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She tipped her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. The whiskey burned its way down her throat, setting a tiny fire in her stomach. She had to pee. Her feet hurt. Her head felt kind of swimmy. Too much alcohol, not enough food. Not enough forethought, not enough good sense, not enough of whatever it took to keep a family together.
It wasn’t her sister May’s job to keep their family together, but May somehow always had. Her wholesome blondness, her big blue eyes, her expectation that weekends were for Packers-watching parties or the cabin. May belonged to both her mom and dad, she was theirs in a way Allie could never be, cuckoo that she was. May kept them all together effortlessly, and now that she’d left and was making her life here in New York with Ben, Allie was stuck with a job that was impossible for her to do. Stuck in a role without lines or cues. She wasn’t the one they stayed together for.
Allie had always been the one who tore them apart.
But not anymore.
“What are they doing now?” she asked with her eyes closed.
“I’ll check.”
She felt him move away. Allie took a deep breath and exhaled. She needed to ease up on the whiskey and locate some focus.
The bar was crowded enough now that she could find somewhere to observe where her mom wouldn’t see her. It was probably time to release Winston back into the stream.
He’d been fun, but she didn’t have anything to offer him. Not tonight, not in New York. Maybe if he’d strolled into her life in Manitowoc, it would be different, but—
“They’re gone.”
Her eyes flew open. “No, they’re not.”
“They are, I’m afraid.”
“You said they just ordered drinks. That was only, like, a minute ago.”
But she knew it had been longer. An hour? More? She’d lost track, and he said nothing, his face creased with concern.
She pushed away from the wall. Her pounding heart dropped into her stomach with a lurch. “You said you were watching them!”
“Allie—”
“No, you said you had this! You could see them and I couldn’t, and you told me they’d ordered drinks and they weren’t going anywhere, but now they’re gone? How can they be gone?”
A group of twenty-something Manhattanites were filing through the narrow passage from the back room, but Allie shoved them out of her way, pushing through bodies, craning to see the spot in the bar where her mother had to be even as she knew he wouldn’t lie to her, he hadn’t botched it, it had just happened.
Someone stepped on her foot as she maneuvered through the thick crowd around the bar. “Watch it!” she snapped, and she twisted sideways to pass the last person standing in her way, only to find what she’d expected.
Her mom was gone.
Again.
The ache at her breastbone felt like defeat, the catch in her throat too familiar to swallow around.
The autumn after she and Matt broke up, she would drive around the farm roads in the dark, listening to the radio and crying.
She hadn’t known before she reached this era of her life what it meant to cry—really cry. How much it hurt, and how unbelievably fucking loud it was, and how nobody wanted it. No one wanted to hear it, or to look at it, or to face the pain of it, so she’d driven in the dark and cried alone until all the extra, unbearable surplus pain had spilled over and she could go home and sleep.
But she was through with that kind of crying. She wouldn’t cry like that. Not in New York, not in this bar.
A hand fell on her shoulder, and she flinched.
“Allie.”
“Not now.”
“Allie, I’m sorry.”
She dropped her shoulder, slipping out from beneath his hand. “Just leave me alone.”
