“I have to do what makes me happy, and what’s right for me, not just what works for all of you. I want to learn how to do beautiful tattoos. It’s a form of graphic art, even if you don’t like it. And after that, I’ll go back to school.” She sounded stubborn and defiant as she said it.

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Annie said sternly, and then wiped the tears from Katie’s cheeks, and spoke more softly. “I wish you weren’t so damn independent and listened to me once in a while.”

“I do. But I have to do what I think is right too. I’m twenty-one years old. I’m not a baby.”

“You’ll always be a baby to me,” Annie said honestly. It was the conversation she’d had with Whitney a month before, about letting them go, make their own mistakes, and have their own lives. She couldn’t protect them forever.

“Where is this place?” Annie asked, and Katie told her. It was in a horrible neighborhood, and just the idea of her being there filled Annie with terror. What if something happened to her? Or she got AIDS from one of the needles? “I wish you’d give up this idea,” Annie pleaded with her. “It really is one of your worst.”

“I’m not going to,” Katie said fiercely. “I’m an adult, and I have a right to make this decision.”

“I guess you do,” Annie said sadly. “But not all the decisions we make are good.”

“We’ll see,” Katie said quietly, prepared to defend her independence with whatever it took. She didn’t share with her aunt then that she also wanted to do some traveling, and she wanted to go to Tehran with Paul for a visit to his family in the spring. She figured that right now that news could wait. And after they talked quietly for a few more minutes, Kate went back to her room. She was planning to bring home all her things from the dorm that weekend.

In her own room, Annie took two aspirins for the headache she’d had since that afternoon and lay down on her bed. She would have called Lizzie, but she didn’t want to bother her in Paris. And it was three in the morning for her by then. Instead she called Ted. He didn’t answer, and it went straight to voice mail. Annie left him a message to call her as soon as he could. She couldn’t believe that Katie was going to be working in a tattoo parlor. The idea of it made her sick. And all she could hope now was that Katie would come to her senses and do what she had promised and go back to school. And the worst of it was knowing that no matter how much she loved her, there was nothing Annie could do. Overnight she had become obsolete.


Chapter 12


The following day was even more stressful for Annie. She had an argument with two contractors, and a very difficult meeting with one of her more challenging clients. The weather was terrible, which was slowing everything down, and the fact that Katie had dropped out of school, without even discussing it with her first or asking her advice, had Annie on edge all day. The idea of Katie working in a tattoo parlor seemed even worse the more she thought about it. And she hadn’t heard from Ted yet. She at least wanted a shoulder to cry on, and maybe he could influence his younger sister, or Liz could when she got back. But for now, Liz was in Paris up to her ears in her own work, and Ted hadn’t called.

By the end of the afternoon, Annie couldn’t stand it any longer, and after visiting a job site where everything was going wrong, she hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of the tattoo parlor Katie had mentioned the night before. It was on Ninth Avenue, in what had once been called Hell’s Kitchen but in recent years had been cleaned up. But it still wasn’t where Annie wanted her niece to hang out, let alone go to work every day instead of school. She groaned out loud when they got to the address. The tattoo parlor was lit up in neon, and a cluster of unsavory-looking people were standing around smoking outside. Annie had never seen uglier people in her life.

“Wrong address?” the driver asked her when he heard the sound of despair from the backseat.

“No, unfortunately the right one,” she said as she paid him, with a good tip.

“You getting a tattoo?” He seemed surprised. She didn’t look the type. She was wearing a black wool coat with black slacks and a black cashmere sweater, and she looked impeccably groomed.

“No, I’m not. Just looking.” She didn’t want to admit to him that her niece was working there. It was too embarrassing and depressing.

“I wouldn’t do it if I were you,” he advised her. “You can get AIDS from the needles,” he warned.

“I know.” She thanked him again and slid out of the cab, and she pushed open the door to the tattoo parlor and looked around. The people working there all had pierces and tattoos, and most of them had full sleeves of colorful tattoos. She didn’t care what Katie said, Annie still did not consider it art.

