He looks up at me, the look in his eye changing from avoidance to irritation. “You ask a lot of questions,” he says.
“I know. Sorry. You don’t have to answer that,” I say. “It’s a bad habit.”
“Asking too many questions?”
“Thinking that people want to answer.”
His face softens. “No, it’s fine,” he says. “She’s my sister. And it’s just a little sensitive ’cause she’s not with us anymore…”
His sister. He said she was his sister. And he said she isn’t with them anymore. This breaks something in me. If this is Bailey’s mother, she is lost to her. Bailey has lived her life thinking her mother is lost to her, but this will be in an entirely new way. She will be lost to her as soon as she found her. Which is why the next thing I say is the truth.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah…” he says. “Me too.”
I don’t want to push him further on Kate, not now. I can check death certificates when I leave here. I can check with someone else to learn more.
I start to get up, but Charlie scans the shelf until he finds a specific photograph. It’s a photograph of Charlie with a dark-haired woman and two little boys, both of the boys dressed in Texas Rangers jerseys.
“Maybe it was my wife, Andrea,” he says. “That you met, I mean. She worked here for years. When I was in school, she put in more shifts than I did.”
He hands me the picture frame. I look closely at the photograph, at this nice family staring back at me, at his now ex-wife, shining a lovely smile at the camera.
“It probably was her,” I say. “It’s weird, isn’t it? I don’t know where I put the room key for my hotel, but her face, I think I remember.”
I hold on to the photograph.
“Your boys are adorable.”
“Thank you. They’re great kids. But I need some new photographs in here. They were five in this photo,” he says. “And now they’re eleven, which, as they would be quick to tell you, is essentially voting age.”
Eleven. That stops me. Eleven would line up, almost precisely, with when he and Andrea got married. Andrea getting pregnant shortly before or shortly after the wedding.
“They play me a bit now though, since the divorce. Think I’ll cave to all their demands just so I get to be the cool dad…” He laughs. “They win more often than they should.”
“Probably okay,” I say.
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “You got kids?”
“Not yet,” I say. “Still looking for the guy.”
This is truer than I want it to be. And Charlie smiles at me, perhaps wondering if I mean it as an invitation. I know this is the moment, the moment to ask the question I need an answer to most.
I stall as I think of how to get there.
“I should probably get going, but maybe I’ll head back if I get done early enough.”
“Definitely,” he says. “Come back, we’ll celebrate.”
“Or commiserate.”
He smiles. “Or that.”
I stand up, as if I’m about to leave, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest.
“You know… this is a bizarre question. Is it okay if I ask you? Before I head out? I figure you know a lot of locals.”
“Far too many,” he says. “What do you need to know?”