“Uh, where to?” the cabbie asked. His gaze went from Max to the rear mirror to look at Zeffy.
“We should get Nia home first,” Max said, turning to look at Zeffy. “Then we can clean up at my place and get some warm clothes before getting you home.” He turned a bit more. “That okay with you, Nia?”
Nia nodded. “Sure.”
Zeffy gave Nia’s knee a squeeze, knowing how nervous she was about seeing her mother again.
“We can come up with you if you like,” she said.
Nia shook her head. “No. I can do this.”
Zeffy gave her a reassuring smile, then looked out the window. She was suffering a bit of culture shock, what with all the traffic and people and buildings. Eight months, she thought. Having been through so much, the panic she felt now seemed beyond inappropriate. But the more she fought it, the worse it got.
Finally she closed her eyes and called up the melody of the song she’d been working on for Bones. Make that Joe. She smiled. Mr. Crow Crazy Dog. Now that she knew him better, a handful of lyrics began to slide into place. She concentrated on them, on being home, on being safe, and slowly the panic ebbed away.
2 LISA
Lisa no longer overslept in the mornings. She woke an hour earlier than she needed and took that time to check a few teenage haunts on the way to work, showed Nia’s picture to whomever she could, asked around, then used another hour on the way home to repeat the process in some different part of town. She had no luck, but she refused to give up hope. And she was getting better at holding back the panic attacks. The only time they were really bad was when she woke sometimes in the middle of the night, breathless and crying, but then she had Julie to hold her and soothe her fears.
Julie. Lisa had to smile. Considering how first meeting Julie had turned her whole life upside down, it was a little odd that Julie was now the stable, calming element in her life. She didn’t mind the late dinners while Lisa was out looking for Nia—in fact, she usually prepared them. They worked very well as a couple—far better than the relationship Lisa’d had with Dan, though Lisa never regretted her marriage. Without it, she wouldn’t have had Nia.
She sat on the bus, looking down at the photo of her daughter that she used to show around at malls, coffee bars, bus stations, wherever kids Nia’s age hung out, slipping into a sad reverie that almost made her miss her stop. Getting off, she pulled her collar up against the wind and trudged home through Old Market’s narrow streets. They were calling for snow again tonight.
On the way up the stairs to her apartment, she paused outside Max Trader’s door, thinking for a moment that she’d heard voices, then forced herself to continue up the last flight. Yes, Trader had disappeared at around the same time as her daughter, but she’d come to accept the fact that there wasn’t necessarily a connection.
The front door was unlocked, which was odd since Julie had this thing about always keeping the door locked. But before Lisa could wonder too much about that, she saw the small familiar knapsack lying on the floor, heard the voices coming from the kitchen. Her pulse jumped into overtime and she almost ran down the hall, not bothering to take off her coat. She paused in the doorway, her gaze drinking in the sight of her daughter, sitting there at the table across from Julie, a coffee mug in hand. Nia looked up, an odd expression in her features. It took Lisa a long moment to realize that it was nervousness.
“Nia,” she said, her voice soft.
She couldn’t seem to move. A thousand questions died stillborn. All that was important was that Nia was back. Safe. In one piece. There’d be time for answers later.
“Um, hi, Mom.”
Lisa’s gaze slid to Julie’s and read the warning there: Don’t push, don’t make a scene, try to take it slowly. She took a deep breath, then sat down at the table with them, still wearing her coat, the snow from her boots forming puddles on the linoleum floor.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Nia nodded. “I’ve met Julie.”
Julie. Yes, of course, Julie. Oh god. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Nia about it, to explain how she’d fallen in love with another woman instead of a man.
“So,” Nia said. “I guess I’ll be calling her stepmom, right?”
Julie laughed. Actually laughed at a moment like this. But then Lisa felt herself smiling, too, and some of the tension left her body.
“Oh, please,” Julie said.
“Are...are you okay with this?” Lisa asked.
