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I looked up, and put down my glass.
The bar was emptying out, and gradually the patrons who’d been partying into the early hours of the morning had finally made their way home. But I was still here: I’d arrived an hour ago, after pacing the streets, and had been nursing a Manhattan at an upstairs table.
“How did you find me here?” I said.
“I asked where Alex Lowe goes to drink,” said my father. He stood, looking rather helpless and sad. His face had a rounded, smooth quality that mine didn’t, and if you cleaned him up a bit, he’d look pretty young for his age. He had to be almost seventy. “You’re quite famous, you know,” he added.
“And how long,” I said, leaning over the table, “did it take you to find that suit to put on?”
“Not long,” said Max. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
“What is this?” I said. “An ambush? Did Lola send you here?”
“No,” said my dad. “And if you don’t mind me saying so, you were rather too harsh on her. Not her fault that she’s got a good pair of eyes. Spotted me before I spotted her down by the lake.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” I said. “Lola doesn’t want me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because your good friend Luca Desilva just kidnapped her daughter,” I said.
“Her daughter?” said Max. “Nothing to do with you?”
“Huh?” I said, turning on him. “How do you know that?”
“I had a feeling that was something to do with it all,” said Max. “He kept talking about a birth certificate. But I never put two and two together.”
“Well, she told me to go, as a matter of fact. Told me that I was no good, that it was all my fault.”
“And you believed her?” said Max.
I scowled, then looked away. “I don’t have to justify myself to a man who walked out on his own family,” I said. “I did my best to help. But Lola doesn’t want me. No matter if I can help her.”
“Who cares?” said Max.
“Excuse me?” I said. I was on the verge of calling the bouncer. He’d already made nervous eye contact with me, conscious that the scruffy, shabbily dressed man in front of me had abruptly sat down at my table at six in the morning.
“I said, ‘who cares?’” Max said, and folded his arms. “Who cares if she likes you or not? You like her, don’t you?”
“Don’t pretend you know a thing about me?”
“Oh, I know one or two things aboutyou, mister,” said Max Lowe. “And one of them is that you’re sincerely happy with that girl, whoever she is. I saw the two of you in the diner, remember? Now don’t tell me that now she’s in trouble, now her kid, your kid, is in trouble, you can just walk away?”
“You did,” I replied.
Max was stunned into silence. He seemed ragged at the edges of himself, a little shaky and burned-out.
“You’re right,” he said. “And I regretted it so much. Every single day I’ve regretted it.”
“Mom died, you know,” I said.
“I…she…”
“I was eighteen. And I had no one in the world to rely on.”
“I’m so very sorry, Alex.” Max looked like a shell of a man. Even his grief was barely a human’s grief. Because he looked so tired of life.
“Why?” I said. “That’s all I want to know. Why did you leave? My eighth birthday. I remember I was waiting for you to come home from work. And you got your things and just went. Without so much as a goddamned goodbye.”
