Owen's Daughter (29 page)

Chapter 10

The next morning, Skye joined hands with strangers she didn’t know and chanted “Keep coming back because it works when you do and it won’t when you don’t.”

“So that’s how you get sober,” Skye told Peter as they left the AA meeting on Rosina Street and Isleta, at the Friendship Club. “And from here on out it’s up to you. I need to focus on finding my daughter.”

Peter had put on his sunglasses. “I need a nap,” he mumbled.

“No, you don’t,” Skye said. “You need a Coke, a couple aspirin, and then you need another meeting. There are meetings practically every hour in Santa Fe. Come on, let’s get a soda or some coffee. Then I’ll walk you back to the Friendship Club.”

“Please,” he begged. “Dump me in an alley and let me die.”

“Aw, that’s just the hangover talking. Come on. It’s a nice sunny day and the birds are chirping. Let’s go in this diner and get some bottomless Cokes and yummy bacon and eggs with wiggly yolks.”

“Skye, I have to go to the restroom,” Peter told her as soon as they were seated at a booth near the courtyard.

“I don’t know where it is. You could ask the waiter.”

He stood up and made his way to the front, walking as though every bone in his body were hurting. The waiter pointed, and Pete limped down the hallway. Skye remembered plenty of mornings like that. Waking up only to wish she had died in her sleep.

While she waited, she retrieved her note pad from her hoodie pocket and reviewed the list.

Maybe the lawyer’s name was Church?

Call PRCA back—see if they have a record of the upcoming events Rocky’s registered for.

Find Rocky’s dealer.

Drive to T or C?

Give up and call the cops.

The diner was directly across the street from Guadalupe BBQ. Skye was a mouthy waitress, always ready to laugh, even when the joke was on her. It made her really popular, which resulted in great tips. But as good as that memory of her apron pocket stuffed with money was, Guadalupe BBQ was the scene of the crime: the place she’d once left Gracie curled up on the floor of Milton’s office, sleeping on a ratty blanket. Skye had forgotten her—not for a moment, but for an
hour
.

She’d been in a hurry to get downtown after her shift ended at ten. Catfish Hodge was playing the blues at Vanessie’s piano bar. She found a great parking spot on Water Street and stumbled through the door, thinking that even though she smelled of fries and onions, she looked good in a denim miniskirt, a navy tank top, and her Old Gringo forget-me-not cowboy boots. The place was crammed. She found a place up front and ordered a Dos Equis and a double shot of tequila, trying to relax. Between work, Gracie, and Rocky coming and going, her schedule was always so crammed that her mind was never truly at rest. Maybe she needed a Xanax. She found one in the bottom of her purse, picked off the lint, popped it, and swallowed. Every time another worry nagged at her, she ordered another shot, followed by a beer. Catfish Hodge and the Hillbilly Funk Allstars wailed through “Like a Big Dog Barking” before Skye remembered
—holyshitholyshitholyshit
—that this was her night with Gracie and she’d left that sweet girl in Milton’s office at Guadalupe. She pushed her way through the crowd, tripped, and landed in some guy’s lap, apologized, pushed some more, and finally, crying, told the bouncer, “Get me out of here!” Lord, bouncers weren’t paid enough. The way he picked people up and out of the way made her want to kiss him. It took a while to remember where she’d parked her car. She threw up in the street, wiped her mouth, ignored the horrible comments made by people walking by, and gunned the Mercedes’s engine. God bless German engineering—it took her about three minutes to get back to Guadalupe, where she parked crookedly on the street, begging Jesus that no harm had come to her baby. Milton was waiting at the bar, and Gracie was fast asleep.

“Nice to see you finally remembered you had a child,” Milton said.

In her mind, Skye was saying,
ThankyouGod
, but a different story came out of her mouth. “You shut up. Rocky was supposed to pick her up.”

Milton sighed. “You’re a terrible liar and a worse parent.”

“Yeah, maybe, but at least I’m not a judgmental asshole.”

