I found out about her death three days after it happened, when Rowdy showed up at my cramped studio apartment near campus with a bottle of vodka clutched in one hand, a little baby bundle tucked in another, and eyes
so red and swollen I barely recognized him.
He'd been crying—something I hadn't seen since we were children huddled
together in whatever shithole apartment Mama could afford that month.
The great Rowdy Hale, already making a name for himself in the underworld,
reduced to a broken boy mourning the woman who'd brought us into this world and then spent most of her waking hours trying to escape it through
the bottom of a bottle.
"Is that why you're here?" I ask. "To reminisce?"
"Partly." He stands finally and saunters around my desk, dragging one of those nails along the wood. The scraping sound makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
