A Bad Day for Sorry

“That’s some hairdo you got there, baby girl,” she said instead.

The last time she’d seen Noelle, at the Sawyer county fair last September, her daughter had a yellow-blond bob with long pieces coming down past her chin and the back trimmed up short to the nape of her neck. In Stella’s view, her daughter would be gorgeous even shaved bald, but Noelle did manage to come up with unusual things to do to her hair.

That day at the fair, Stella stopped in the middle of the throng of people, unable to move forward, her friend Dotty Edwards chattering on about how she’d been robbed in the jam competition, and Noelle had turned in the bright early autumn sun and caught sight of her mother. For a fraction of a second the two women had stared at each other across the crowd of fairgoers, amid the screeches from the midway and the sweet-hay smell from the animal barns, and then Noelle had dashed off , looking stricken, and Stella had made her excuses to Dotty and gone home with a headache.

All those months ago, months that had gone by without seeing her daughter, without talking to her, without having a chance to hug her and hold her. The loss of it seized up in Stella’s throat, and she realized that no matter what, she was going to do whatever it took to stay in her girl’s life.

Noelle touched the spiky top of her head self-consciously. “I got an award, Mama,” she said shyly. “I did this competition up in Kansas City, with this new amino glycine color process? And I got the Judge’s Choice. I mean, it didn’t come with any cash or anything, but I got two hundred dollars in product and my picture’s going to be in Midwest Salon magazine.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, sweetie,” Stella said, pride swelling up in her battered chest. “Could I—when it comes out—do you think I could have a copy?”

The leaky tears Noelle had already produced were nothing compared to the torrent she unleashed then. Her face crumpled, and she buried it into the crook of Stella’s elbow and sobbed.

“Mama… I’ve been so terrible to you… and I just missed you so much and I don’t know why I was that way… just everything that happened, you know, and I—I—”

She finally pulled away, her face damp and splotchy and smeared with mascara, and went for the tissue box and snuffled and wiped at herself until she had most of her composure back. Stella waited patiently, choking back a tear or two herself.

“I’m sorry, Noelle,” she said. “You haven’t had an easy go of it. And I haven’t been, you know, Mother of the Year.”

Noelle shook her head. “Don’t, Mama. Let’s not even talk about the past, okay? It’s just—I mean…”

Stella reached for the girl’s hand and squeezed it. Noelle picked at the blanket for a minute, frowning.

“Mama,” she said. “I’m not seeing Gerald anymore. That guy, you know, my boyfriend.”

Relief and surprise flooded Stella, but she was careful not to react. She’d made the mistake of throwing in her two cents a few times too often to risk doing it now.

“Are you all right with that, sugar?” she asked.

Noelle snorted in disgust. “More than okay. Just—I just wanted you to know. I mean, I don’t know if I’m even going to date at all anymore, you know? It’s all so…”

She made a helpless gesture and glanced at her mother tentatively. Stella’s heart contracted. She knew all too well how it felt when you realized that the man who shared your bed wasn’t who you thought he was, how it felt when your hopes and illusions slowly shriveled and died. All that trust, all that hard work going into the hopeless project of making a broken relationship keep rolling along on sprung wheels.

Rejecting the whole mess might be a sign of sanity. But still, the thought of Noelle, barely a grown woman, shutting herself off from love hurt Stella to the core.

“Maybe don’t give up completely,” she suggested.

“Oh! I forgot. The sheriff ’s out in the waiting room, Mama. He wanted me to come get him the minute you woke up.”

“He is?”

“Yeah, he’s been here almost the whole time. He had to go on some call or something, and he’s been in to see that other girl a bunch of times, but—”

“Wait,” Stella said, grabbing Noelle’s arm. “What other girl?”

“That got shot with you, you know, that Lardner girl—”

“Chrissy’s alive?” Stella’s heart did a somersault, her throat dry. She didn’t dare hope, but—

“Um… I mean, she’s alive but they—but—Mama, I’m so sorry, they don’t know if she’s going to make it. She barely had a pulse when they got there, and the bullet went through her lung and there was some problems with her heart and they got her on all these machines.”

Slowly Stella relaxed her grip on Noelle’s arm. She nodded once. All right. Chrissy had made it this far. Good girl, she thought fiercely. There probably wasn’t a betting pool in the hospital, but if there were, Stella would put all her chips on Chrissy.

“She’s a good kid,” she said. “I think you’ll like her.”

For a moment Noelle’s expression wavered, her smile slipping, her eyes going a little opaque, and Stella realized something surprising: Noelle was jealous. Just a tiny bit, maybe she wasn’t even aware of it, but it was there nonetheless.

“I know you’ll like her,” Stella said quickly. “She’s not smart like a whip, the way you are, and she’s still got some growing up to do, but I think she’s got potential.”

Noelle nodded, and the worried expression relaxed. “Well, maybe when this is all over, I mean, when you get out of here, I can bring you to visit her. Or something.”

“Yeah,” Stella said. “I’d like that.”

There was a silence, but it was a nice one.

“I think I’m supposed to tell the nurse you’re awake,” Noelle said after a while. “And, you know, fetch Sheriff Jones.”

“Speaking of that,” Stella said. “Look, I don’t know how to put this exactly, but I imagine I look pretty terrible, and with you being an expert and all, do you think you could do a little fixing up before he comes in here? I mean, strictly for practical reasons,” she added hastily. “I’m going to come out of this with a lot of explaining to do, and I’ll probably end up in court or jail or something and, you know, seems like I ought to get off on the right foot with Goat… uh, with the sheriff .”

“Jail?” Noelle demanded, eyes widening. “Mama, they can’t put you in jail. Those guys were the worst kind of criminal! The sheriff told me—I mean, they’re like the mafia, Mama, up in the city.”

“Sheriff told you that?” Stella asked hopefully.

“Yeah. And what’s with—” Noelle broke off and studied her mother carefully. The scrutiny was uncomfortable; Stella flinched at Noelle’s unwavering examination. Suddenly her daughter raised one eyebrow and cracked a small grin.

“Huh. Well. I got my makeup kit in my purse. Let’s see what we can do.”

He stared.

Stella kept the determined smile fixed on her face, trying to ignore the uncomfortable tugging of her stitches, the warm buttery weight of the concealer and foundation and whatever else Noelle had dabbed on her, and waited for Goat to say something.

But he just kept staring. He’d walked into the room, two, three steps, then sputtered to a halt a good three feet away from the bed. His big hand went to the back of his neck, as though to brace himself, and he grimaced, eyes crinkling up to glinty ice-blue slits.

“Damn it, Goat,” Stella finally said. “Could you say something, please? I just got done taking two bullets. I don’t think I’m up for carrying the conversation, you know?”

Goat snapped to life as though a switch had been turned on. His look of detached horror was replaced by a weak smile. He grabbed the visitor’s chair and spun it around backward, straddling it with his long legs jutting out at angles and his arms draped across the chair back.

“I’m glad you’re not dead.”

Stella gave the smile one last surge and then let it collapse, her facial muscles crying out in protest. “Yeah, me too.”

“You had me worried.”