She’d never forget the look on Milton’s face, sorry for her, sorrier still for Gracie. He grabbed her keys out of her hand so fast that they left a burn. “You sit down and drink some coffee.”

“I’m fine to drive,” she said.

“No, you’re not.” He poured her a cup and watched her drink it down black.

Gracie’s head lolled to the side. What with all the yelling and partying that took place at Skye and Rocky’s, Gracie could sleep through anything.

“There,” Skye said. “Coffee all gone. Now give me my keys, please.”

Milton marched her to the curb and shut the metal gate behind him. He was hard-core on drunks, because Guadalupe had once been fined a whole weekend without liquor sales when another server—not her—served a minor. The BBQ had lost thousands in earnings. Milton fired that waiter, then turned around and sued him for damages.

At the car, he said, “Here’s the deal, Skye. Without me here to wait for you to show up, you could’ve lost her. People are crazy. Pedophiles are everywhere. Bad shit happens all the time. I’m the only thing standing between you and felony child endangerment,
capice
?”

Milton was a professional at making people cry.

The coffee was hard on Skye’s stomach after vomiting and all the booze, and her nerves weren’t helping matters. She stroked Gracie’s pink cheeks, trying and failing not to sob. “I’m okay, Milton,” she said. “I swear I can drive home. Straight home.”

He didn’t say anything. She figured he would be over it by tomorrow. She placed a sleepy Gracie into the car seat she’d nearly outgrown, there in the right rear backseat, the safest place for a child to be. She was sure she’d locked the straps, too, but apparently she’d imagined that part. She got into the front seat. Milton leaned down and she stuck her head out that window. “Now what?”

“You’re fired.”

“Milton, no. This will never happen again, I promise. Please let me finish out the week. I need the money.”

“Two days,” he said. “That’s all. I’ll have your last paycheck ready by then.”

Just one more horrible memory to add to all the others.

The speed limit in the Railyard was like twenty-five or even twenty in places. But she was drunk and angry and pressed her foot down on the gas pedal a little too fast, fishtailing up the street toward Alameda. She made a right, intending to double back toward Canyon, when out of nowhere a shadow of a dog seemed to stop right in front of her. She swerved into a retaining wall, hitting it hard enough that the radiator buckled, and she could smell the coolant. When she looked up, she saw it was a coyote, disappearing into the rabbit brush.

Dwell not in the past, but in the moment. The present is what matters
, Duncan’s voice whispered in her ear. Duncan listened calmly to even the most heinous acts people had committed thanks to alcohol and drugs. He never once changed his expression,
because at Cottonwoods we don’t judge, we’re all equal
. Skye smoothed her skirt and let out a flinty laugh—this was the same stupid denim skirt she’d worn that horrible night. There hadn’t been a drop of blood on it. The blood had been in the backseat—Gracie’s.

“Here you go,” the waiter said, breaking her reverie. The man set down Skye’s eggs and coffee and Peter’s Coke.

Where in the hell was Peter? Maybe he’d gotten sick in the bathroom. Passed out, even. She pushed her hair back behind her ears and called the waiter back. “Did you see my friend come out of the bathroom?”

“Nope. You want me to check?”

“If you wouldn’t mind. He wasn’t feeling well.”

The waiter smiled and left. Skye sipped her coffee. It was better than the AA coffee, but ditch water pretty much was, too.

The waiter came back. “I knocked, opened the door. Nobody’s in there,” he said.

“He must have walked out the back door,” she said. “I’m sorry. He was supposed to pay the check. I have a dollar. Can I mail the rest to you?”

He sighed. “Just go. It’s okay this one time.”

She jaywalked across Guadalupe Street and straight into Guadalupe BBQ, bypassing the outdoor tables and heading straight to the bar. That’s where Peter would go, the nearest bar, to get a little hair of the dog to ease his headache. The restroom was directly across from it. She knocked, opened the door, and found it empty, too. Dammit! He was messing up her plans. And she basically had dined and ditched, which was a terrible thing for a former waitress to do.

