And I did appreciate that small gesture, considering everything I’d gone through because of her. “How far did you have to come to be here?” I asked.
She kept on with her hair. “A little ways. Is it important?”
“I’d like to know, Amanda. Where have you been? What have you been doing?”
“Because you want to judge me for everything,” she said, setting her coffee on the table.
“No, because you’re my sister and I haven’t seen you in six or eight months.” Leaving aside the whole Gretchen thing…
“I’ve been around,” she said petulantly.
“Where?”
“Here and there.”
“I see.” The stubborn part of me wanted to keep interrogating, ask her what type of work she’d been doing. But that would’ve pushed her away further, and she’d already slipped so far.
It wasn’t just about Gretchen. I’d only thought of the baby when I’d spent all that time searching for Amanda. Now that she was sitting here in front of me, I realized there were two people I needed to worry about.
“I was thinking,” I said, sharply changing the subject. “Do you remember Old Man Harvey?”
Amanda’s head tilted quizzically. “The angry old guy who lived down the street in Sargasso? Sure, what about him?”
“Remember that time we knocked on his door at Halloween?”
With our age difference, it’d been one of the only years we’d trick-or-treated together. When I was thirteen, I declared myself too grown-up to go anymore. And by the time I realized Halloween could be a way for an adult to bond with the baby sister she had little in common with, Amanda had reached the same point of “maturity.”
The question was a gamble, and as Amand
a stared at me, I began thinking I’d lost that gamble. After a long moment, Amanda laughed, the sound tinkling through the small shop. “That man must’ve been eighty, and he tore into the streets after us yelling about his shotgun.” She laughed harder. “I nearly shit myself!”
“And I grabbed you up and piggy-backed you away.”
“He probably chased us for half a mile,” Amanda said. “I don’t know why he was so upset. Do you think we were the first trick-or-treaters he ever got?”
“We probably were. None of the other kids were foolhardy enough to try it.”
We smiled at each other. It was working. We were bonding.
“Been a long time since I’ve thought about those days,” Amanda said.
“They were the good old days.” I sipped my coffee. “You must think of them sometimes, if you thought of me when Gretchen was born.”
She stiffened. “No.”
“Then why me?” I set my elbows on the table, leaning in. “What made you leave her with me, and not somebody else?”
“Who else is there?”
She didn’t ask sarcastically. Not even rhetorically. In fact, it sounded like if I had a better idea of who to drop the baby with, she’d take her straight there.
And for the life of me, I couldn’t answer it. “Ma?” I asked, already knowing the reasons it wouldn’t work even before Amanda began to shake her head.
“She’d never do it,” she said. “She hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you any more than you hate her.” I watched Amanda closely, but her eyes didn’t flicker. “You two fought, that’s all. You’re still mother and daughter.”
“She wouldn’t take her. She’s too busy doing her own thing. And if by some miracle she did, she wouldn’t give Gretchen a good life. She’d pay her even less attention than she did to us.”