cyndra to leave.”
“It’s best for her to be at home. Her friends are there. School.”
“What if she stayed?”
“She can’t.”
“What if she wanted to stay near you? Would you want that?”
“Van, please stop.”
“No.” I took a wet serving dish out of her hands and put it aside. “Goddamn it, Addy. You were right when you called me out for being deceitful. So let’s lay it out. Mickey will need a lot of professional help. Cyndra might need even more, when her memories start flooding back. And they will. You think the Tyners can handle that? Or that they even give a shit?”
“They wouldn’t let us—”
“I won’t give them a choice. I don’t care if it takes bribing Tachelle or false records to prove you’re Cyndra’s great-fucking-aunt or what. I’ll make it happen. We can make it happen. If you want.”
Addy burst into sobs. It startled the hell out of me. I’d hardly seen the tough old woman so much as get misty before. I jumped forward to hug her for a long moment and then guided her into the front room to sit in her overstuffed peach chair.
She cried for a little while, fishing Kleenex out of the knitted cozy on the lamp table next to her. I sat on the floor and held her hand. After dabbing the last of her tears and a hearty blow of her nose, she tossed the final tissue aside.
“I keep harping on you for your secrets,” she said.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t have your own. Mine tend to involve felonies.”
She laughed a little. “You’re right. We all have bits of our past we’ve kept quiet. Or set aside. That’s easier, sometimes.”
I waited.
“I had two babies,” Addy said. “With my first husband. One was stillborn. We never legally named her, but I always called her Lanie. My boy Dwight died of pneumonia when he was four.”
“Addy.”
“It was many, many years ago, Van. It startles me sometimes how much time passes when I don’t think of them.” She shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about them a lot this past week.”
“Cyndra likes it here. She likes you.”
“It might not be possible for long,” Addy said, maybe to herself. “I’m not young. If her father dies, Cyndra could want something else for herself. Someplace better.”
“So we’ll just have to make it so good here that the kid never wants to leave.”
Addy sighed and turned bloodshot green eyes on me. Her armor back up, with a chink or two. “Are you serious about bribing the State of California and all that rubbish?”
“Damn right.”
She huffed again, less emphatically. “Then I guess I’m serious about finally cleaning out the project room.”
“I’ll help.”
“Damn right indeed. I can’t lift those boxes.”
“With everything, I meant.”
“I know,” Addy said. “I know.”