A woman came over to ask if she could help her, and Annie said she was there to see Kate Marshall. Annie looked like a visitor from another planet with her sleek blond hair, fashionable high-heeled boots, and new black coat. She wanted to run right out the door, but she stood her ground as she waited for Kate, and a few minutes later her niece came through a back door where the private rooms were. She was wearing a miniskirt, red turtleneck sweater, and combat boots with her short blue-black dyed hair. But even dressed like that, Annie thought she looked much too good for this place.

“What are you doing here?” Katie asked her in a whisper. She looked nervous that Annie had come.

“I wanted to see where you work.” The two women looked deep into each other’s eyes, and finally Katie looked away first. She knew she couldn’t convince Annie that this was acceptable instead of school, but she thought she shouldn’t have to defend it either. She had made a decision that felt right to her. “Are you okay?” Annie asked her gently, and Katie nodded, and then she smiled, and looked happier than she did a minute before.

“I’m having fun. They’re teaching me a lot. I want to learn how to do tattoos, just so I know what it takes and how the designs work on skin.” Annie refrained from saying “Why?”

Annie only stayed for a few minutes, and Katie didn’t tell her co-workers who she was. It made her feel like a child to have her aunt check up on her, and she was no longer a child as far as she was concerned. She was an adult. She looked visibly embarrassed to have Annie there, so once she had looked around, Annie left.

Annie wanted to cry as she drove away in a cab. She couldn’t get the image of those people out of her head. They had bolts and pierces everywhere. They looked like a scary lot to her. She had one more job site to visit before she went back to her office, and then home at the end of the day.

The construction site was another one of her trouble spots right now, and she was fiercely upset when she saw that one of the workmen had left a hose on earlier in the day, and in the freezing weather, the water had turned to ice on the ground. It was an invitation to accidents and another headache she didn’t need. She pointed it out to the foreman, and the contractor who was there too, and then, still thinking about Katie and her new job, Annie stepped over the construction debris and hurried out of the site and back toward the street. It was getting late. Her mind was so full of Katie that she didn’t see the last patch of ice she had complained about, and suddenly her high-heeled boots flew into the air, and she came down hard on one foot with a sharp yelp. One of the construction workers had seen her fall and rushed to help her. He picked her up, dusted her off, and steadied her on her feet. But the moment he did, she winced, her stomach flipped over, and she thought she was going to faint from the pain. Someone got her a folding chair, and the pain in her ankle was excruciating.

“Are you okay?” the foreman asked her with a worried look. It was exactly what she had just warned them about. What she hadn’t expected was that the accident waiting to happen was her. She had been totally distracted and distraught since her visit to Katie at the tattoo parlor, and she hadn’t looked where she was going in her rush to leave and get back to the office. And it was one of the very rare times she had worn high heels to a construction site. She hadn’t planned to visit any of them that day and changed her mind once she got to work.

Several of the men had gathered around her by then, and she tried standing up again, but she couldn’t. She was seriously annoyed at herself. She had been visiting construction sites for twenty years and had never injured herself. The high-heeled boots that day had been a big mistake.

“I think it may be broken,” Annie said, wincing, as she tried to stand up. She could put no weight on it at all.

“You’d better go to the hospital,” the foreman advised her. “It may only be a bad sprain. But either way, you should get an X-ray so you know, and you can get a cast on it if you need to.” That was all she needed now. With everything she had to do these days, she didn’t want to have to hobble around on crutches or in a cast.

“Maybe I’ll just go home and put some ice on it,” she said as she tried to limp off the site, but in the end it took two men to get her to a cab. And a third one was carrying her briefcase and purse. “Thanks, I’m sorry to be such a pain in the neck.”

“You’re not. But get yourself to the ER,” the foreman insisted. She nodded, pretending to agree with him, but once in the cab, she gave the driver her office address. She was sure she’d be fine when she got home and took her boots off, but for now it hurt like hell. And when she got to her office, she couldn’t get out of the cab. The driver turned to look at her as she struggled.

“Looks like you got hurt pretty bad,” the driver said sympathetically. “What happened?”