3. Chapter 2
Zoltan Boros
I'd meant to go straight home.
That was what I told myself on the ride over, the same thing I'd been telling myself for days: one drink, then home. Efficient. Contained. No reason to linger.
Missy was beside me, her backpack in her lap, her sneakers pressed together the way they always were when she was trying very hard to be good.
She'd been quiet since pickup. Not the bad kind of quiet, the kind that preceded tears or the silence that meant she was somewhere else entirely. Just the ordinary quiet of a tired child who'd had a long day.
"Papa," she said, looking up at the sign above the door. "Is this where you go on Tuesdays?"
"Among other days."
"Why?"
I considered this. A month ago I would have said it was proximity to the office, or the quality of the whiskey, or the absence of anyone who recognized me. All of which remained true. None of which was currently accurate.
"Come inside," I said instead. "You can get a Shirley Temple."
She considered this the way she considered most things, with the particular gravity of a child who understood that adults rarely meant exactly what they said. Then she slid out of the car and reached for my hand.
Her palm was small in mine. I held it carefully, the way I still did even though she was getting too old to want me to.
The bar was quiet. The kind of quiet that had texture: two men in suits at the far end, a woman with a book occupying the middle, the television in the corner showing scores no one was watching.
I found myself scanning the room before I meant to. Already looking for her.
Liv was always behind the bar. I'd had her name for three Tuesdays now — the regular in the print-shop shirt had said it out loud, and I'd filed it the way I filed everything. I hadn't used it. I was careful about what I gave away.
She hadn't seen me yet. She was quartering limes with the focused efficiency she brought to every task, the same efficiency I'd been watching for days.
Missy tugged my hand. "That stool has a scratch shaped like a lightning bolt."
I looked down. The stool beside my usual one did have a scratch shaped, loosely, like a lightning bolt. I hadn't noticed. "Good eyes."
"I always look at things closely."
"I know."
She climbed onto the stool without assistance and set her backpack on the bar with a solemnity that suggested it contained state secrets rather than a half-finished geography worksheet and three colored pencils. I settled onto my usual stool and waited.
I didn't have to wait long.
I heard her footsteps first, then caught the movement in my peripheral vision. When I looked up, Liv had stopped mid-reach for the speed pourers and was looking at Missy with an expression I couldn't quite read.
Then she looked at me.
Something moved across her face. Too quick. I'd gotten better, over the past days, at catching these micro-expressions — which told me something about my priorities I preferred not to examine.
"You brought backup," she said.
"This is Missy."
Missy looked up from the bar. "I know what a Shirley Temple is," she said, which was not exactly an introduction but was, for Missy, fairly warm.
Liv set down the knife and leaned forward, elbows on the bar, dropping to Missy's level with the ease of someone who'd done it before. Not the careful condescension adults usually performed with children. Something more direct. More honest. A version of her I hadn't been shown.
"Ginger ale, grenadine, maraschino cherry. You want extra cherries?"
Missy thought about it. "Two extra."
"Done."
I watched her make the drink the way I always watched her work, like there was something I was trying to solve. I'd identified this tendency early on. I was not sure what to do about it.
She slid the glass across the bar and it stopped exactly in front of Missy, who was now examining the bar top with apparent fascination. She had found a groove in the surface and was tracing it with one finger.
"Your bar has interesting scratches."
"That one near your elbow is from a dart that went sideways in 2019. The long one by the register is from a fight about a football game that I am not authorized to confirm or deny my involvement in."
Missy stared at her. "You were in a fight?"
"I was in the vicinity of a fight. There's a difference."
"What's the difference?"
"One requires paperwork. The other requires good reflexes."
Missy processed this. I watched her decide, with visible effort, not to ask the obvious follow-up. She was learning when not to push. I wasn't sure whether to be proud or sorry about that.
"Papa has good reflexes," she said instead. "He catches things before they fall."
Liv glanced at me briefly. There was something in it that warmed the back of my neck. "Does he?"
