“This is my daddy’s favorite restaurant,” she said. “Momma doesn’t like it, so he brings me here.”
“It’s a nice place,” Louis said. Lily was having trouble opening the tab on her Coke, so Louis reached over and popped it open for her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
There was a long, awkward silence. But then Louis realized that it was awkward only from his viewpoint. Lily was biting into her hot dog, sipping her Coke, and looking around at the other diners with interest.
“Momma says hot dogs are bad for you,” she said.
“This one’s really good,” Louis said, wiping the mustard from his mouth.
“That’s because it’s a coach dog,” Lily said.
“Coach dog?”
“You know, a Jewish hot dog.”
Louis frowned, then smiled. “Oh, a
“Yes, kosher. That’s what I meant to say. Momma says regular hot dogs are made out of pigs’ lips. But pigs don’t really have lips!” She laughed, throwing back her head, sending her ringlets dancing.
Louis’s heart melted.
They ate in silence. Louis finished his hot dog and was trying desperately to think of what to say to this little person — no, his daughter — sitting across from him, when Lily spoke.
“Who was that lady in your car?”
“Her name is Joette,” he said. “I call her Joe. She’s a sheriff up north.”
Lily looked up at him, the last bite of her hot dog poised at her lips. “But who is she to you?” she asked.
Louis hesitated. He did not want to go into this with Lily for several reasons, but he wasn’t sure if Lily had seen him kiss Joe goodbye. If she had, to hedge around the truth now was dead wrong. He guessed that Lily hadn’t seen Amy sitting in the backseat.
“She’s my girlfriend,” Louis said.
Lily lowered her hot dog and wiped her lips with the napkin. “Momma thinks black men ought to marry only black women,” she said softly.
Louis crumpled the food wrappers and stuffed them inside his empty cup, then took a long look over at the market across the street, completely lost for anything to say. Who was he to pass along his philosophies on race and relationships to a child he had no part in raising?
He looked back at her. “I understand why your mother feels that way,” he said gently. “But we can’t always help who we fall in love with, Lily.”
Lily began to wrap up her papers. Louis watched her, sure she was still bothered by the idea of Joe and maybe the idea of having to tell Kyla that there was a white woman in Louis’s life. And he had the horrible feeling that maybe this would be their last meeting.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Lily asked.
“Sure.”
“There’s a boy at school,” Lily said, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. “His name is Kurt Vanderloop. He’s ten. He likes me, but I don’t think I’m allowed to like him back.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s white.”
Louis leaned over the picnic table and gently covered Lily’s small hand with his. She didn’t pull away.
“Liking people is about what you feel in your heart,” he said. “Not about what you can see with your eyes. And I think if you explained it to your momma like that, she might understand it better.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said.
Louis smiled. “Well, she let you make the decision to see me,” he said. “I have a feeling she’ll let you make some other decisions, too. You have to trust her to do that, okay?”
“Okay.”
He sat back and looked again toward the street. He wanted to take a walk, but Channing’s cruiser was gone, probably on a call. Louis wasn’t sure they should leave.
“Can I ask you another question, Louis?”
“Sure.”
“Do I have more family on your side?”
Her pale gray eyes were steady on his. In them, he could see the same look he had seen sometimes on Amy’s face when she spoke of finding her mother. That odd little look of hunger, a hunger for connection to your past, a hunger to know where you had come from. A hunger he had never acknowledged in himself, despite the fact that he kept a picture of his father in his drawer. One he usually looked at only through the amber glow of a brandy bottle.
“Yes,” he said. “I have a half-brother and sister.”
“Where do they live?”
“Mississippi, I think,” he said. “I…”
Hell, there was nothing to say here but the truth.
“I haven’t seen them since I was seven,” he said. “The three of us were split up and put in foster care. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes,” she said. “Daddy told me about it. Why did that happen to you?”
“My mother got sick.”
“And you had no grandma or anyone else who could take care of you?”
Louis rubbed his brow. “No.”
Her face wrinkled with a mix of sympathy and pity. He didn’t like the idea that an eight-year-old felt sorry for him.
“I had good foster parents,” he added. “Right here in Michigan. I was fine.”
“And even when your momma got sick, your father didn’t come back for you?”
“No.”
“Couldn’t you have called him or something?”
Louis sighed. “Truth is, Lily, I wouldn’t have known where to call,” he said. “I’ve never even met him. He left my mother before I was born.”
“Like you did me?” she asked.
Louis met those eyes. The questions were getting tougher again but somehow easier to answer.
“Yes.”
“But you came back looking for me,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But your father never came back for you?”
“That’s right.”
“How come you never went looking for him?” she asked. “Didn’t you want to ask him why he didn’t care about you being born?”
“No,” he said. “I… I told myself, if he didn’t care about me, then I didn’t care about him.”
Lily was staring at him, either not understanding him or not believing him. Could she hear the lie in his voice?
“Would you do it now?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Would you find him now?”
He was quiet.
“You’re a private investigator,” she said. “You could do it easy.”
“What would be the point?” he asked. “I’m a grown-up now. You need fathers when you’re young, like you. Plus, I’m not sure I’d have much to say to him.”
“But don’t you want to know?”
“Know what?”
“Where you come from?”
