36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You

by Vicki Grant

  Hildy bounced her forehead off Gabe’s chest. She was sort of saying she loved him while trying not to get too soppy about it. He really didn’t need her crying anymore, but it was so hard to stop once she’d started.

  “Dad’s a prick,” Gabe said.

  “He is,” she said.

  “And I don’t know why. What’s the matter with him? I don’t know how a guy could just wake up one day and decide he hates fish and his favorite hobby and, like, I don’t know, me or something. People don’t do that. Normal people.”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” Hildy said. She wanted to believe it.

  “Well, he sure acts like—” Gabe tried to cover up another sob with another slurp. It was agony for Hildy, standing there with her head on his chest while he made desperate sucking sounds into an empty plastic cup and they both tried to act as if they were perfectly okay with the situation.

  Max finally arrived with three 72-ouncers and a large shopping bag full of junk to share.

  “Gregorinko’s going to be some sort of pissed when he gets his credit card statement this month,” he said as they got in the car. “Thank goodness convenience stores are such rip-offs.”

  “A little passive-aggressive, but whatever,” Hildy said, and tore open a bag of dark chocolate almond clusters. Max knew what she liked, she thought. He knew how to take her mind off her problems.

  Then, hot on the heels of that, another thought.

  “Oh my god!” she screamed. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!”

  “What now?” Gabe said, mouth full, comfy in the backseat of the warm car, and suddenly bored.

  Max guessed immediately. “Bob?”

  Hildy whimpered.

  “Relax. Use your words.”

  She hit her head repeatedly against her palm.

  “This family’s nuts,” Gabe said.

  “I forgot about Bob. I was supposed to meet Bob at seven!”

  Max started up the car. “Where?”

  “That new café. Near the bridge.”

  Max burnt out of the parking lot, heading north.

  “Hey. No way. Stop!” Gabe grabbed their headrests and pulled himself up between them. “If I’m late for curfew, you’re the one in trouble. I mean it. I’m not losing my allowance over this.”

  Hildy told him to put his seat belt on and directed Max to the café. It’s was 7:43. What were the chances he was still there?

  “Call him,” Max said. “Tell him to wait.” But Bob didn’t have a cell phone, and she didn’t know the name of the place, and the whole situation was, of course, hopeless but that didn’t matter. She made Max take an illegal turn, cut someone off, and run yellow lights all the way there.

  She had to. Number one on Bob’s list of things he hated: people who let him down.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Max rode the curb outside while Hildy banged on the door of the café. It was locked. A waitress, clearing a table, looked up and shook her head.

  Hildy banged some more and mouthed, Pleeease. The waitress mouthed back, Sorry. Hildy banged harder.

  The waitress sighed and opened the door.

  “Look, our machines are all off. We’ve dumped out the coffee. Nothing I can do. We’re closed.”

  Hildy peered around her. The place was empty. Completely devoid of Bob.

  “I know. I don’t want coffee. I was supposed to meet someone here. Just wondering if you knew where he went.”

  The waitress screwed up her mouth and put her hand on her hip. She’d had a long shift. She wanted to go home.

  “What did he look like?”

  “He, um—” Hildy spread her hands out to her side, then slapped them palms down on her chest, then looked up at the light above the door.

  She had no idea. This guy who’d occupied all her thoughts for days, who’d exposed himself to her—he’d disappeared. She didn’t have one word to describe him.

  “Tall?” the waitress said, maybe in embarrassment for her, maybe just wanting to hurry her along.

  Hildy remembered. “Almost six feet… Light brown hair…”

  “Little—um—thing with his nose?” The waitress waved her hand uncertainly in front of her face.

  “Yes. Yes. That’s him. He was here?”

  “Yup. You the girlfriend he was waiting for?”

  Hildy nodded. The waitress whistled. “You’re in trouble.”

  “Where’d he go? You know?”

  “No idea. Owner might. She was talking to him.” She leaned over her shoulder and called, “Colleen. Got a sec?” She waved Hildy in, then went back to cleaning up.