"At home. Not at work. At work he just sits at a computer."
"What does he do at the computer?"
"Fixes problems," Missy said, as though this were obvious. "That's all he does. Fix problems."
A short silence settled over the bar.
"Your daughter has a clear-eyed grasp of your professional life," Liv said. She wasn't looking at me, but there was something at the corner of her mouth. The almost-smile.
"She's perceptive."
"Must get it from somewhere."
It was the kind of comment that could go several ways.
I was aware, in the clinical part of my brain that never fully went quiet, that she was very good at that — saying things that landed sideways, that left no obvious surface to push back against. I'd noticed it the first day, then the second, then so many times after that I'd stopped counting.
Missy finished her Shirley Temple in four minutes. She ate all three cherries and then looked at the empty glass with the expression that meant she was deciding whether asking for another was worth whatever it cost.
"Can I have the stem?" she asked. "The cherry stem."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I want to see if I can tie it in a knot with my tongue. I saw a video."
"It takes practice," Liv said, producing a cherry stem from somewhere. She set it on the bar. "Most people can't do it the first time."
"Most people can't do lots of things the first time," Missy said, picking up the stem. "But I practice things until I can."
Liv looked at Missy. Then, briefly, at me. Something shifted in her expression. Not the almost-smile. Something smaller. Something private, that I wasn't sure I'd earned the right to see.
"I believe it," she said.
Missy put the stem in her mouth and immediately began making faces of intense concentration.
"Long day?" Liv asked.
I looked up. She was watching me with that quiet directness that had been making the back of my neck prickle for days.
"Yes," I said.
"And then you came here."
"And then I came here."
I wasn't sure why I'd said it like that. Matter of fact, nothing in it, as though this bar and these particular twelve feet of mahogany were simply the logical conclusion of my evenings. Which they had, without my fully deciding, become.
She held my gaze a beat longer than comfortable. Then she moved down the bar to check on her other customers.
I let out a breath I hadn't been aware of holding.
Beside me, Missy produced the cherry stem from her mouth, still unknotted, and examined it critically.
"I need more practice," she said.
"You have time."
"Do you like her?" Missy asked, with the conversational pivot of a child who had been biding her time.
The question landed cleanly. "She makes a good drink."
"That's not what I asked."
"Finish your water," I said.
Missy picked up her glass, clearly satisfied. "She's nice," she said.
I looked at my daughter — at the careful way she held herself, the small seriousness she'd learned to wear like armor in rooms full of adults who spoke around her.
She notices things, I thought. She's right that she got it from somewhere.
When she came back, she brought the check without my asking and set it face down on the bar.
"Already throwing me out?" I said.
"It's getting late. Figured she might have a bedtime."
"She does."
I reached for my wallet and set my usual bill on the bar. Then, because Missy was watching with the focused attention of a child taking notes, I added another — for the Shirley Temple, the extra cherries, and the cherry stem provided without commentary.
"Same time tomorrow?" I said.
"You know where to find me." She took the bills without counting them.
I wasn't sure what to do with that. I pocketed my wallet, helped Missy with her backpack straps, and walked toward the door.
At the threshold, Missy turned and waved. "Goodnight, lime lady."
I heard her answer from across the bar, a warmth in it I hadn't heard her aim at me. "Goodnight, Missy."
Missy didn't know her name. I did, and still hadn't said it. I was beginning to understand why.
The door swung shut behind us.
Outside, the evening was cool and grey. Missy slipped her hand back into mine. I held it carefully.
"I like it here," she said.
I looked back at the sign above the door, the faded letters of Clockwork Tavern catching the amber of the streetlights.
"So do I," I said.
I meant the bar. I was almost certain I meant the bar.
My phone buzzed in my jacket. I looked at the name on the screen — the one call I never sent to voicemail — and, for the first time in recent memory, did exactly that.
I had a daughter to get home. I had a bedtime to keep.
I had, I was beginning to understand, a problem I was going to have to start dealing with.
I walked to the car.