Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

are you saying?”
    “You know what I said. But it doesn’t have to go further. I have a cell phone number. He can go away and never see us again at all.”
    Her hand covered her mouth as if choking off a terrible cry.
    “Not... dead? But—”
    “He was... is from a wealthy family. Mistakes weren’t welcome in it. That’s all. He was told you were impossible to find.”
    “The lawyers found me fine! He believed them?”
    “They were convincing. Private detectives reported that they could find no girl named Mira in St. Stanislaus’s parish.”
    “There were three in my high school class!”
    “No right girl named Mira.”
    “He believed them.”
    “He’d been wounded. He was tired, confused. I can’t blame him, and, believe me, I wanted to more than I knew.”
    “So. You’ve sorted it out. You two. You men. And now it’s up to me if I want to see him again.”
    “Yes.”
    “Does he want to see me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Because he hates that he was deceived. He would have done the right thing.”
    “But he doesn’t love me.”
    “He’s married.”
    “With children?”
    “Yes.”
    She folded her lips. “I’m sorry, Matt. You’re the real victim of this. I’m sorry you had to learn what cold people you came from, partly. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry I asked you to look into this. You have a very stupid mother.”
    “I have a very stubborn mother and I’m not sorry.”
    “Why the hell not?”
    “Swearing, Mom?”
    Her lips twisted into an unwilling smile, despite the tears in her eyes. “Sometimes it’s called for. Why aren’t you sorry?”
    “I’d rather know my father was lied to as well. That he wouldn’t have turned his back on us.”
    “So he says now, seeing you face to face.”
    “I believe him.”
    “Well, fine. Can we go now?”
    “Let me pay the tab first.”
    “Tab? You expected a long night of drinking and reminiscences maybe?”
    “I don’t know what I expected. You’re the one. Whatever you want or need. We agreed on that.”
    “You and your... father. Why do I feel it’s always a conspiracy of men?”
    “There are so many of us? Really. Take your time. You can always change your mind.”
    “No, Matt. I can’t. I haven’t been able to act according to my own mind since that night that changed everything-Let’s leave. Your cousin Krys gets moody when I monopolize you too much. That girl! All hormones. No shame. Wish I’d been like her. Nothing would have mattered as much.”
    “You underestimate Krys. Everything matters too much with her. And I like you just the way you are.”
    “You can’t fool me. That’s a Billy Joel song. ‘Just the Way You Are.’ The Muzak at the restaurant plays it all the time.”
    He sighed, signed the credit card slip, and left a generous tip.
    They walked out of the bar’s calculated dimness into the glaring brightness of the hotel lobby, all slick marble floors and walls and glittering oversize chandeliers.
    At the bank of house phones, he saw Winslow and nodded imperceptibly.
    He thought.
    His mother wrenched her neck in that direction, stared for a long moment, then took his arm and drew him toward the rank of glass doors leading to the hotel porte cochere.
    He saw her into a cab and sent her to work at Poland-ski’s Restaurant.
    Then he turned and went back in to have a postmortem with his father.

    “So how did it go?” Krys asked when he got back to his mother’s apartment way too late.
    “You didn’t have to wait up for me.”
    “Mira won’t be off her shift until midnight. How did it go?”
    “It didn’t.”
    “You look horrible.”
    “From you, that’s a new one.”
    “I mean you look like you’ve been through it.”
    “Imagine brokering a truce between Israel and Palestine.”
    “That bad? I made some hot tea.”
    “Like I need caffeine.”
    “I’ve never seen you testy before.”
    “She didn’t want to see him and I had to tell him afterward.”
    “Testy on you is not bad, mind you.”
    Matt wasn’t too emotionally exhausted to smile, which she’d wanted to make him do. Among other things. He couldn’t encourage her hopeless crush, but he knew a lot more about longing and forbidden love and all that sticky emotional stuff now than he’d known the first time they’d met last Christmas. He had to respect her feelings even as he had to discourage them. Had to clear the decks for the real guy who was waiting for her somewhere down the road to maturity.
    “Krys. Mom’s going to