Page 51 of Wicked Pickle

She blows out a breath. “Mom took off when we were little. Dad was an alcoholic.”

“Did he hurt you?” I nearly stand again.

“No, no, but he got too many DUIs, and they took us away after the third. A good thing. He might have killed us at some point.”

“And he didn’t fight for you?”

“No, he signed away his rights immediately.”

“And your mother?”

“They didn’t find her.”

“Other family?”

“Sure. We went a few months with my dad’s mom, but she was old and sick, and when my sister acted out, she couldn’t keep us.”

“No aunts or uncles?”

“One set who didn’t want us and another set that were in another state, but child services couldn’t seem to get their act together to get us sent to them. That’s something I would focuson if I went that direction. Cross-state kinship placements. It’s too hard right now. It needs to be easier.”

My feelings about her evolve with every revelation. “But you went to college.”

“Yeah. Foster care gets you some scholarships, and your entrance essays can make a grown man weep.” She smiles ruefully. “As long as I could get good grades and figure out how to keep scholarship money coming in, I could get my degree.”

“I don’t have one.”

“That’s all right. You’ve got street smarts.”

“I bet you do, too.”

“Some. My foster parents were pretty straitlaced middle class. They helped me get the scholarships. I probably wouldn’t have made it to college if I had stayed with Dad.”

“So, you didn’t have the horror story of foster families?”

“No. The horror was the situation that got me there. But the fosters, they were all right. Do-gooders, you know?”

“But they didn’t adopt you.”

She sits back. “No. I was on my own when I aged out.”

I’m not sure why I’m so riled over Symphony’s past. Every worst-case scenario wanders into the Leaky Skull on the regular.

But I don’t want that for her. I want things to be easy.

She pulls the label the rest of the way off the beer bottle.

“You know what that means, right?” I say.

She presses the damp label to the table. “What?”

“When someone strips the label off a bottle, it means they are sexually frustrated.”

She wheezes a laugh. “Who decided that?”

“Hell if I know. I’ve been hearing it since I was a kid.”

“I’ve never heard it.”

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