I try a small smile, and she smiles back.
“We can get real coffee at Nina’s,” she says. “You probably shouldn’t come inside while I change, though. Unless you want a lecture on the dangers of the pot.” She gives me a real smile, like Forgiven, and disappears inside for a few minutes. When she reappears, she’s wearing cutoffs that are short enough to show the pockets from the inside and a T-shirt that she’s clearly spray-painted in.
“Nice shorts,” I say.
“Yeah, well. My best friend’s a bad influence.” She elbows me. “On account of taking the pot.”
Iz takes us to Nina’s, and we slide into our usual booth by the window. Leonard gives us a wave and goes back to the television on the counter.
“Just coffee, thanks, Leonard,” Leigh yells.
“So . . .” I tug a napkin from the dispenser and start tearing it into ribbons. “What’s new . . . with you? How did the unveiling go?”
She rolls her eyes. “Stop being weird. We can talk about you. Or Wil or whatever you want.”
My face gets hot. “Sorry.”
She shrugs. We are not us yet.
I don’t know where to start. I want her to know about my dream without my having to speak it. Leigh would say that the dream is my subconscious, trying to send me a message. Only there are so many messages blinking on and off in my brain—Wil is lying; Wil would never lie to me; trust no one; he’s hiding something, for sure—that I don’t know which to hold on to.
“Hello?” Leigh waves a plastic-coated menu in my face.
“Okay. Minna’s pissed,” I say carefully.
“Minna’s always pissed.”
“No. I mean, like, for real.” I tell her about Minna’s history, about the letter I sent to Virginia. “Maybe her daughter called and they had a fight or something,” I decide. “So she’s mad about that.”
Leigh’s whole face squints at me. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I’m guessing it didn’t go well.”
“Maybe it went well and maybe it didn’t. But that’s not the point. You know that, right?” Leigh says.
Leonard comes over with coffee, and I pretend like we have to stop talking while I stir in cream and sugar.
“Tell me you know that.” Leigh’s eyes narrow. “Tell me you understand that this was absolutely inappropriate and an inexcusable invasion of privacy.”
“Leigh. The woman hasn’t spoken to her daughter in thirty years! It isn’t fair!”
“Oh, but you know what is fair? Stealing her personal property and sending it without her permission. Changing her life without asking first.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I protest. The coffee is too hot, too sweet, but I chug it anyway.
“It was exactly like that. Here. Put your coffee down.” She reaches for my hands and squeezes them. “Look at me. For real.”
I look everywhere else, until there is nowhere else to look. Her eyes are a near black today, burning coals.
“Thing is, Minna is an adult. She’s been running her own life since the Stone Age.”
“Well.” I blink.
“And deciding when, or if, to speak to her daughter is one hundred percent her business. It’s so far from being your business that if you were standing in your business, you’d need a telescope.”
“Okay. I get it.” I pull away and stare out the window.
“So far from being your business that you’d have to take three flights, a train, and a ferry to get even close.”
“Okay.” I rub my temples. “I’m an asshole.”
“That is appropriate.”
I laugh and cry a little and ask Leonard for a refill.
“So . . .” I say.
“So . . .” Leigh says.
“Maybe I should write her a letter or something. To apologize, since she’s not talking to me.”
“That’d be a start. As long as you make it clear that this was not a misunderstanding. She didn’t take it wrong or miss the point. This was just you being the worst court-ordered gal pal Minna has ever had.”
I let my head thunk against the window.
“Onward. So what’s going on with you and Wil?” Leigh starts to build a small standing house with artificial sweetener packets. This is the thing about Leigh: She can be mad about Wil one second and ask about him the next. It’s a kind of goodness that isn’t in most people. “You guys looked kind of weird at rehearsal yesterday. Scratch that. You looked weird at rehearsal.”
“He’s, ah . . .” I want to tell her. I do. I want her to tell me that I’m ridiculous, over-involved, reading everything wrong. “I love him.”
It’s the only truth I know.
I spend the rest of the morning at home on the couch, trying a letter to Minna. But everything comes out the wrong way, the way Leigh warned me.
It’s just that my family is broken, too, and—
I know how much you love your daughter, so—
I only meant to—
“Bridge.” I snap out loud. Leigh was right. I should never have sent that letter in the first place. And believing that I was doing Minna a favor was nothing short of delusional. I crack my neck, hunch over the legal pad, and write an apology. A real apology. I ask for her forgiveness. I tell her that it’s okay if she doesn’t want to give it. It’s her choice. I mean the things that I say. When I’m finished, I press a stamp into the corner and shove it in our mailbox.
Inside, I slink onto the couch again and turn on the television. A talk show host I don’t recognize is delivering paternity test results. Cartoons. A woman in an apron is moaning over the apple crisp she just made. A local news anchor is bringing breaking news, live from Atlantic Beach. The helmet blonde from the newscast I watch with Minna. From Wil’s street, the night Wilson was killed. The house behind her is Wil’s house. I sit up.
“I’m here in front of the Hines residence with breaking news in the ongoing investigation into the death of Wilson Hines, the Atlantic Beach husband and father who was murdered in cold blood during a breakin back in early April.”
I turn up the volume.
“Police have been investigating the murder as part of a string of breakins in recent months. A second victim, twenty-four year-old Dana York, died due to complications from a separate, but police believe related, attack.”
“Get on with it, get on with it.” I turn the volume louder. Louder.
“According to reports from the Atlantic Beach Police Department, detectives in the case have, just minutes ago, arrested a suspect.”
My stomach launches into my throat.
“Police say twenty-one-year-old Timothy Pelle, seen here, has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder in the beating deaths of Wilson Hines and Dana York. Additional charges are reportedly being considered by the state attorney.”
Beating deaths. I taste sour.