  A middle-aged woman with frazzled burgundy hair and an eyebrow ring came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “That guy waiting. You know where he went?” The waitress scrunched up the brown paper covering a table.

  “Paul?”

  “You know him?” Hildy said.

  “Apparently I do,” the owner said. “He recognized me. Said his mother was Molly, um, Bergman… no, sorry, Durgan. Didn’t know who he was until then.”

  “Molly,” Hildy repeated. The mother he’d talked about. Bob’s.

  “Yeah. We worked together at The Uptown Grill, must be fifteen years ago now. Paul—I used to call him Paulie. Molly and Paulie. Cute kid.”

  “Cute grown-up,” the waitress said, and shook out her hand like hot.

  “Don’t know where he went, do you?” Hildy felt hope springing eternal. “He’s mad at me. Hates it when I’m late. Won’t answer his phone.” She had no idea why she felt the need to embellish the story.

  “Sorry. We chatted for a bit, then things got busy and I had to go. He was sitting over there.” Colleen threw her chin toward the window. “Didn’t have a chance to ask about his mother. By the time I finished up, he was gone.”

  Hildy noticed some things crumpled up on the table. She knew immediately what they were.

  “Oh,” she said in the most casual voice she could find. “The cards on the table? He must have left them for me. Mind if I take them?”

  “Better you than the landfill.” Colleen gave her head a little shake and her curls swayed like underwater plant life. “Funny seeing him sitting there drawing. That’s what he used to do when he was little, too. Always plunked at some table in the back, working away on something, his tongue out to one side. Waiting for his mother to get off work, quit flirting, whatever.”

  She gave a sad little laugh. “Hard life for a kid.” Another shake of the head. “Molly. Molly Durgan of all people.”

  Colleen and the waitress got back to closing up the café. Hildy went to collect the cards with the questions. That’s when she noticed the brown paper covering the tabletop was filled with drawings. Kong was prominent, and so was the hand Bob liked to draw, and Bambi’s dad, and a bowl of cappuccino with a heart etched in the crema and, also, several times, a girl with large lips, small eyes, and, occasionally, huge orthodontic headgear.

  “Mind if I take this, too?” Hildy said. She’d beg for it if they said no. She’d honestly get down on her knees and beg.

  “All yours,” Colleen said. “But if it turns out to be worth something one day, we’re splitting the profit.”

  Hildy laughed, rolled up the brown paper, and headed to the car, giddy with happiness.

  Gabe and Max were pretty happy, too. They’d cranked up the music and decorated the inside of Greg’s Volvo with a fringe of bright orange cheese puffs and red gummy worms. It was like stepping into a little Mexican cantina on a cold winter’s night.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Hildy felt as if the gods were smiling down on her. Gods with an s. It must have taken more than one to fix the mess they’d been in. (Maybe that was why Bob needed girls with an s. To fix those messes he’d alluded to.)

  She got Max to go in the front door of their house and create a racket while she snuck Gabe in the back. Gabe was old enough to do it himself, as he pointed out in an angry whisper, but Hildy needed t
o be the smoke screen. Dead fish and his drunk father were not what she wanted Gabe seeing at the moment. She distracted him all the way up the stairs.

  It turned out the situation in the living room was not as bad as she’d feared. Alcohol has its virtues. Greg was still in the spot she’d left him, pretty much comatose. The rest of the fish had survived. The man from Craiglist had either stood Greg up or Greg hadn’t heard the doorbell. In either case, the aquarium was still there.

  For the time being.

  And that was fine.

  Max was strong enough and—in this case at least—discreet enough to get Greg upstairs and into bed before her mother got home. By the time he came back down, Hildy had cleaned up the floor and put all the fish paraphernalia back in its proper spot. She gave Max the dregs of the bottle of rye and a full quart of scotch as thanks.

