Free The Girl in Times Square by Paullina Simons Page B

unthinking, not inconsiderate, just in love, detective. You know? We forgive people who are in love for their short-term inconsideration. It’s such bad form to deny them.”
    “So a minute ago, no boyfriend whatsoever and now so wildly in love, you’re defending her on grounds of temporary insanity? Please, pick a side of the fence, Miss Quinn, and keep to it.” He tipped his proverbial hat as he left.
    Judi came over and whispered, “Ooooooh,” from behind.
    “Just stop it,” said Lily.
    Why wasn’t she able to call Amy’s mother? Why couldn’t she make that call? On the surface it seemed so easy, as easy as talking to the detective. Easier—she knew her, she liked her. Hi, Mrs. McFadden, how are you, and the other children…ugh, right there. The other children? Yes, Mrs. McFadden, I know it’s terrible about Amy. She’s gone and no one knows where she is, but the other children that you still have, how are they? Are they safe? That was the whole problem. Imagining the conversation filled Lily with such itching discomfort that she just couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone.
    She called her grandmother instead.
    “Have you been reading the papers?” said Claudia. “An Amtrak train struck a log truck at a crossing this morning, derailing all ten cars and injuring ten people. Two people were seriously hurt.”
    “Grandma…”
    “A microphone stand impaled a pregnant mother, who fell in her own house while getting her two boys ready for school.She fell from the second floor to the first and was impaled through the chest on her microphone stand. She was a musician.”
    “Grandma, please!”
    “Think about those boys. It’s terrible seeing your own mother get hurt in such a freak accident.”
    “Yes. Yes, it must be. Well, thanks for talking. I gotta run.”
    Andrew hadn’t called Lily since she got back. She had called him at home last week, but Miera said he was in Washington. “Lily, his schedule is posted online. Clearly says, Washington. Call him there.”
    She called him there, but he was still in session. And he didn’t return her call. Typical of him. He would get so busy, sometimes she didn’t hear from him for weeks. She called Andrew’s apartment to speak to her father, but there was no answer. She walked around her bare room, looked at her watercolors, her photographs, her words, pictures of herself as a child, held by her sister Amanda, hugged by her brother—their youngest, Lilianne, good girl, dark girl, smart girl, walking early, smiling early, clever, funny, holding up a picture of a perfect lotus flower she drew when she was three, laughing at her mother, who took the photo. Suddenly Lily stopped walking, her gaze darkened, her eyes blinked, blinked again, closed.
    Spencer who saw everything. Could he have looked at her walls and missed the lottery ticket? It was small and tucked in, part of a collage, covered by a photo on one side, and old American Ballet Company tickets on the other, but could he have seen? She came closer to the ticket. Oh, so what if he did? He didn’t know by heart the drawing from that day, April 18, 1999.
    When the phone rang, she absent-mindedly picked it up.
    “Lil?” It was her mother! That caught Lily unawares. Had she been caught awares, she never would have picked up the phone. The modern conveniences of caller ID—call screening. Maybe if she cashed in her lottery ticket, she could afford the six extrabucks for caller ID-while-call-waiting; that would be most useful. Ha! This she was thinking while trying to decipher the tone of her mother’s voice which seemed rather chipper for a woman who had found herself recently and unexpectedly without a husband.
    Suddenly her father picked up the other extension. “Lil?”
    “Papi?”
    “Yes, why so shocked? I do live here, you know.” And he laughed.
    Her mother said, “I barely spoke five seconds to my own child. Could I have her first, and then you’ll have her when I’m