Page 46 of Our Crooked Hearts
CHAPTER TWENTY
The suburbs
Right now
“This is Sharon. You left a message for me.”
“Sharon.” My brain whirred, placing the name. “Sharon.Hi.”
No reply.
“Thanks for calling. Sorry. It’s just…” I gathered myself, trying to banish, briefly, visions of the pale-haired stranger. “It’s really early.”
“Where I am, it’s late.” Her words bumped against each other belligerently. “What do you want?”
“I think you knew my mom. Dana Nowak. From ’Twixt and ’Tween, a long time ago. That was your shop, right?”
“I haven’t talked to Dana Nowak in over twenty years, honey. I’ve got nothing to tell you.”
She was drunk. I tried to picture the stranger attached to the voice, tried to imagine what it was about this call that made her want to drink before she made it.
“You called me back. If you’ve got nothing to say, why bother?”
No reply.
“I just want to know what she was like,” I told her, before she could decide to hang up. “Anything you can remember.”
“Dana’s dead,” she said abruptly, and my head filled with white noise. Then I figured out she wasn’t telling me, she was asking.
“God, no, that’s not what I— Why would you think she was dead?”
“Some kinds of girl don’t have a long life span.”
I cupped a hand to my eyes. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Whatdoyou know?” Less aggressive now, but still wary.
“I know you called me back for a reason. And I know…” I hesitated. Even in my brain the word felt unwieldy. Standing alone on the drive, talking to a stranger, I finally said it. “I know she’s a witch. I’m thinking you might be one, too.”
“Worker.” The word had a sarcastic edge. “But I’m out of work.”
I dropped to the concrete, my head flooding with questions. “What does it mean, though—to be a witch, or a worker? What can you do? Do you learn it? Are youbornwith it?”
I could hear her loosening up. Liking to be asked questions she actually wanted to answer. “Some workers have aptitude, sure. But more have… other things. Hunger, ambition, nerve. The arrogance to look at reality and say, ‘Here’s howIwould’ve done it.’ Guess which one I am.” She laughed, an unhealthy, rock-tumbler sound.
“What about my mom?”
“Aptitude,” she said. “Arrogance, too.”
“What could she do? When you knew her, could she—do you think she could’ve made a person forget something? Something really big?”
A pause. “Why don’t you askherall this? Seeing as she’s not dead.”
My laugh hurt coming up, its edges sharpened on broken glass and the bones of dead rabbits. “She’s hard to talk to.”
“I’ll bet,” Sharon said dryly, and sighed. “I only knew her a little while. I was glad to see the back of her. Thought she was tough, but she was nothing but underbelly. Her friend, Felicita, she was the strong one. There, that’s something I know about your mom: she’s a one-owner dog. She still hang around with a girl named Felicita Guzman?”
“Yeah.”