Nia nodded. “After some of the stuff I’ve seen, this seems relatively normal.”
Lisa’s mind filled with visions of bizarre cults, sexual perversions, a hundred and one other parents’ nightmares.
“I’ve got to ask you something, Mom.”
It took Lisa a moment to get back from where her fears had taken her.
“Sure,” she said. “What is it?”
“Who did I invite to my twelfth birthday party?”
Lisa looked blankly at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Please,” Nia said. She seemed to be feeling awkward, but determined. “Just answer the question.”
Lisa took a steadying breath. “Okay. You didn’t have a birthday party that year and you haven’t had any since. That was the year you convinced me that you hated them.”
The reply seemed to relieve Nia, far out of proportion to what such an innocuous question and answer should have done.
“So what was all that about?” Lisa couldn’t help but ask.
“Nothing.”
But then Lisa understood. She remembered the strange man she’d met in the hallway outside her door a few days after Nia had disappeared. What was it that he’d said again? The words came back to her quickly, called up from the familiar pool of information holding anything and everything that might be a clue to Nia’s whereabouts.
She’s convinced that you’re not really her mother anymore—that there's someone else in your head.
How do you reassure your daughter that you are who you are? she asked herself. But there was no need to take the question further. Nia stood up from the table and looked at her.
“I’ve missed you, Mom.”
“Oh, sweetheart—”
“And I could really use a hug.”
Lisa took her in her arms. “Me, too,” she whispered into Nia’s hair.
An odd scent rose from Nia’s hair—a curious mix of wood smoke and something else, not quite definable, wild and musky—but Lisa forced herself not to ask about it. Take it step by step, she told herself. There’ll be plenty of time later to find out where Nia had gone and why. For now she was simply grateful to have her daughter back. She hugged Nia tighter.
“Me, too,” she repeated.
3 TANYA
That was fun,” Tanya said.
After two months on the West Coast of gladhanding and making nice at parties and premiers and wherever else Eddie could get her in—“You want people to think of you when they’re casting, capisce?”—hanging out in a pub with Geordie where no one knew her and she wasn’t expected to be all outgoing and vivacious had been an utter relief. The Harp was Geordie’s local, almost across the street from his apartment, and now her local, too, since she’d moved into her new apartment five blocks farther down on Kelly Street.
For a Newford bar, The Harp was surprisingly quiet. A handful of Irish musicians sat in one corner, none of their instruments plugged in, playing the music for enjoyment, what Geordie referred to as the craic, instead of for money. There were people in the small smoky room out to have fun, to be sure, voices loud, laughter louder, but there were also corner booths where you could sit and listen to the music, have an intimate conversation. Heaven. They’d played darts. Hung out for a while with Jilly, Sophie, Wendy and Geordie’s brother Christy when they’d dropped by after a show. But mostly they’d been by themselves, talking face-to-face instead of over the phone. What Tanya liked the best was that they both still had so much to say.
Geordie smiled. “I w
as hoping you’d enjoy it. It’s hard to think of something that’ll measure up to what Hollywood’s got to offer by way of entertainment, so in the end I just thought screw it, and went to the other extreme, seriously lo-fi.”
They were walking back to Tanya’s apartment through a light fall of snow, but she stopped now and turned to look at him.
“You don’t have to worry about me and Hollywood,” she said. “It’s all glitter and BS there and not my scene at all. I’m only there for the work.”
The work. Whatever Eddie was doing, he was doing something right, because she’d landed another role, small, but more lines than she’d had to date. It was a big-budget film and she was making more for the few weeks’ work than she had so far in her admittedly limited film career. She was the female lead’s ditzy girlfriend, wardrobe care of Goodwill, character just this side of that waitress on Mad About You who never seemed to get anything right. Anyone only familiar with her work to date would think it a serious stretch, but she loved this opportunity to play a bit of a klutz instead of the babe and knew she’d be good at it.
“I know,” Geordie said. “I guess I just miss you.”
