Mockingbird by Sean Stewart Page A

really. Mind you,” she added, smirking, “there was a very pretty salesclerk in Victoria’s Secret she was flirting with. Carmelita. Finally she called her into the changing room to help with a garter belt. Now, I’m not saying anything happened—but they took fifteen minutes at it, and pretty Carmelita came back fairly flushed.”
    I considered. “Could have been worse.”
    Not that I would ever, ever show my face in the Galleria again. Ever.
    â€œFirst the Widow, now Sugar.” Candy turned left onto a stretch of Westheimer that I recognized, not far from Momma’s house. “Girl, you’ve got a bad case of the ghosts.”
    â€œMockingbird Cordial,” I said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhat’s a Mockingbird? What does she do?”
    â€œSings. I don’t know,” Candy said. “The Mockingbird can be anyone, I—Oh.”
    â€œYeah.” I pressed my hand against my forehead but it didn’t seem to help. “I think she let the Riders into me. I think that’s what the cordial did, Candy. Damn it.”
    Hush little baby don’t say a word,
    Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
    There are some gifts that cannot be refused.
    â€œIs there any more left?” Candy asked.
    â€œNo, you may not drink the stuff. It wasn’t meant for you, Candy. Momma left it for me, damn her. Anyway, I flushed the rest of it down the toilet after the Widow mounted me.”
    â€œOh.” It was hard to read the tone of her voice.
    I sat upright and took a deep breath, which pulled the hem of that ridiculous skirt up to about my navel. “Candy?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œIt’s not your fault you’re pretty.”
    â€œOh, Toni.” She didn’t turn around. “Thank you,” she said.

Chapter Four
    I wasn’t at all happy about being afflicted with Momma’s gods. Then the IRS called up and made me even less happy. It turned out that Momma owed them a lot of money. A lot of money. We couldn’t see the will itself. That was under court seal, but to make a long story short, it took all of the (not much) money Momma’s estate had left, plus most of my savings, to square our family’s accounts. (As Mary Jo had feared, there was no money for her roof either; just some old photographs and a handful of Momma’s paintings.)
    Luckily, I was used to paying off Momma’s debts. Was I mad about having to pony up thousands of dollars of my own money? Sure. Furious. But I had known Momma all my life, and ever since she died I had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was just bound to be a nasty surprise waiting for me. To have it be something I could deal with by cashing in a mutual fund and writing a check seemed almost too easy.
    And even if money was suddenly a bit tight, I had an excellent job and, for the first time, a real sense of direction. I had a plan. Momma was dead and I was going to have a family of my own. For the time being I had a good job; the next trick was to acquire an equally good father for my baby.
    It sounds cold-blooded, put like that, but statistically, children who come from two-parent homes do better in school than those from single-parent families. Obviously there is a confound there, as plenty of single moms are dirt-poor. And of course lots of kids from one-parent families turn out fine. Still, I saw no reason not to stack the odds in my child’s favor. Candy might be the sort to draw to an inside straight, but as an actuary I preferred to stick to the percentages, and the percentages were better with a father figure in the family.
    Sex never was one of my strong points. I was self-conscious on dates, confused, ashamed of my appearance. I wasn’t a teenager anymore, I didn’t stammer and blush, but like a lizard or a roach, I had developed a dry protective coating. At my best I could be funny; but dating me, as Candy said unkindly, was still too much like