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Stupidly, unbelievably, I smiled.
“You like her?” Vanessa asked.
“I am not talking about my love life with you.” I sounded like a defensive teenager and she smiled.
“Ahh, you do like her.” She took another drag from her cigarette. “It’s okay, Carter. You can be happy. You deserve it.”
“You’re an authority on happy?” I asked.
“Pretty much the other way around,” she said. “There’s not an inch of unhappy I haven’t seen firsthand.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you?”
“The last thing I expect is for you to feel sorry for me. But if you like this girl, don’t run scared. Proud is a lonely way to spend your life.”
“You didn’t have to let go of us,” I said, not even sure if she was talking about her kids, but wanting to say it anyway. “You didn’t have to take that money from Margot every month.”
She didn’t give me an answer, probably didn’t have one, and I hated that I wanted one. I was doomed to disappointment when it came to my mother.
“I better go,” she said. “We don’t want our picture on the front page of the paper now, do we?”
Her black shirt blended into the night, the gleam of her blonde hair the only indication she was there.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere yet,” she said.
“I can’t have you here, Mom. It’s bad for me.”
“I know, Carter, and I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t worry about me, Carter,” she said, her voice spooling out from the darkness. “I’ll be fine.”
And then she was gone.
JIM
I stayed in the shadows at the top of the alley, holding my breath as Carter walked past, practically breathing smoke and fire. Whatever he and the film noir blonde had been talking about, it hadn’t made the golden boy happy.
And that made me smile, despite my own frustration. I’d been too far away to hear anything, but I would put money on the blonde woman being Vanessa O’Neill. Carter’s long-lost Mommy.
Conspiracy to sell stolen gems, that had to carry jail time. All I needed was to connect a few dots to make sure Carter O’Neill went down.
And I had the perfect way to make sure those dots got connected.
I pressed three on my speed dial.
“Yo, Jimmy!” boomed Louis, the photographer I used in situations like this O’Neill one. I cringed at the nickname, at the stupidity that dripped off this guy’s voice. Louis hadn’t even graduated community college, but what he did for a living didn’t require it. “What’s up?”
“Nothing, Louis, I just have a job for you.”
“Well, I liked the Deputy Deadbeat Daddy Denied job. Made a nice chunk of change off that sweet picture.”
“Good, because it’s more of the same.”
“Same what?”
Dear God, I thought, save me from the idiots.
“I need you to follow Zoe Madison, maybe get some friends to do the same.”
“Dude, the story is cold. No one gives a shit about the pregnant girl anymore.”
“That’s not true—”
Louis was silent, having picked a fine time to get wise. “I’ll pay you,” I said.
Louis sighed. “All right, Jimmy, it’s your dime. Not sure why you want to spend it on pictures of a dead story.”
I’d explain it to you, I thought, but you’d never understand. Leverage was too big a word for Louis.
7
ZOE
“Hands,” I yelled over the violins in the Mozart gavotte. “Watch your hands, Sophie.”
Frustrated, I circled the pirouetting girl in the room, walking in front of the cracked mirrors over to the stereo in the corner.
I pushed the off button and Sophie and the violins both stopped. These Saturday morning lessons weren’t going well.
“When is your audition?” I asked and Sophie blushed, flexing and unflexing her hands.
“January 10.”
“Great,” I said, walking up to the girl and taking her hands. “That gives us five weeks to get rid of these lobster claws.”
“They’re that bad?”
“Worse,” I said. “Juilliard does not accept lobsters into their dance program.”
“You know,” Sophie said, her tone going sour and making me want to roll my eyes. I wanted to tell Sophie that Juilliard didn’t accept spoiled little girls who used excuses to explain bad technique, either, but I couldn’t be too sure of it. “None of my other teachers have ever said anything about my hands.”
I stepped back, lifted my head and looked down my nose the way all of my former choreographers and teachers had stood, a posture that was guaranteed to put dancers in their places. The look was as old as toe shoes, and I found I liked it, liked using it. “Then every other teacher you’ve had has done you a disservice. You came to me because you want into Juilliard, right?”
Sophie nodded, her jaw tight but her mouth shut.
“Your feet are exquisite,” I said, and Sophie perked up. “Your legs are good, not great, but they show lots of promise. Which leaves…”