She turned back and the bartender was right there.

“You need a drink?” he said, smiling.

What a question. “I have a dollar in my pocket. Could I have half a Coke?”

He grinned, eyeing her up and down. “I’ll even add a couple of cherries.”

“Thanks. I’m thirsty.” Peter was probably halfway home by now. What was the old saying? “No good deed goes unpunished”? She watched the guy handle the soda hose and wondered how old he was. Freshly twenty-one, she bet. Give him a Santa Fe summer in the food industry and he’d go back to college willingly.

He plucked three cherries from the prep table container. “I’m Brad.”

“Nice to meet you, Brad.”

“You new in town?”

“Nope. Coming back after a time away.”

“Anything else I can get you?” he said, leaving the end of that sentence open, as if the main reason women went into bars in the daytime was to have a freaking love encounter with a stranger.

She started to stand up but changed her mind. Milton and Rocky were friends. “Is Milton around? He knows me.”

The bartender cocked his head sideways the way her daddy’s ancient dog did, only Hope didn’t smile like he wanted into her pants. “Yeah. I’ll go find him.”

While he slipped out the doorway, Skye studied the liquor bottles behind the bar, lined up like crown jewels on the wooden shelves. The liquid glistened, some of it crystal clear and looking as harmless as water inside glass bottles pretty enough to use as vases. Others were deep amber and yellow. They could have been magic potions, and boy, did they ever feel like it to begin with.

She sipped her Coke and waited. When the bartender returned, Milton was behind him. Skinny Milton, in his cigarette leg jeans and a Hawaiian shirt with a dizzying print she had to look away from. He frowned at Skye and said, “Oh, hell, no. You put down that drink and head back to whatever rock you crawled out from under. The last nine months have been nice and quiet, which I determine to be directly related to your absence. Brad, remember her face because this one is eighty-sixed from the establishment permanently. If she isn’t out of here in five minutes, call the cops.” He turned to go, but Skye stood up and took hold of his arm.

“Jeez, Milton. I’m not asking for my job back. I’m trying to find Rocky. I came by to ask if you’d seen him.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “That’s how it always begins. Just this one little favor and pretty soon I got ATF fines and sting operations and feds breathing down my neck.”

Milton watched too much television. “When did I ever ask you for a single favor?” Skye said.

He barked a short laugh. “Do you really want me to answer that? Because we could be here all day.”

Skye ducked her head, embarrassed. “Look, could we start over, please?”

“Why? Is the story going to be any different?”

She made herself look him square in the eyes. “I’ve done some really stupid things. I’m the first to admit it. But I’m going on nine months sober and I just want to find Rocky, that’s all. Answer one question and I’ll be on my way. You seen him or not?”

Milton studied her up and down, but not the way Brad had. He was the kind of boss who’d call you Muffin Top and tell you to lay off the fries if your skirt was tight that week. He wanted all the servers smiling all the time, even when someone dumped a plate of chili on your lap. Every woman who worked here thought he had a BMI calculator where his heart should have been. He tossed a napkin and pen her way. “Leave your number with Brad. If I hear from him, I’ll let you know.” He walked away, just like that.

Skye laid down her dollar.

“On the house,” the bartender said, pushing it back toward her. “Not only are you pretty, but anyone who gets a rise out of Milton has to be hella fun, too,” he whispered. “Everyone who works here thinks he’s made out of Terminator parts. This one gal, Lily, she yells out, ‘Metal!’ every time he comes out of his office.”

“Yeah, I’ve attended that particular rodeo,” Skye said. She took her wallet out of her purse and flipped to the photos inside plastic sleeves. There was one of Rocky holding Gracie, back when staying married to him sounded reasonable. She plucked it out of her wallet and held it up. “This guy look familiar?” she asked.

“Sorry.”

“How about the little girl? Blond, about four?”

Brad shook his head. “I know everybody from the smoked-out meth heads to the Euro trash. Can’t say I’ve ever seen either one of them.”