Tanya leaned closer to him and gave him a kiss. “I don’t deserve you. You’re way too nice.”
“Yeah, right.”
She kissed him again. “But you are.”
Arm in arm, they continued up the street to her building, sharing the sort of goofy small talk that would make people who weren’t at the beginning of a relationship grit their teeth. At one point Tanya got a fit of giggles and buried her face against Geordie’s shoulder.
“Ewww,” she said, pulling back. “You’re all wet.”
Geordie laughed. “Well, what do you expect, when—”
He broke off as Tanya came to an abrupt halt. Her good humor fled when she saw who was sitting on the front steps of her building, so obviously waiting for her, despite the snow.
“Oh, shit,” she said.
Geordie gave her a puzzled look, then turned his attention to where she was looking.
“It’s Johnny,” she told him.
There was someone sitting on the other side of him, but she couldn’t quite make out enough of the person to recognize them. Johnny she’d know anywhere.
“Johnny?” Geordie repeated, obviously not making the connection.
But why should he? Tanya thought. Johnny hadn’t made a career of screwing up his life the way he had hers.
“Johnny Devlin,” she said. “Back to make my life miserable again.”
“He’s not going to bother you,” Geordie began.
But then Tanya suddenly shrieked and ran towards the steps, Johnny, Geordie, everything forgotten except for the redheaded figure who stood up and opened her arms as Tanya came running up to her. Tanya and Zeffy stood there hugging, laughing and crying, until they finally stepped back and looked at each other.
“My god,” Tanya said. “Where’d you get the clothes?”
They made the ones she’d be wearing for her upcoming role look positively fashionable: a couple of layers of oversized shirts, a padded coat in which Zeffy was swimming, hugely baggy jeans rolled up because the cuffs were at least a foot too long.
“They’re Max’s,” Zeffy said. “I can’t seem to find my own.”
“Max...?” Tanya turned slowly to look at Johnny. “So it’s really true?” Max and Geordie had been introducing themselves to each other. At Tanya’s question, Max nodded.
“And Johnny?” Tanya asked.
Zeffy shook her head. “We don’t know. Dead, probably.”
“Dead.”
Zeffy glanced at Geordie. “Jeez, Tanya. Don’t tell me you’re still carrying a torch for him.”
“No. I’m just—this is horrible—but all I feel is relief.”
“I can understand that.”
Tanya stepped closer to Geordie and linked arms with him. “So where have you been?”
“It’s a long story,” Zeffy said, “that’d be way easier to tell somewhere warm.”
“Oh,” Tanya said. “Well, I live right here.”
“I know.”
“How’d you find out?”
“I tried calling Jilly first,” Zeffy said, “but she was out. Ditto, Wendy. Then I called Kit and she told me how you’d quit at the restaurant, turned into this big-shot Hollywood type—”
“Oh, please.”
“—and she gave me your address, so here we are.”
“Well, come on in,” Tanya said, leading the way up the stairs. “We’ve got ages of catching up to do.”
Geordie and Zeffy followed her up the stairs, but they all paused when Max didn’t join them.
“I guess I’ll just leave you with your friends then,” he told Zeffy.
Zeffy gave an exaggerated sigh and came back down to collect him. “Face it,” she said, taking him by the hand and pulling him up. “You’re part of the circle now, too.”
“I didn’t want to impose,” Max began.
“I think the word you’re looking for is join in,” Zeffy said. “No, wait a sec. That’s two words.”
“Will you guys come in already?” Tanya said from the open door. “You’re letting all the cold air into the foyer.”
Zeffy ignored her. “Unless you don’t want to,” she said to Max.
“No, I want to.”
It was weird, Tanya thought, seeing Zeffy all flirty with Johnny like this, though of course he wasn’t really Johnny, he was somebody else, living in Johnny’s skin, so that made it all right she supposed. She stepped aside as they entered the building, holding hands. Still, weird didn’t begin to describe how this felt. It was enough to make her head ache.