  “You don’t need to do this,” he said, flapping one hand at her while pocketing the bottles with the other. “Tonight was weirdly fun. I mean, a high-speed chase. A missing kid. A race against time. I felt like a younger, better-looking version of Liam Neeson. I haven’t had this much excitement since—”

  “TMI,” she said.

  “What? You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “Am I wrong?” She kissed him good-bye and pushed him out the door.

  Gabe would notice fish were missing when he woke up. Amy would smell booze when she got home. Greg could very well get up the next day and start this all over again—but that was the next day.

  Hildy didn’t care. For now, it was all about Bob. She opened her laptop and messaged him. She could explain everything. He’d understand.

  An alert came up. No “Bob Someone” existed anymore.

  Okay. He was mad. She got that. She’d just have to find another way.

  And she could, she realized.

  He wasn’t Bob Someone. She knew who he was now.

  She could make this right.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Hildy thought it was going to be easy. She could find Bob.

  “But do you really want to?” Xiu was still groggy from an epic date with SBJ. Hildy’s call had woken her up. “Still not convinced he’s the guy for you.”

  Hildy looked out her bedroom window. Her mother’s car was gone. Her father was going to lose it when he saw the inside of his. She answered sweetly, “Yes, I do, and that’s your problem not mine.”

  “Fine then. If you’re that hot for him, go for it.”

  Hildy clamped the phone between her ear and shoulder so her hands were free to get dressed. “I might be dense, but I really don’t get why you think Bob and me would be such a disaster?”

  “There’s your answer in a nutshell. ‘Bob and me.’ Just a few hours with him and already your grammar’s suffering.”

  Given their recent conversations, that was actually kind of funny.

  “Bob and I. Excuse me. I’m tired. And that’s beside the point. I still don’t understand your big objection. You haven’t even met him.” Hildy put on leggings, then jeans, and thick wool socks, too.

  “I’ve met him through your eyes and what you’re showing me is a guy totally at odds with who you are.”

  “So? Opposites attract.”

  “Sure. But I can’t help feeling like I’m watching my beloved vegan friend about to chow down on a big bloody slab of prime rib. I feel obliged to warn her that it might be hard on her system.”

  Hildy put Xiu on speaker so she could get her top part dressed. “Look, do you know a Paul Durgan or don’t you? That’s all I called about.”

  “Paul what?” Xiu gave a gravelly unbrushed-teeth type of cough.

  “Durgan. D-U-R—”

  “No, I don’t. At least not at this time in the morning. Maybe after I’ve had my tea.”

  She tried to direct the conversation back to her date with SBJ but Hildy said, “Later,” and hung up. She had work to do.

  She started online. She found a few Paul Durgans, but unless he’d drastically changed his hair, age, or race, not the one she was looking for. She checked an old phone book for a Molly Durgan, an M. Durgan, a Paul or P. Durgan. The closest she came was an E. M. Durgan on Oxford Street. Her heart thumped. She’d found him. She just knew it.

  She considered phoning but that seemed lame. He might just hang up.

  He’d have every right to hang up.

  She decided to walk over instead. Pull the full rom-com thing. Show up at his door with three Egg McMuffins, a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, a sincere apology, and some joke about being the girl he needed to round out his perfect day. (Question 4, if he missed the reference.)

  She fixed herself up, then got ready to go. She peeked in Gabe’s room. He was still asleep. Her dad usually took him to the market Saturday morning but she guessed that wasn’t part of the routine anymore.

  The door to her parents’ room was ajar. The bed was unmade. No one was there or downstairs, either, and that was a relief. She bundled up and left. She stopped at the strip mall for her supplies, then headed over to 2012 Oxford Street.

  She was surprised when she saw it: a big old Victorian house with shrubs out front neatly bundled in burlap and a late-model Mercedes in the driveway.

  This was either the wrong place or Bob had been lying to her.

  She stared at the house for a couple of seconds before mentally shrugging and walking up the front path. No stopping her now. She rang the bell. She could hear a TV click off, then footsteps. The door opened. An older lady with glasses around her neck and stiff curls smiled and said, “Yes?”

