Madly (New York 2)

“About as well as I could ask for.” His standard answer. “What’re you up to today?”

“I’m actually in New York for a few days. Spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“No kidding.”

“Yeah, I thought I’d better tell you, since Matt’s been asking people where I am.”

There was a pause. A long pause by other people’s standards, but not a long one for her dad. They breathed into the phone at each other.

“How’s the donations drive going?” she asked.

“Good. They announced it again at church. I got a few people coming over later.”

“That’s awesome.”

“I’m going to need a bigger space, though. You know if Sal’s warehouse is still empty?”

“I think his kids leased it out.”

“Yeah, I wondered. I’m looking at those storage units out by the highway.”

“You think you’ll get that much stuff?”

“You never know.” There was another pause. “Your mom’s just taking some time for herself.”

Her lower back hurt. She’d curled over the phone, hunched in a ball on the bench. “Yeah, I wondered when she didn’t call me back.”

“Yeah. I’m sure she will, when she gets to it.”

“Yeah…Okay, well, I’d better let you go. I just wanted to say hi and, you know. Let you know what I was up to.”

“Sure thing. Talk to you soon, then.”

“Talk to you soon. ’Bye, Dad.” She took a breath. “I love you.”

But by the time she got the words out, he’d already hung up.

The sun punished her for everything she’d done wrong. It made her stomach overlarge, made her head pound with the hangover she deserved for all the whiskey she’d had last night but thought she’d avoided when she woke up thinking of Winston.

Winston.

Winston and his beautiful shirts and better smile and old-fashioned manners.

Winston and the way he held her hand, like it wasn’t a childish thing to do, but a thing, in and of itself.

Winston and the way he made her feel like someone new and fresh, rather than the kind of person whose family needed to get away from them, to take time for themselves.

Without letting herself think of what May had said, or what her mom had done, or any of it, she pulled the card he’d given her out of her purse and called the number.

Feel free to use his services toward your cause, he’d said.

So she did. She felt free to ask Jean to drive all the way to Queens to pick her up, and she felt free to slip into the cool, air-conditioned backseat of the Town Car when it arrived.

She didn’t know where Winston was, exactly.

But she felt free to ride around in the back of this car until it found him.

Chapter 8