“Tanya?” Geordie said.
“What? Oh right.”
She closed the door on the snowy night and went in to let her friends into her new apartment, apologizing for the mess as she unlocked the door.
4 NIA
The opening for a show that Jilly and Sophie had at The Green Man Gallery later in the week seemed the perfect excuse for a welcome-home party, so everybody got together, milling about in the small gallery with the usual crowd of artists, patrons and hangers-on, admiring Jilly and Sophie’s most recent collaborations, listening to the jazz pianist playing in the corner, sampling the buffet, and of course, partaking of all the gossip.
“It’s so cool of you to have invited me,” Nia said when she was alone with Jilly for a moment.
Jilly smiled. “You’ve got to have your friends around you at a time like this, right? For the celebrations as well as the down times.”
“Sure. I...I’m glad we’re friends.”
Jilly gave her a quick hug. “Me, too.” She glanced over to where Nia’s mother and her girlfriend were talking to Albina Sprech, the owner of the gallery. “How’d it go with your mother?”
"I don’t think she believes me,” Nia said. “I mean, who can blame her, really—but she’s being cool about it. We’ve been getting along better this week than we ever have.”
“I meant with her and—was it Julie?”
Nia nodded. “I’m happy for them. I don’t get it, but Julie’s really nice and, well, you know. It takes some getting used to.”
“Seems like everybody’s turning into a couple around us,” Jilly said.
Nia looked around the room. Her mother and Julie. Max and Zeffy. Tanya and Geordie.
“I hope it works out for all of them,” she said. Then she grinned. “Zeffy’s staying at Max’s until Tanya goes on location and then she’s going to stay there. Max claims she’s sleeping on the sofa—as if. I think they make the greatest couple, don’t you?”
Jilly laughed. “Zeffy told me about your matchmaking. Maybe I should get you to fix me up with someone as nice.”
“You don’t strike me as the type of person that’d ever have any trouble meeting people.”
“Ah, but what about the right people?” Jilly asked, but then she smiled.
“My trouble is I kind of live in ass
onance—my whole life is getting the rhyme wrong, do you know what I mean? Instead of finding the right rhyme, I’m just stringing together all these vowel sounds.”
That seemed awfully sad to Nia. It was so much like her mother, never connecting with the right guy for so long.
“I guess you must get lonely,” she asked.
Jilly shook her head. “No. Not really. I learned a long time ago to be happy with myself, so I’m pretty much okay with it. I mean, one day I might meet the right person, but I’m not counting the days or anything. If I get a little melancholy about it, I just keep myself busy and the feeling goes away.” She cocked her head and regarded Nia with a teasing smile. “How about you? Any beaus in the near future?”
“Oh, please.”
Jilly laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I always say, too.”
5 MAX
I’m standing with my hand idly fussing the wiry fur on Buddy’s head, listening to Zeffy’s conversation with a woman whose name I can’t remember anymore when I catch my reflection in the glass of a print near the back of the gallery. The stranger’s face looks out at me, Devlin. The same face that’s waiting for me in the mirror every morning when I’m shaving. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it. I think Zeffy has trouble sometimes, too. I catch her looking at me, the flash of doubt in her eyes gone almost before it registers. Almost.
I thought I’d adjust better. I seemed to, before, after I got over the initial shock. But then I kept expecting to get my own body back, if not right away, then at some point. Now I know it’s impossible and there’s times when I can barely stand to be in this skin. I want to rip it off like the mask I feel it is. I want to be me again—the me I remember. I want to look in the mirror with a sense of comfortable familiarity and not get caught off-guard the way I still do. The way I probably always will.
“I’ve been thinking,” I say later as we’re walking back to my apartment. Buddy’s on a leash, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Oh-oh,” she says.
“What?”
“The way you said ‘I’m thinking’ sounds too much like you’re uncomfortable with what you’re about to tell me.”