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When I called Ward that afternoon and explained the Jinx methadone situation, he freaked out. “Drugs entering into this is

bad news, Margo. It will screw up everything.”

I wanted to believe that if I explained the moral conundrum, Dr. Sharp and Mark and even the judge would understand. Wasn’t

it the right thing to do, to help a family member struggling with addiction? Wasn’t he in a treatment program actively attempting

to recover? Why should it make me look worse to be helping him? Addiction wasn’t contagious.

“No,” Ward said. “It’s one too many things. You have your age, you have the OnlyFans, you have the pro wrestling stuff—you

add drugs? It starts to look real bad.”

I knew what Ward meant. He meant it made us look like white trash. Which we were. Which I’d always known.

“What should I do?” I asked.

“I mean, if I were you, I would lie.”

“You would?”

“Not outright, but don’t bring it up. What do you have left, just the home visit, right? Jinx doesn’t even have to be there

for that, you could say he’s out seeing a movie. If they were looking for drugs as an angle, maybe they would figure out he’s

registered with the methadone clinic, but I’m not even sure with HIPAA if they have access to that. In fact, I doubt it. How

many people know about Jinx’s relapse?”

“I mean, right now, just me.”

“I would keep it that way. And when you do that home visit, lie your little ass off. Pretend the relapse never even happened.

Do you think you can do that?”

“I think so,” I said. I mean, I wasn’t Shyanne and Jinx’s daughter for nothing. Lineage-wise, I was practically falsehood

royalty. How many times had I pretended my own grandmother had died?

JB was coming that Friday, a fact so exciting and scary I almost squealed every time I thought about it. By Thursday, Jinx seemed relatively stable, and I knew I couldn’t wait any longer.

“I’ve started seeing someone,” I said. We were at the park with Bodhi, pushing him in the little bucket swing. I stood behind,

with Jinx in front, and periodically pretended to be a monster who wanted to eat Bodhi’s fat little legs. Bodhi shrieked with

laughter.

Jinx looked skeptical. “Who?”

“You know that guy I was writing long messages to?”

“Oh, Margo, no!” he cried.

We went back and forth for over an hour, me explaining, Jinx objecting, first at the park, then at the waffle shop, then the

apartment. I tried to be patient. I’d known it would be like this. Jinx was convinced JB was going to rape and murder me.

Finally, I had Jinx read the portrait JB had written of his mother.

He sighed when he finished reading, handed my phone back. “Well, that’s very compelling.”

“Because even if it isn’t true,” I said, “the sensibility to make up a lie like that.”

“I don’t think it’s a lie,” Jinx said. “But you’re right, even if it was a lie, your typical murderer/rapist wouldn’t make

up this lie.”

I nodded, happy and reassured that he knew what I meant.

“I am perturbed,” Jinx said. “I’m really of two minds about this.”

“What are your two minds?”

“Well, I mean, I worry. What if this guy tries to take advantage of you? He sees that you do all this stuff online, maybe

he’ll get ideas.”

I guffawed. “Dad, I mean, you know I’ve had sex before?”

“Well, yes, I’m aware!”

I wasn’t sure what to say. To me it was obvious JB was coming to have sex with me, that it was the whole point really. If

things went well, obviously. And I wanted them to go well.

“The other part of me is just delighted to see you this happy,” Jinx said. “You should get to have that—you should get to

be young. I can remember that feeling, when you’re smitten and can’t think about anything else.” He smiled, his eyes far away.

“Were you smitten with Viper?”

Jinx came back to himself. We were lounging on the pink couch, stuffed full of waffles, Bodhi asleep on my chest. “Viper was

a much sadder situation.”

I waited, though it didn’t seem he was going to explain. “Was Viper her real name?” I asked.

“Oh, I assume not,” Jinx said. “I don’t know her real name. She was an escort. I was— I’d started using again and I was hiding

it from Cheri, so I’d go on these ‘business trips’ and basically have a bender.”

“Where would you go?” I was afraid of what he would say, but I also wanted to know.

“Oh, I went to a town about thirty minutes from us that had a La Quinta. But it’s not very fun to do drugs all by yourself.

So I called one of those escort services, and Viper came, took one look at me, and said, ‘You better share!’ We wound up spending

a lot of time together.”

It was all so banal, so much more ordinary than I had been imagining. I remembered the way he had been when he was high, imagined

him and Viper eating Milky Ways together in the La Quinta, probably watching old wrestling matches. “Why do you think you

have such a hard time being faithful?” I asked. Because in some ways it was the question of my whole life. His inability to

be faithful was why I’d been conceived at all. Jinx had broken hearts, ruined marriages, alienated his kids—all for sex? It

was almost easier to understand the drugs.

Jinx sighed, seemed to really consider it. “I’m not sure any of it was about the actual sex.”

I guffawed again. “What was it about then?”

