“Wouldn’t Merker have been able to find her here?”
“He never knew me by my real name, Miranda. Miranda Chicoine. When I got hired at the Kickstart, I told them my name was Candace. I don’t know, I guess when I applied for a job as a stripper, I didn’t want it to be Miranda who was doing it. So while I was there, I was Candace. When I left, I became someone else. I’ve always been hiding out from the place I’d last run from. My father wasn’t going to find me when I was Candace, like he’d even be looking. And when I didn’t want Gary Merker to find me, I became Trixie. But inside, I’ve always been Miranda.”
“I abandoned Miranda years ago,” Claire said. “When she turned up with Katie, I couldn’t say no. And Don didn’t say no, either.”
He rubbed his unshaven face again, shrugged. Don was probably in his early thirties, but he seemed older, and wiser than his years would suggest.
“And that’s why I couldn’t have my picture in the paper,” Trixie said. “Worst fears realized and all that.”
“I saw Merker’s mother, in Canborough,” I said.
“Isn’t she a treat?” Trixie said.
“She said one of Gary’s old friends had called him, said he’d seen the picture in the Oakwood paper. She passed the message on.”
“A real darling.”
“About that night,” I said. “When the three bikers were shot. Did you see Gary do it?”
Trixie hesitated, shook her head. “No.”
“But he thinks you did? You said he’d be wanting to talk to you about that.”
Trixie was about to say something when Katie ran in, her curly-haired head not reaching the top of the kitchen table. “I’m hungry,” she said. She sidled up to Trixie and pressed her head into her side.
“It is getting to be dinnertime,” Claire said.
“Are you going to live here now?” Katie asked Trixie.
“Well, sweetheart, I’ll stay here as long as I can, but you know I can never stay for a long, long time.”
Katie gave Trixie a squeeze, and then said to me, “Do you have two moms?”
“No,” I said.
“I do,” Katie said, beaming.
“You’re very lucky. I just had the one.”
“Does she come and visit you all the time?”
“Not anymore,” I said.
“Is she dead?” Katie’s eyes danced.
“Yes,” I said.
“You must be sad,” Katie said. “I don’t want any of my moms to die.”
No one could think of anything to say to that.
“Are we going to have hamburgers?” Katie asked.
“Chicken,” Claire said.
“Is it with the icky sauce?” Katie asked.
“No. It’s the sauce you like.”
“Okay,” Katie said, and ran back into the living room.
I looked at Trixie, and I guess she could sense a question. She said, “We’ve told her the truth, at least some of it. That I’m her mother, but I’m the mommy who can only come to visit once in a while. But Claire, even though she’s her aunt, is really more like her everyday mother, so she calls her that.”
“Okay,” I said. My next question for Trixie I blurted out before I considered its implications: “If your problems with Merker disappeared, would you become her everyday mommy?”
Claire’s head went up, and I saw something in her face at that moment. Fear, maybe. Fear of giving up a child she’d come to love as if she were her very own, in every way.
“Well,” said Trixie, “I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I think, the way my life seems to be going lately, one threat just gets replaced by another. The thing is, I could never be any better a mother to her than my sister has been.”
And some of the fear bled away from Claire’s face. Maybe this was best for her, that her sister have a life of uncertainty, so that she could keep raising Katie in relative normalcy.
Trixie tapped my arm. “Let’s you and me take a walk. Claire, you okay for dinner, I take a walk with Zack?”
“Sure, go ahead. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Trixie motioned for me to follow her out the front door, onto the porch. We leaned against the posts that straddled the steps. I chose the one I’d not whacked my head against. We crossed our arms and looked at each other.
“I’m glad you found me,” Trixie said.
“I’m a regular Sherlock,” I said.
“Didn’t even need Lawrence’s help,” she said. “You’re good.”
“I hate to call him for everything.”
“Come on.” We went down the steps, walked around the house and toward the barn. As we passed it, I saw my car, the Virtue, parked around back, where it couldn’t be seen from the highway.
“That car of yours,” Trixie said, “has been nothing but a pain in the ass.”
“I’m sorry. I never would have let you steal it had I known. Yours, by the way, has been trouble-free, despite your bundle of recall notices.”
Trixie made a face that said Go figure. She pointed to mine and said, “Sometimes you try to start it, it won’t go.”
“It hasn’t been doing that for a long time. I thought it was all fixed. I’ll have to get it looked at.”