Belle Isle Andy hadn’t had a drink since she’d returned home. She wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to break the streak. Still, she took a cup and sat cross-legged on the floor so that her dad could sit in the chair.
He sniffed at the chair. “Did you get a dog?”
Andy sucked down a mouthful of bourbon. The 100 proof made her eyes water.
He said, “We should toast your birthday.”
She pressed together her lips.
He held up the cup. “To my beautiful daughter.”
Andy held up her drink, too. Then she took another sip.
Gordon didn’t imbibe. He dug into his suit pocket and retrieved a white mailing envelope. “I got you these. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to wrap them in something pretty.”
Andy took the envelope. She already knew what was inside. Gordon always bought her gift cards because he knew the stores she liked, but he had no idea what she liked from those stores. She dumped the contents onto the floor. Two $25 gas cards for the station down the street. Two $25 iTunes cards. Two $25 Target gift cards. One $50 gift card to Dick Blick for art supplies. She picked up a piece of paper. He had printed out a coupon for a free sandwich at Subway when you bought one of equal or lesser value.
He said, “I know you like sandwiches. I thought we could go together. Unless you want to take someone else.”
“These are great, Dad. Thank you.”
He swished around the bourbon but still did not drink. “You should eat.”
Andy bit into the sandwich. She looked up at Gordon. He was touching his mustache again, smoothing it down the same way he stroked Mr. Purrkins’ shoulders.
He said, “I have no idea what’s going through your mother’s mind.”
Andy’s jaw made a grinding noise as she chewed. She might as well have been eating paste and cardboard.
He said, “She told me to let you know that she’s going to pay off your student loans.”
Andy choked on the bite.
“That was my response, too.” Her student loans were a sore point with Gordon. He had offered to refinance the debt in order to help Andy get out from under $800’s worth of interest a month, but for reasons known only to her id, she had passed his deadline for gathering all the paperwork.
He said, “Your mother wants you to move back to New York City. To pursue your dreams. She said she’d help you with the move. Financially, I mean. Suddenly, she’s very free with her money.”
Andy worked peanut butter off the roof of her mouth with her tongue.
“You can stay with me tonight. We’ll work out something tomorrow. A plan. I—I don’t want you going back to New York, sweetheart. You never seemed happy up there. I felt like it took a piece of you; took away some of your Andy-ness.”
Andy’s throat made a gulping sound as she swallowed.
“When you moved back home, you were so good taking care of Mom. So good. But maybe that was asking too much. Maybe I should’ve helped more or … I don’t know. It was a lot for you to take on. A lot of pressure. A lot of stress.” His voice was thick with guilt, like it was his fault that Laura got cancer. “Mom’s right that you need to start your life. To have a career and maybe, I don’t know, maybe one day a family.” He held up his hand to stop her protest. “Okay, I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but whatever the problem is, I just don’t think going back to New York is the answer.”
Gordon’s head turned toward the television. Something had caught his eye. “That’s—from high school. What’s her—”
Motherfucker.
CNN had identified Alice Blaedel, one of Andy’s friends from high school, as a Close Friend of the Family.
Andy found the remote and unmuted the sound.
“—always the cool mom,” Alice, who had not spoken to Andy in over a decade, was telling the reporter. “You could, you know, talk to her about your problems and she’d, like, she wouldn’t judge, you know?” Alice kept shrugging her shoulder every other word, as if she was being electrocuted. “I dunno, it’s weird to watch her on the video because, you’re like, wow, that’s Mrs. Oliver, but it’s like in Kill Bill where the mom is all normal in front of her kid but she’s secretly a killing machine.”
Andy’s mouth was still thick with peanut butter, but she managed to push out the words, “Killing machine?”
Gordon took the remote from Andy. He muted the sound. He stared at Alice Blaedel, whose mouth was still moving despite not knowing a goddamn thing.
Andy poured more bourbon into her empty cup. Alice had walked out on Kill Bill because she’d said it was stupid and now she was using it as a cultural touchstone.
Gordon tried, “I’m sure she’ll regret her choice of words.”
Like she’d regretted getting genital warts from Adam Humphrey.
He tried again. “I didn’t realize you had reconnected with Alice.”
“I haven’t. She’s a self-serving bitch.” Andy swallowed the bourbon in one go. She coughed at the sudden heat in her throat, then poured herself some more.
“Maybe you should—”
“They lift cars,” Andy said, which wasn’t exactly what she meant. “Mothers, I mean. Like, the adrenaline, when they see that their kids are trapped.” She raised her hands to indicate the act of picking up an overturned automobile.
Gordon stroked his mustache with his fingers.
“She was so calm,” Andy said. “In the diner.”
Gordon sat back in the chair.
Andy said, “People were screaming. It was terrifying. I didn’t see him shoot—I didn’t see the first one. The second one, I saw that.” She rubbed her jaw with her hand. “You know that phrase people say in the movies, ‘I’m gonna blow your head off’? That happens. It literally happens.”
Gordon crossed his arms.
“Mom came running toward me.” Andy saw it all happening again in her head. The tiny red dots of blood freckling Laura’s face. Her arms reaching out to tackle Andy to the ground. “She looked scared, Dad. With everything that happened, that’s the only time I ever saw her look scared.”
He waited.
“You watched the video. You saw what I did. Didn’t do. I was panicked. Useless. Is that why …” She struggled to give voice to her fear. “Is that why Mom’s mad at me? Because I was a coward?”
“Absolutely not.” He shook his head, vehement. “There’s no such thing as a coward in that kind of situation.”
Andy wondered if he was right, and more importantly, if her mother agreed with him.
“Andrea—”
“Mom killed him.” Saying the words put a burning lump of coal in her stomach. “She could’ve taken the gun out of his hand. She had time to do that, to reach down, but instead she reached up and—”
Gordon let her speak.
“I mean—did she have time? Is it right to assume she was capable of making rational choices?” Andy did not expect an answer. “She looked calm in the video. Serene, that’s what you said. Or maybe we’re both wrong, because, really, she didn’t have an expression. Nothing, right? You saw her face. Everyday-ness.”
He nodded, but let her continue.
“When it was happening, I didn’t see