Jinx was rubbing his chin over and over like it was sore. “I get lonely. At night. And women are, you know, like, soft and—”

“Soft?!” I said too loudly. Luckily, Bodhi didn’t stir.

“Look at it this way,” Jinx went on. “If you’re feeling awful and hollow and lonely, do you want to go out and do coke with

Shawn Michaels and get into a bar fight when he uses the N-word, or do you want some giggly redhead to tell you her whole

life story while you eat ice cream on a hotel bed and then cuddle you with her soft boobs?”

“My God,” I said, “do you think we weren’t lonely?”

“You and Shyanne? You and Shyanne had each other,” he said.

I wanted to say that we had failed in a crucial way to connect. Yet in so many ways, it felt like Shyanne and I, even though

there were so many things we wanted and couldn’t have, were the lucky ones, and Jinx, who always did exactly what he wanted

no matter who it hurt, had never managed to enjoy his life.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking over at me, his brown eyes sad as a noble dog’s.

“It’s all right,” I said. Because in the scheme of things, it had been. It was a relief, getting to ask these questions. I

had always imagined my father as having these dark, unfathomable urges for sex, drugs, violence. It was better, in a way,

to understand that what he really wanted and needed was for the pain and loneliness to ease. His behavior was still bad, but

it was no longer so alien and frightening.

“So you’ll watch Bodhi while I go out to dinner with JB?”

Jinx nodded. “But I get to meet him first and make sure he’s not a psycho.”

“You can tell if someone’s a psycho upon meeting them?”

“Pretty much,” Jinx said. “I’ve known several.”

And I laughed. Because he really, really had.

There was no shortage of affordable hotels in Fullerton, partially because of the colleges, mostly because of the proximity

to Disneyland. But JB had chosen an Airbnb. In his words, he was “physically unable not to.” It was a haunted mansion. He

had forwarded me the listing, and I gasped at the price, nearly $400 a night. From the outside it looked like any normal house

in Fullerton, cute and unassuming. Inside, everything was purple velvet and red silk, with low light and a plastic raven with

glowing purple eyes, creepy portraits, and crystal balls. There was a “haunted gaming room” and a totally normal-looking outdoor

hot tub. That was really the funniest part about the house, the contrast between its spooky interior and suburban exterior.

The day JB flew in, I was so excited and nervous it felt like I was outside my body. I had borrowed a green sundress from Suzie and kept sweating through the pits, so I had wads of toilet paper stuffed under my arms as I dashed around the house, making sure the sterilizer was running with Bodhi’s bottle things, digging through the laundry for a clean blankie. When the doorbell rang, I ran to answer and tripped in my strappy heels, face-planting on the carpet. “Jesus!” Jinx cried, as I lunged up from the floor like a whale breaching the water, desperate to get to the front door first.

I opened the door, knees stinging with rug burn, strands of my hair stuck to my lip gloss, toilet paper trying to climb out

of the armpits of my dress, and there he was, just as nervous as me. He wasn’t as tall as I was expecting. His shoulders were

broad, and he was solidly built, like if you whacked him in the torso, he would make a good sound. He was wearing a black

button-down shirt and jeans and smelled like gum. But it was him. That was the main thing I felt: that I recognized him, that

he was who I had been hoping he would be.

“Come in,” I said, gesturing. He was holding a bouquet of tiger lilies, the pink ones with freckles, still wrapped in crackly

plastic from the supermarket. He held them out to me.

“Oh my gosh,” I said, and blushed. I felt like he was here to pick me up for a school dance.

“Is that JB?” Jinx boomed from the living room. I led JB in and introduced them. Jinx managed to deliver what looked like

a cripplingly strong handshake while still holding Bodhi in his other arm. JB handled it well and called him “sir.”

I took Bodhi from my dad, even though I was already holding the flowers, and bounced him on my hip. “This is Bodhi,” I told

JB, and JB reached for Bodhi’s tiny hand, then didn’t know if he was supposed to.

“Hey there,” he said, a little awkward. It was clear he didn’t know anything about babies.

“Let me get these in water,” I said, stomping into the kitchen like a giraffe in my heels. I was already reconsidering the

shoes. I had assumed JB would follow. Jinx had started talking to him, and I kind of panicked and left him there. I couldn’t

get my heart rate to a normal speed. I plopped Bodhi in his highchair while I arranged the flowers in a vase. I fished the

toilet paper out of my armpits and tried to calm down.

Evidently JB passed Jinx’s cross-examination, and I was so keyed up I don’t even remember saying all of the goodbyes except that I kissed Bodhi about a million times, and then we were out the door. On our way down the stairs, I tripped, twisting my ankle, and went down hard. I knew it was bad the moment I finished falling down the stairs. I didn’t even try to get up.

“Oh shit!” JB cried, scurrying down to me.

