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.
“When are you going to let all this shit go?” Jack spat.
“When you accept your part in it!”
I peeked around the door. My mother stood at one end of the kitchen, wearing her bathrobe and slippers. Her short golden hair lay messy around her face, and her features were pinched in disgust. She had folded her arms and was leaning to one side, her hip hitched up at a defiant angle. Small as she was, nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of Celine Gracewell. I, of all people, could certainly attest to that.
“I’m just trying to keep Sophie safe,” Jack said, his shoulders dropping in resignation. “Why won’t you let me?”
“Because I don’t trust you. Not after everything.”
With a frustrated sigh, my uncle stepped back and shook his head. “You’ve never trusted me.”
“Oh shut up, Jack.”
Feeling like I had heard enough to make me feel sufficiently uncomfortable for the rest of the year, I kicked the door wide open.
“What the hell is going on?”
Jack’s face flooded with relief, settling the high color in his cheeks. “There you are!”
“Yeah.” I pointed at myself for added effect. “Here I am. What’s all the yelling about?”
“Nothing, nothing.” He ran his hand along his graying buzz cut, stopping to scratch the back of his head. “I’m just stressed.”
Jack was always stressed about something.
“What are you doing here?”
“Being dramatic,” my mother hissed before he could reply.
Yikes.
“Is that your new car in the driveway?” I asked, coming to stand between my uncle and my mother and trying to alter the mood. “If you’re making that kind of money from the diner, you should probably give me a raise.”
He wasn’t amused by my joke. “I borrowed it from a friend. I’m not driving my car right now.”
“Feeling too conspicuous these days?” I tried to lighten the mood again.
There really was nothing more uncomfortable than awkwardness. And besides, Uncle Jack drove a red vintage convertible — an homage to his midlife crisis. It was only fair I got to make fun of him for it.