Free Best Girl by Sylvia Warsh Page B

both. When she took off her jacket, she was wearing a green scrub tunic. We sat down on my old IKEA sofa, her purse and tote bag between us.
    â€œAre you a nurse?” I asked.
    Diane smiled and nodded. She said no more about herself, and I didn’t ask.
    I went on to what I really wanted to know. “What was she like?”
    Diane looked away, remembering. “She was strong. Inside, you know? She knew who she was. No bullshit. Pretty though.” She turned to me. “Dark hair and white skin. Blue eyes. Like you.”
    I got a shiver down my back.
    â€œHere’s some pictures.” Diane took a manila envelope out of the tote bag and handed it to me.
    I peered inside the envelope. My heart jumped. I pulled out a photo.
    A cute young couple with lots of hair smiled at the camera in front of Niagara Falls. She wore a short white dress. He was in a suit. They looked happy.
    â€œThat’s Carol and Freddy on their wedding day,” she said. “They were both twenty-one.”
    Freddy. My father’s name was Freddy!
    I turned the photo over. Someone had written in: September 20, 1985 . I was born one year later.
    I took out more photos, staring at the mother I would never meet. It was like looking into my own face. The same wary eyes, the high forehead. Then I was looking into my own face. Me as a baby. Then as a toddler. My mother, a bit older, sitting on a stoop holding me on her knee, both of us smiling like crazy. There was something weirdly familiar about that stoop. Could I really remember it from when I was that young?
    â€œThat’s your dad,” said Diane.
    I picked up a picture of Freddy. His longish hair was pulled back into a ponytail, his head turned a bit so I could see his ear. And there it was! The clamshell ear I hated on me. No earlobe. Only it looked good on him.
    Tears filled my eyes. Embarrassed, I stuck my hand into the envelope again and pulled out something else. A faded flyer: three young guys playing music onstage. The Tranzac Club. The date at the bottom was August 2, 1984.
    â€œThat was Freddy’s band,” said Diane.
    â€œMy father was a musician?” Young and skinny, Freddy played the guitar, looking spaced out on bliss.
    â€œVandal Boss. They did okay.”
    â€œThe one with Stu Van Dam?” I asked.
    Vandal Boss was local, and I was interested in bands so I’d heard of them, though they never made the big time. Their claim to fame was Stu Van Dam. I peered more closely at the shot. The lead dude in the middle practically chewed on the microphone. That was Stu. He’d become a star on his own in the nineties with a hit song—they still played it on the radio. Blond. Full of himself. Behind them sat a guy on drums. I was trying to remember what happened to them. They’d dropped off the radar.
    My father had played with a band! I was excited. That’s where I got it from!
    â€œWhere’s Freddy now?” I wanted to meet him!
    Diane looked at me strangely. “You really don’t know?”
    â€œKnow what?”
    She hesitated. “I met your mother when I worked in the infirmary. She got sick a few years ago. The chemo helped for a while, but then…I got to know her. She was a kind person. She didn’t do what they said.”

CHAPTER TWO
    â€œW hat do you mean?” I asked.
    Diane squirmed on the sofa and looked away. “It’s hard for me to tell you.”
    I got a bad feeling about what was coming.
    â€œIt was a prison infirmary.”
    â€œShe was in jail?” I gasped in spite of myself. “What did she do?”
    Diane cleared her throat. “She was in for murder.”
    â€œMurder?”
    Diane stared straight ahead.
    â€œWho?” But I knew before she said it.
    â€œThey said she killed Freddy. But she didn’t do it.”
    My hand went to my mouth. Maybe Shelley was right. Maybe it was better not to know. I was the kid of a murderer. Tears dripped onto my