“We’re done here. I’m going now.”

“And how do you expect to find her?”

Lulu thought she had me, but I’d already thought up an answer to that one. “I bet I can find a phone book.”

She didn’t argue. Instead, she reissued her warning. “Don’t you go to her. No good could come of it.” She planted her feet apart and stood blocking most of the door. I had a feeling she wasn’t half so drunk as I thought she was, but I’d never seen her desperate before and I didn’t want to acknowledge her desperation now.

I screwed my courage to the sticking place and slung the bag over my shoulder. “You thinking of stopping me?” I asked with more bravado than I felt. “You’d better not try. ’Cause you can’t.”

She didn’t take the challenge right away, but she answered me all the same. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“Try it, then.” The longer I looked at her, lean but solid and wholly unflinching, the more I prayed she wouldn’t call my bullshit.

Lulu didn’t move. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing—measuring whether or not she’d be able to take me if she felt she had to. I never reached her height, but I was twenty years her junior and I was faster than she had reason to know. Lulu might have been past forty, but she could still knock the head off ’most anyone I knew. Even so, she backed down first.

“You know I’ve never laid a hard hand on you—not in your entire life—and I don’t mean to start now. But yours is a mind that needs changing. I wish I knew how to do it, but I don’t. And I can’t keep you hostage here forever, even if I stopped you now and didn’t let you leave.

“You’re my daughter. I don’t mind saying so—you’re my daughter. Not Leslie’s. And not your mythical father’s, either. You’re mine and you’re Dave’s—the closest we ever had or ever will have, and I love you accordingly. I know you’ve got things you think you need to get answers to, but I wish you’d take my word that you don’t. There are some things you’re better off—hell, you’re just plain happier—not knowing. There’s so much of that crap waiting for you that even I don’t know it all, because I didn’t want to hear it. I’m only going to say this once, and then I leave it to you: Don’t go get involved with old Tatie.”

I tried to be flippant. “You make it sound like a matter of life or death.”

She snorted and slapped her hand at the wall. “Goddamn stupid kid.”

Then she retreated from the doorway and half stumbled out into the hall, then into her bedroom. Her voice trailed behind her, taunting but sad. “There’s more she can take from you than just your life.” Her bedroom door closed, but I heard her last, bitter words.