“It’s complicated. Want me to drop you off somewhere in Town, or stay here and I’ll come back and get ya later because I gotta —”

“I want you to tell me what the fuck is going on. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

Softening, slowing down, bracing for the wounded look he knows he’s about to see in my faraway eyes when he tells me, he says, “You want the truth?” Like he knows the answer.

“No. Probably not. Lie to me.” I stare back up at the ceiling, pouring my fractured attention back into observing the little swirls of plaster. Because for all the times I claim to want truth, it turns out I mostly want comfort. And comfort tends to come swaddled in lies.

“I gotta go rescue a sick and hurt old cat,” he says as he gathers his cufflinks and shoes, and smooths his salt-and-pepper bed-head. “She’s trapped under a pile of garbage, and I’m the one who accidentally left that garbage there so it’s my fault. And the old cat’s brother is a pit bull who will rip my balls off if I don’t go help.”

“Jesus, I said I wanted a lie. Not a stupid cat metaphor for the truth.”

“It is complic —”

“It’s always complicated,” I sulk. “Go drag that nasty old pussy out of whatever dumpster she flung herself in.”

“Do you want me to —”

“No. I can take care of myself.”

So here I am, storm-stranded in a hotel in beautiful down­town Town, Town, feeling like I got dragged through a knothole backwards, with no underwear, a face full of sex-smeared makeup, and a little black dress that screams walk of shame. I may well be one year older, but I’m sure as hell none the wiser.

The cogent streams of searing hot water in the hotel shower makes for quite a sharp contrast to the lukewarm iron-smelling dribble dunks that I take at Mama’s house. As the water pelts my skin, I come to a needling, precise realization: I need truth. Truth about my family. Truth about my father. Truth about myself. It’s not going to find itself. It’s not gonna drop from the sky. I’m gonna have to boot down some doors and drag all the family skeletons out to play, myself. Truth with a capital T is another item for my Fuck It List, and I best not be burning daylight. I scrub my scalded skin dry, squirm back into my dress, and go ask the bright-eyed girl at the front desk to call me a taxi.

“Might be kinda tricky to get someone out on them roads today, ma’am,” she says, laying on a thick commercial brogue. “Lemme call our handyman Roger, though. He’s got a four-wheel drive. Get you wherever you need to go. He’s right good like that.”

“I have a few stops to make. And I need to get to the Northside,” I say, hoping she’ll just call me a cab and not subject me to more chit-chat about this Roger buddy.