“What do you want from me?”
“I want to talk.”
Her brow creased and her eyebrows met sharply in the middle, two angry diagonal lines. An element of her face that did not belong to Antoinette. Weird.
“Antoinette used to talk about you. I could tell you what she said.”
“Why should I care what she said?” Lindsey asked. Although Theo knew from the sound of her voice that she did care. Three months of therapy aside, she did care.
“Because she was your mother,” Theo said. “Because she loved you.”
She agreed to have coffee with him-his suggestion, because having coffee was an adult thing to do and Theo didn’t want to call attention to the fact that he was too young to drink alcohol. Plus, he only had ten dollars left in his wallet, which wouldn’t go far with anything except coffee. They went to Rebecca’s Café and stood in line for coffee, which Theo loaded down with cream and sugar. Lindsey got jasmine tea, and Theo said, “Do you want a scone or anything? I can pay for it. What about a cwasant oh jam-bone ay fro-maj?” He used his corniest French accent, a relic from his days with Brett and Aaron and his other school buddies a hundred years ago. It worked: Lindsey smiled the tiniest smile, and Theo rushed ahead of her to pay for “One large coffee and one jasmine tea, please.” They sat at a very small round table in two uncomfortable wrought-iron chairs. Theo sipped his coffee and burnt his tongue.
Lindsey stirred her tea bag with a thin plastic straw. “Why don’t you just tell me what you have to tell me?” she said. She looked at her watch.
“Do you really have someone to meet?” Theo asked. “Your boyfriend?”
“You may have been screwing my mother,” she said. “But you’re a far cry from being my father. Got that?”
“No, I didn’t mean…”
“How old are you anyway? Nineteen?”
Theo was pleased that she thought he looked nineteen. “Almost.”
Lindsey huffed. “Disgusting. My mother and you, I mean.”
“It wasn’t disgusting,” Theo said. “Don’t think that.”
“Whatever,” Lindsey said.
“Your mother is a beautiful woman,” Theo said. “And you look just like her.”
Again, the tiniest smile. “Please.”
“It’s true,” he said. “She told me the whole story about how she was pregnant with you and what happened… with her husband… your father. She said she loved you. She loved you, but she gave you away because she was in so much pain.”
“My father cheated on her,” Lindsey said. “Antoinette told me that already, when I spoke to her on the phone. He cheated on her because that’s what men do. They cheat.”
“Hey,” Theo said. “That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Lindsey said. “Like, I finally get the courage up to contact my mother and the day before I get to her, she vanishes into thin air.”
“Why did you contact her in the first place?” Theo said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
Lindsey leaned forward and parted her lips so that Theo could see a tiny chip on her front tooth. “Because I wanted her to love me.”
“I wanted her to love me, too,” Theo said. He tried his coffee again, but now he had a sore, dry spot on his tongue. “She never forgave herself for giving you up. So I can’t understand why… why she wanted to abort our baby. You’d think she’d want to try again, you know? Do things the right way?”
“I have no idea,” Lindsey said. “I never met the woman. Never even seen a picture of her face.”
“I have a picture of her at my house,” Theo said. “A picture of her when she’s twenty-seven years old. You should come see it. You’d see how much she looks like you.”
“I thought you lived on Nantucket,” Lindsey said.
“I do. I did. I’m spending this year with my grandmother. I go to Boston Hill.”
“Boston Hill? You’re still in high school”
“I got held back,” Theo said. “I should be a freshman in college.”
Lindsey looked out the plate glass window at the dark street. Theo tried to predict his grandmother’s reaction if he brought Lindsey home. It was almost five-thirty. She liked him home by six to eat dinner.
“So what do you say? Do you want to come see the picture? Oh, and I have something else you might want.”
“What?”
“Just something. Come with me. It’s not far. Marlborough Street. You can meet my grandmother.”
“I don’t drink so,” Lindsey said. “But thanks, anyway.”
“Please?” Theo said. “Don’t you want to see the picture? I’ll give it to you if you want it. It’s, like, the only picture of Antoinette in existence. Come on.” He took her empty cup and his full coffee cup and threw them both away. “Follow me.”
It was very cold outside. Theo wore a flannel shirt with a fleece vest. He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.
“I have to meet someone,” Lindsey said.
“This won’t take long,” Theo said. He unlocked Antoinette’s bike, and even considered telling Lindsey that it was Antoinette’s bike, but he didn’t want her to claim it as her own or anything. “I’ll give you the picture and you can go. I promise.” He walked the bike with confidence, checking twice out of the comer of his eye to make sure she was following him.
“I’m not staying long,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We eat at six, anyway.”
“And don’t introduce me to your grandmother as Antoinette’s birth daughter or anything. Just tell her I’m a friend from school.”
“You bet.” He slowed down a little so she could walk alongside him. “Was it you who turned my mother in to the police?”
“I didn’t turn her in,” Lindsey said. “I just told them what I knew about you and Antoinette. About Antoinette being pregnant. Those seemed like relevant facts, and your mother certainly wasn’t going to come forth with them. That guy, John? He told most of it, anyway. He had it in for his wife and your mom.”
“My mom didn’t do anything to Antoinette.”
“Prove it.”
“I can’t prove it,” he said. “But they haven’t found a body, have they? I’m telling you, Antoinette is alive somewhere.”
“You can hold on to that fantasy if you want,” she said. “But I’m not going to.”
“My mother didn’t do anything wrong,” Theo said. “If you need someone to blame, blame me.”
“I do blame you,” Lindsey said. “High school. God, I can’t believe it.”
They approached his grandmother’s apartment. He had his own keys now. Lindsey regarded the building. “Nice place,” she said. “I’d hate to imagine the rent.”
“Two thou,” Theo said, though he had no idea if this was true or not. He locked Antoinette’s bike up at the bottom of the stairs. “Where do you live?”
“None of your business,” Lindsey said. He turned to look at her as they climbed the stairs, and she glared at him. “I don’t want you stalking me.”
“You are like your mother,” Theo said. He took a deep breath outside his grandmother’s door; then he unlocked it. “Sabrina?” He smelled roasting chicken, and Sabrina emerged from the kitchen wearing a flowing orange dress and a gold lame head scarf. She shimmered like a flame. Sabrina on fire. Theo watched Lindsey’s eyes widen; she was expecting another kind of grandmother, maybe.
“Well, helllooo,” Sabrina said. “Hello, hello. I’m Sabrina Montero.” She smiled and offered Lindsey her hand.
“Lindsey Allerton.” Lindsey transformed immediately into the kind of woman that one would want to introduce to one’s grandmother. Charm lifted off her like perfume. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’m a friend of Theo’s from school.”
Sabrina blinked. She looked between Lindsey and Theo. “Really?” she said. “How divine. Theo hasn’t brought any of his school friends up to meet me yet. Ashamed of me, probably. Will you stay for dinner? We’re having Cornish game hens-and you won’t believe this, but I put three of those little yummies in the oven. I had a feeling company was coming.”