“That must be why the sentries let you pass.” Olive appeared to stitch it all together in her mind. “We’re a lonely planet.”
Margo brought her mother a piece of pie, leaned over Michael’s shoulder. She had a sweet citrus smell, maybe orange rinds.
“Of course, Queen Yllana will have to be told,” Olive said, with resignation in her voice. She patted Michael’s hand on the table.
“It’s only right,” Darnell said solemnly.
Michael sipped his coffee.
“So,” Darnell said, turning to Michael, his head tilted with exaggerated curiosity. “You need some money?”
Michael carried Alice upstairs to the guest room and put her in the bed. She was breathing heavily and talking in her sleep. He wandered down the hall to his dad and Margo’s room. When he flipped on the light, everything seemed brightly colored and foreign. A new painting hung over the bed. A fuzzy red cube coming out of a black void. On the dresser, opened boxes with pastel baby clothes under tissue paper. Framed photos of Darnell and Margo camping at Big Bend. Black-and-white Hollywood publicity shots of Margo’s mom and dad—his dark, high cheekbones like Margo’s. A photo of gap-toothed Michael as a kid in his baseball uniform. Alongside it, a photo of him and Andrew sitting together along the roofline of one of the houses his dad built back when he was a contractor. Andrew is smiling goofily at the camera but also thinking how best to show off, how to frighten everyone by pretending to fall and then twisting and swinging gracefully to the ground. Unhurt, whole. It might have been right after this photo was taken that Michael, trying to imitate him, had slipped off that same roof and broken his arm.
In a wooden jewelry box on the dresser Michael found two pairs of gold earrings and a bracelet with diamond inset. A pair of vintage gold cuff links that he suspected were Margo’s dad’s. He went through the other drawers quickly. Surveyed the medicine cabinet and selected a small handful of Vicodin and Xanax. Just enough to get him by for a few days. Temporary. It was all temporary.
“So, where you headed?” His dad asked after Margo had taken her mother to bed and they were alone in the kitchen.
“Nowhere.”
His dad studied him. “The detectives came by,” he said. “I didn’t tell Margo.”
“What are we talking about here?” Michael asked.
“They wouldn’t say what it was about. They just said they wanted to talk to you.”
“Must have missed a meeting with my probation officer.”
“Son.”
“I don’t know. I’ll call him. Sort it out.”
“Son.”
“What?”
“How much money do you need?”
“I’m fine.”
“What about Alice?”
“She’s fine too.”
“We can take care of her. Until you sort out whatever it is.”
Michael tapped the table leg with the side of his foot. “No, see, Lucinda’s got lawyers involved now. She’d use this against me.”
“Son.”
“You keep saying that.”
His dad rubbed his mouth, looked around the kitchen for something but seemed to forget what it was.
“Do you talk to Mom ever?” Michael asked.
“Not all that often. She’s still in Chicago with the ocularist.”
“Never, you mean.”
“Your mom seems quite happy.”
“You don’t know a thing about her.”
“For the longest time I thought she wouldn’t move past it.”
Michael resettled himself in the chair, felt the tabs of Vicodin kick in, push the worry to the distant edges of things. His dad’s hand on the coffee cup seemed small and full of mischief. “I miss Andrew sometimes,” Michael said. He held his hands in his lap to keep them from shaking.
“He loved you. He really did,” his dad said. “Brothers don’t ever say those things. But he looked out for you.” His dad was looking right at him but didn’t seem to see him.
Upstairs something scraped across the wood floor. Margo moving furniture around. “So, which is it, boy or girl?” Michael asked.
“Don’t know. We asked the doctor not to tell us,” his dad said. “It’ll be a surprise.”
“Thought of any names yet?” Michael asked.
“After we lost the last one we decided to wait on that.”
They were quiet, listening to Margo’s feet squeaking on the floor above their heads. It sounded to Michael like something straining, about to give way.
“You’ve got a child of your own to look after,” his dad said.
Margo’s citrusy smell was still in the kitchen. Michael looked out the window but all he saw were the reflected, indistinct faces of two men at a table.
27