“I’m okay,” I said, even though I knew I was not. I wasn’t even positive I could stand, my ankle was screaming.

“Do you want me to get your dad?” he asked. “Do you think you need to go to the doctor?”

I closed my eyes in anguish. I knew I could not go to the fancy restaurant where he’d made a reservation like this, and I

was certain Jinx would be able to tell if my ankle was broken or only sprained; he was great with injuries. But I also knew

if we went back up there our chances of having any date at all would drop to zero. I tried to stand and gasped when I put

weight on my ankle.

JB grimaced.

“What if,” I said, “we go to the haunted mansion and just order in?”

“Don’t you think you should go to the doctor?” JB asked, gesturing at my ankle.

“If it’s broken it will still be broken tomorrow,” I said. “And I will cry if we don’t get to have this date. Please? Can

we please just go to your place and order in?”

“Of course,” JB said, “obviously, obviously.” But he looked worried. “You want help walking?”

I nodded, and he dipped his shoulder so I could grab on while he braced me around the waist. We wobbled out to the parking

lot to his rental car.

When we got to the haunted mansion, JB helped me to the door, then told me to wait while he disappeared inside. When he returned, he was pushing a desk chair with wheels. I plopped into it delightedly, and he gave me a rolling tour. It was very gaudy as haunted mansions go. There was a black light in the hallway that made eyes on the wallpaper glow. We settled in the sitting room, where flat screens hung in elaborate gilt frames were rigged so they displayed paintings that appeared to be moving. I transferred myself onto a velvet settee, and JB grabbed me some ice in a bag for my ankle, then plunked down beside me, and we huddled over his phone trying to decide what to order.

“Oh, I know what we should get,” he said. “This is so obvious!”

“What?”

“Wings!” he said.

I clapped my hands like an excited child. “Yes!” I cried. “Wings!”

Once the business of ordering the food was done, I became keenly aware of him next to me on the couch. I felt like a vampire

mesmerized by the pulse in his throat or something, but we couldn’t start making out before dinner. So I asked questions about

his flight and work and whether he’d ever been to California before (he had, though not to Fullerton, because, duh, why would

anyone visit Fullerton?). It felt like we were strangers, and I didn’t know how to break through into feeling like we knew

each other.

“Your dad is quite intimidating,” JB said. I had briefed him on my dad, but it was another thing to experience it in person.

“Oh, no, did he threaten to cut your dick off?” I asked.

JB laughed. “Now I feel like he was taking it easy on me.”

“Do you ever think about the sort of restrained, almost literary quality of my made-up family, and just comparing it to my

real family, aren’t you ever like, ‘Damn, she’s a genius’?”

“Yeah, didn’t you see my review on Goodreads?”

I laughed. “What the fuck is Goodreads?”

“It’s, like, a book review site, it was a joke.”

I giggled, caught up in a fantasy of other people reading his reviews of our private correspondence, trying to figure out

what he was even talking about. “Gosh, people love reviewing things,” I said, imagining with horror a site dedicated to reviews

of OnlyFans accounts.

“Even dicks,” JB said.

That was true, I realized, I did rate dicks. But I didn’t want JB to think I was like WangMangler. What if he was nervous and thought I was some big dick judge? “I’m an easy grader,” I said. “I give them all ten out of ten. The art is really all in the comparison to the Pokémon and any relevant puns.”

“Oh?” JB said, still smiling, though I could tell he was uncomfortable. And why shouldn’t he be? I shouldn’t be talking to

him about other people’s dicks.

When the wings came, JB set out all the food on the coffee table so I didn’t have to move, and we feasted. The whole time

we were eating I was distracted trying to figure out what would happen next. I had not calculated any of this because I’d

imagined us at a restaurant. I’d thought my chance to kiss him would be when we walked out to the car after dinner, and if

that went well we’d go to his Airbnb instead of my house. Now I didn’t know how exactly a kiss would happen.

“Is something wrong?” JB asked.

“No,” I said, “I’m just, like, plotting how I’m gonna put the moves on you.”

He laughed, covering his mouth with his napkin. “That’s a relief,” he said after he finished chewing. “I’m not good at making

plans like that. I figured I would try to kiss you after dinner when we walked to the car.”

“That’s when I had figured I would kiss you!”

“But now I have no idea, really.” JB laughed again.

“Leave it all up to me,” I said. “You won’t even know what’s happening. You’ll be like a baby gazelle taken down by a lioness.”

His eyebrows shot up, and I figured it was now or never, so I leaned over and kissed him, even though I was pretty sure I

tasted strongly of buffalo sauce. My lips met his, and he leaned into the kiss, turning to me on the settee. His hands found

my rib cage and squeezed. I could feel the strength in his hands and arms, that big chest with its huge ribs, the heat of

him. I broke away from the kiss and blinked. The room was spinning slightly. “Whoa,” I said, and he kissed me again.