“I didn’t mean to pry …”
“No, of course not.” Nic cleared his throat. “I had just forgotten about it, that’s all. I got locked out the other day and I had to punch in a boarded-up window at the back of our house to get in. The perks of moving and all that …”
“It looks painful,” I said, doing my best impression of Captain Obvious.
Nic shook his head a little. “I’ve had worse.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, and before I could think of a reply, he was turning from me.
“I should probably go, Sophie.”
“Good-bye,” I offered.
“Maybe I’ll see you soon?” he called over his shoulder.
“As long as you don’t try and kill me again.”
“I’ll try not to, but you’re certainly more than welcome to come back and stalk my house.” He winked, the lightness in his voice back again.
“I wasn’t stalking it!”
“Buona notte, Sophie.”
I arrived home to find a silver Mercedes parked on the street outside my house. I rounded the car, which exaggerated the pitiful state of my mother’s battered Ford just by being near it. The Mercedes may have been sleek, but it was empty and unfamiliar. What’s more, my mother was usually in bed at this time of night, not welcoming rich visitors. I might have been infamy’s child, but she was infamy’s wife, and that meant her social calendar was a lot more open than it used to be. Now, instead of friends, she had projects.
I began to panic that she was welcoming a visitor — the kind of visitor who was going to try and replace my father. Maybe my mother was already tired of waiting. Maybe she didn’t want to face the next four years alone, fielding questions from nosy neighbors and fair-weather friends, and spending every Valentine’s Day crying over the night my father was taken away from her. Maybe this was the car of the man who was going to try and fix it all.
I centered myself. There was really only one thing to do. And that one thing was not to stand outside panicking. No. I was going to march inside, muster up every strand of teenage sarcasm and moodiness I had in me, and use it to scare away whoever this mystery suitor was.
I let myself in through the front door and shut it quietly behind me. Deep vibrations were wafting from the kitchen — a man’s voice! I padded down the hallway, stopping just behind the door that led to the kitchen. It was ajar.
“I don’t know why you’re acting so jumpy. You’re going to terrify her,” my mother was saying.
“Will there ever be a time when you take my advice, Celine?”
The strained voice of my uncle Jack surprised me more than if it had been a different man entirely. Historically, my mother and my father’s brother had never gotten along. In my mother’s mind, Jack was always getting in the way. And even when he was getting in the way with concert tickets or take-out pizza, he was still a nuisance. He was about the only person in the world who she refused to tolerate. He ranked below Mrs. Bailey on the I-don’t-want-you-in-my-house scale, and that was saying something.
Growing up, my father and my uncle only ever had each other — a result of two absent, alcoholic parents — and with Jack being younger, and always refusing to settle down, he had relied a lot on my father, pulling him away for nights at the local bar, or sweeping into his life during private moments that my mother had wanted to keep for just us three. In short, Jack was always there, and was, in my mother’s esteem, a bad influence.
But I knew the other parts of him — the man who took me into the city to see Wicked at the Oriental Theatre just because I once said in passing that I liked musicals; the man who purposefully lingered around my conversations with Millie at work so he could chime in with his idea of sage advice about our boy problems; the man who ruffled my hair when I was trying to complain about something completely serious, who would buy me the new iPhone on a whim, “just because,” and who would insist on driving me to school when it was snowing out so I wouldn’t have to walk through the slush to reach the bus. I saw the man who did his best to step in and protect me when my father went to prison, and even though he didn’t always succeed in shielding me from the cruel jibes and the rescinded party invitations, at least he tried.
I pressed closer to the door.
“I don’t want you getting Sophie involved in your conspiracy stuff,” my mother snapped. “Haven’t you learned anything?”
“It’s my prerogative to look out for her, Celine. I made a promise to Mickey.”
“I think you’ve already done enough,” my mother replied in a dangerously quiet voice reserved only for her most terrifying moods. I flinched in sympathy for my uncle.