Alice stared at the hundred-dollar bill like she’d seen something dirty. Merrily put her handful of photos down on the table and yanked the money back. She dug through her purse for a smaller bill. She’d be trying to break one of these bitches for the rest of her life. That asshole.
She finally found a wad of ones and held them out. “This is what I have, and beers should be dead cheap here—”
Alice was reaching for the money, then past it. She dove instead for one of the photos on the table, grabbing and holding it between them, a wall. Above the print’s scalloped edges, her face was stark. Merrily almost couldn’t stop herself from snatching it back. Instead, she stood and moved to see which one it was.
Young Rick. Jam jar with some dark liquid, cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of his T-shirt, a shoulder turned to the camera. Slicked hair, trying to be Elvis. Just a guy with his life ahead of him, and what a mess he’d make of it, and hers. “What?” Merrily said.
“His tattoo. What is—is that a crow?”
Merrily took the photo and peered at it. “Maybe? A black bird, in any case. Why does it matter if it’s a— Hey!” Alice stumbled away from the table, her eyes wild. “Are you sick?”
Alice used the backs of chairs to steady herself toward the door. “I’m fi—oh, God. I have to—” She bolted for the door.
“Hey,” Merrily called after her.
Alice yanked the door open and was gone.
Merrily looked down at the photo in her hand. The waitress appeared at her elbow and eyed the hundred-dollar bill sticking out from Merrily’s purse. “Black birds, yeah,” she said. “You don’t want to mess with those. They’re major bad luck.”
ON THE WAY back to Chicago, radio turned nearly to silence, Merrily played the conversation with Alice back through. Like a stage play. She said, and then she said. She hadn’t set out to smash Alice’s entire sense of self or whatever, but . . . how was it different from having a new dead dad foisted on you? Foundational damage. Maybe there was more long-lost truth to be had, and it didn’t all have to be for her. Something had transpired at the end of their meeting that she hadn’t understood.
“My room,” Merrily muttered.
A billboard rising up on the side of the road read LOOKING FOR A SIGN? THIS IS IT. She knew it was just a lame sales tactic, but it offended her, struck her like a slap. This was not it.
This couldn’t be it.
What would she do now? Get a job? A real one, a job she would have to be on time for and good at, would have to care about. Some office? She’d have to go to interviews and pretend as though she cared about whatever their widget was. Smiling like an idiot, living to serve some empty corporate cause.
Her phone made the plink-plink sound of a notification from ChatX. Even the notification exhausted her. It didn’t even matter who it was. It didn’t matter to them who she was. A pair of knees, a pair of legs, a pair of—a piece of something to someone, a piece of shit to Searcher, apparently. She wasn’t even real. Had she ever been real? Constructed by everyone else, anyone else, jagged, broken pieces formed into the shape of a woman.
She was crying, and then she was sobbing, the road obscured. Merrily pulled her car to the side of the road and rested her head on the steering wheel. When she got her breath back, she reached for her phone. The notification from ChatX waited, but then so did a text she hadn’t heard come in. Her mom. Come home, the message said. Now.
“MAMÁ?” MERRILY RUSHED through the house, banging a shin against a couch she should have predicted, same couch, same spot for nearly thirty years. She found her mother in the dim kitchen, alone, her phone in her hand. Nearby sat a cup of hot tea gone cold. “Mamá, are you OK? You scared me.”
“Me asustaste. You scare me.”
The Spanish. Not a good sign. Merrily went to the refrigerator, pulled out juice. “What did I do now?”
“What did you do? I don’t even know. This.” She waved her phone. “This, you send with no explanation.”
Merrily poured a glass, sipped. The last thing she had sent her mom . . . she couldn’t remember, and then she did. The selfie in the lobby of that hotel, sent for safekeeping. “The photo of me looking cute?”
“A photo of you looking like lamb led to slaughter.”
Merrily froze. Are you the innocent lamb who’s never done this before? What did her mom know?
How could she know?
“This man,” her mom said. “He is not good.”
On the screen was the photo and Searcher’s face, like a ghost rising out of the black window at her shoulder. Merrily sat down to keep from losing her legs out from beneath her. “You know him?”
Her mom, ashen, looking older than Merrily had ever seen her, reached across the corner of the table, no bracelets to clack together, practically naked without the music of her jewelry, and gripped Merrily’s arm. “You know him. This is the problem. I was hoping it was a mistake—but no, there he is, looking where he has no business. Are you—” Her mom’s throat caught on a word she didn’t want to say. “Is he your—”
“Mamá, no.” He was her nothing now. Never mind that it might have gone the other way. So easily might have gone some other way. What had he said? Tonight would have worked out differently, and not in your favor. The threat seemed darker to her now. “I knew him online.”
“On the computer only?” Hope.
“I met him one time, and . . . he’s no friend of mine.”
Her mom looked as though she might cry with relief. If only she didn’t ask how Merrily had met him online, which site, to what purpose. “And you won’t see him again? Never, OK? Or talk to him on the computer.”
“Never.” An easy promise.
Her mom closed her eyes briefly, a little prayer, and reached for her mug. She made a face and rose to start the kettle.
Merrily watched her stretch to put the tin of tea bags back into the cabinet. She hadn’t thought about the confusing things Searcher had said. About her mom? About a party to be planned? All the devils are back in hell.
She gasped and stood. “Did he know Rick?”
The tin fell with a clang to the floor, the lid rolling into a corner.
“Mamá, who is he?” Months she had played with him on ChatX. Or he had played with her. For what? To lure her, to taunt her, to make her feel dirty and small. But he’d turned her down when he might have humiliated her, might have violated her in a million ways she had only asked for. Why bother with any of it? Why bother with her? “Did he know I was Rick’s daughter?”
Her mom let out a shaking breath. “I guess it’s time to show you where the devil lives. So you stop knocking on his door.”