"Yes, she is." I tucked the photo back into my wallet with care.
"You've done well, Liberty," he said. "It was the right thing to keep her."
"I had to. She's all I've got. And I knew no one would take care of her like I would." I was surprised by the words that slipped out so easily, the need to confess everything.
This was what it would have been like, I thought with a small, painful thrill. This was a glimpse of what I might have had with Daddy. A man so much older and wiser, who seemed to understand everything, even the things I hadn't said. It had bothered me for years that Carrington didn't have a father. What I hadn't realized was how much I still needed one for myself.
Still buzzed from the wine. I told Churchill about Carrington's upcoming Thanksgiving pageant at school. Her class, which would perform two songs, was divided into Pilgrims and Native Americans, and Carrington had balked at being part of either group. She wanted to be a cowgirl. She'd been so stubborn about it that her teacher, Miss Hansen, had called me at home. I'd explained to Carrington that there had been no cowgirls in 1621. There hadn't even been a Texas then, I told her. It turned out my sister didn't care about historical accuracy.
The argument had finally been resolved by Miss Hansen's suggestion that Carrington be allowed to wear the cowgirl costume and walk out on stage at the very beginning of the pageant. She would carry a cardboard sign shaped like our state, printed with the words A TEXAS THANKSGIVING.
Churchill roared with laughter at the story, seeming to think my sister's muleheadedness was a virtue.
"You're missing the point." I told him. "If this is a sign of things to come, I'm going to have a terrible time when she hits adolescence."
"Ava had two rules about dealing with adolescents," Churchill said. "First, the more you try to control them, the more they rebel. And second, you can always reach a compromise as long as they need you to drive them to the mall."
I smiled. "I'll have to remember those rules. Ava must have been a good mother."
"In every way," he said emphatically. "Never complained when she got the short end of the stick. Unlike most people, she knew how to be happy."
I was tempted to point out that most people would be happy if they had a nice family and a big mansion and all the money they needed. I kept my mouth closed, however.
Even so, Churchill seemed to read my mind. "With all you hear at work," he said, "you should have figured out by now rich folks are just as miserable as poor ones. More, in fact."
"I'm trying to work up some sympathy," I said dryly. "But I think there's a difference between real problems and invented problems."
"That's where you're like Ava," he said. "She could tell the difference too."
CHAPTER 15
After four years, I had finally become a full-fledged stylist at Salon One. Most of my work was as a colorist—I had a talent for highlights and corrections. I loved mixing liquids and pastes in a multitude of small bowls like a mad scientist. I enjoyed the myriad small but critical calculations of heat, timing, and application, and the satisfaction of getting everything just right.
Churchill still went to Zenko for his cuts, but I did his neck and eyebrow trims, and I did his manicures whenever he wanted them. And there were the infrequent lunches when one of us had something to celebrate. When we were together, we talked about anything and everything. I knew a lot about Churchill's family, particularly his four children. There was Gage, the oldest at thirty, whom he'd had by his first wife, Joanna. The other three he'd had with Ava: Jack, who was twenty-five, Joe, who was two years younger, and the only daughter, Haven, who was still in college. I knew Gage had become reserved since he had
lost his mother at the age of three, and that he had a hard time trusting people, and one of his past girlfriends had said he had commitment phobia. Being unacquainted with psychospeak. Churchill didn't know what that meant.
"It means he won't talk about his feelings," I explained, "or allow himself to be vulnerable. And he's afraid of being tied down."
Churchill looked baffled. "That's not commitment phobia. That's being a man."
We discussed his other children too. Jack was an athlete and a ladies' man. Joe was an information junkie and an adventurer. The youngest, Haven, had insisted on going to college in New England, no matter how much Churchill begged her to consider Rice or UT. or even, God help him, A&M.
I told Churchill the latest news about Carrington, and sometimes about my love life. I had confided in him about Hardy and how he haunted me. Hardy was every loose-limbed cowboy in worn denim, every pair of blue eyes, every battered pickup, every hot cloudless day.