She looked beyond me, pain gathered in her features, released and she glanced at me before she looked to my shoulder. “No. I don’t want to delay you. I’ll call them too.”

“It’s no problem,” I lied, since it was considering we were already late.

She looked to her watch then to my shoulder. “Council meetings begin at six thirty so I’d probably just make you late. That’s okay. I’ll see them soon.”

“All right,” I said, still quietly.

“Um…yes, well…” She shifted again as if to turn away, shifted back, didn’t reach my eyes, and said, “Well, ’bye.”

“’Bye, Rhiannon. Nice to meet you.”

That was when she looked me right in the eyes and I again saw the pain.

That didn’t sit great with me not only because of what might be behind it but because it wasn’t fun seeing she had it.

“Yeah, Amy. Nice to meet you too.”

I forced a smile.

She attempted to force one back but before she succeeded, she turned and hurried down the walk toward her car in the drive.

I watched her, rattled by that encounter, but only for a second before I closed the door, partly so she wouldn’t catch me watching her, mostly because I really needed to get the kids moving.

I dug my phone out of my purse and texted Mickey, Running late. Will text when we’re on our way.

I gave him only that. The news about Rhiannon could wait.

I sent that and I hurried to Aisling’s door.

It had a poster of a band on it and the good news about that was it was not a boy band. In fact, it shared the knowledge she had excellent taste in music.

I knocked, put my hand to the knob and opened it, poking my head in.

I’d never seen her room. The door was always closed.

Now I saw it had been a little girl’s room, all pink and purple and flowery, but that evidence now lay beneath a lot of clutter, a bunch of spent clothes strewn everywhere, a TV with piles of DVD boxes all around, an unmade bed and a liberal coating of more band posters.

However, there was one other poster. A movie poster. A movie poster that, in its aloneness as a movie poster in Aisling’s room rather than it being one of many, concerned me.

The poster was for the River Phoenix, Lili Taylor movie that had come out decades before.

Dogfight.

My eyes swept back, taking in a plethora of makeup and hair stuff on top of her dresser, all of it coated with a visible layer of dust, and I saw her in bed amidst the mussed sheets (as well as discarded clothes), back against the headboard, book in her hands.

Before I could say a word, she told me, “Dad won’t mind.”