  Hildy apologized for disturbing her and asked if Paul Durgan lived there. She felt obliged to lie and say she’d lost his phone number and needed to find him.

  “Before his breakfast gets cold?” The old lady laughed. “Sorry, dear. Paul, you say? Not any Durgan I know of by that name.” She waved Hildy in. “Let me call my sister-in-law. She’s the family historian. She might know.”

  In the next hour, Hildy learned Mrs. Durgan and Nana had been friends at nursing school and, when her sister-in-law finally returned her call, that there was no known Paul or Molly in that branch of the family.

  As she was walking Hildy to the door, Mrs. Durgan said, “So what’s the real reason you’re bringing that boy breakfast?”

  And because she’d been friends with Nana, Hildy told her.

  Mrs. Durgan listened with a nurse’s smile on her face, kind and sympathetic, but no nonsense, too.

  When she was done talking, Hildy grimaced. “I feel sort of ridiculous. Sorry I bothered you.”

  “Not at all!” Mrs. Durgan gave Hildy’s arm a squeeze. “When you’re eighty-two and a widow, human contact of any kind is welcome. And it’s a wonderful story, anyway. Now can I tell you one?”

  “Sure.”

  “When I was a little older than you, I was going with a boy named Don. Charming? Oh. And handsome? I went weak in the knees just looking at him. But he treated me terribly. Always standing me up or cutting me off or putting me down. And finally I’d had enough. I told him we were through. ‘Don’t bother calling.’ I remember saying that to him, then flouncing out and feeling like a million bucks. Next day, I packed my bags, got on a train, and headed off to a new life in a new city. We were about twenty minutes out of the station when all hell broke loose. Sirens going, brakes squealing, people shouting. Word got down to our car that, at the railway bridge, some damn fool had jumped onto the moving train and crawled along the roof to the caboose. Two minutes later, who comes running in but Don, with the conductor in hot pursuit. The poor boy just managed to get down on one knee and ask me to marry him before he was dragged off for a night in the cooler.”

  “So… did you marry him?”

  “Yes—but not before I straightened him out. I wasn’t about to say ‘I do’ until I was damn sure he knew what he had to do to make this marriage work.”

  “And did he?”

  Mrs. Durgan laughed. “Mostly. I had to beat that streak of arrogance o
ut of him first. Men back then didn’t know their place. And, Lord knows, I wasn’t perfect, either, so we had our ups and downs. But at the worst of times, when I’d almost had enough of his boneheadedness, I thought of him lovestruck enough to jump onto that train and, you know, that saw us through forty-six years together.”

  “So, in other words, I wasn’t that crazy buying my bag of Egg McMuffins and hunting Paul down.”

  “No! You go, girl. Isn’t that what they say these days?”

  Mrs. Durgan gave her a little hug good-bye. “But no jumping on moving trains, please. That was just asinine. But that, of course, was my Don. No matter who you get, you gotta take a little bad with the good.”

  When Hildy got back home, Gabe was up and ransacking the kitchen for something to eat. She zapped the three Egg McMuffins and handed them to him.

  “What’s with this?” he said, stuffing his mouth. “I thought you hate McDonald’s.”

  “I do, but I’m not the one eating.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, texting various friends to find out if they knew anyone named Paul Durgan.

  “Never let me eat them before.”

  Hildy shrugged. “You’ve got cheese on your—” She almost said mustache. She realized Gabe had fine dark hair growing on his upper lip. She just motioned to his face instead.

  He wiped it off and ate it. She didn’t say anything. Her phone buzzed a couple of times. Both texts said Never heard of him.

  Gabe said, “I’m sorry I messed things up for you, Hildy.”

  “What? How?”

  “With that guy. Your date. What’s-his-name.”

  “You didn’t.” Hildy got up to make herself some coffee. She’d thrown the Dunkin’ Donuts stuff out. She didn’t know how Bob could drink it. “He’ll be back.”

  “Right. How could he ever resist you?”

  She pushed his head with the palm of her hand. “Nice.”