Mockingbird Read Online Free

her. She can’t get to you like she can get to me.”
    This was true enough. Candy is the one who inherited Momma’s touch of magic. In Candy the gift was more direct, but less flexible. None of the Riders had ever mounted her. She could see the future sometimes, in dreams and visions, but with one curious qualifier: all she ever saw were happy things.
    I picked up my glass and tipped a little of the Mockingbird Cordial into my mouth. It bit like a copperhead snake: rum, vanilla flowers; the feeling you get on the tip of your tongue when you touch it to a battery. The taste of pennies in your mouth when you were a child. I swallowed and Candy followed suit. “Thanks,” she said.
    â€œHow long ago did you know she was going to die?”
    â€œMaybe a year. I just. . . stopped dreaming about her anymore.”
    â€œHow many happy dreams of her did you ever have?” I swirled another few drops of the cordial around my mouth and swallowed. “This stuff surely burns. Candy, are you all right? About Momma, I mean.”
    â€œNo—Are you?”
    â€œI’m all right.”
    Momma always liked Candy. Right from a baby, Candy was smiley and huggable. A great relief, as I had been colicky and a crosspatch from day one. “When I was having you, you were that set to come out sideways,” Momma told me. “The doctor had to get in there and haul you out with forceps as big as a pair of steel salad forks. And cold! Like to have killed me,” she would say, and laugh. I was horrified.
    When she was in a good mood Momma called me ornery but durable. She liked that word: durable. To endure, which she pronounced with no y sound: en-doo-er. When she cried, which was often, I was a “poor baby,” for having to be so tough so little, but it was good I was tough because in this life that’s what you had to be. When she was angry, I was mean, or hateful, or sometimes the hatefulest child that ever was.
    â€œI’m all right,” I said. “You two were always closer.”
    Candy choked and laughed. “The funny part is that you actually believe that.”
    â€œIt’s true!”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    I raised my glass. “To Momma. May I never be like her.” Birds hopped and flittered among the branches overhead. The liquor ran down into my center and bloomed there, like flowers opening.
    Candy stretched her legs out and crossed them at the ankles. “That bastard Carlos should have come to the funeral.”
    Carlos was Candy’s current boyfriend, a Tex-Mex car detailer who lived at some strange intersection between Mexican folk magic and low rider gang membership. Carlos himself was small and lean and soft-spoken, a wonderful mechanic and something of a sorcerer who had lost part of one ear in a gang fight years before. Despite his angular face and tattoos and small black goatee no one had ever heard him cross his mother. I once saw him drink a shot glass full of 10W-40 motor oil to win a bet.
    Candy had dated a lot of weird guys.
    Actually, I thought they made a good couple: Carlos was pretty serious-minded, which she needed, and she was able to take the fact that he would occasionally visit with the spirits of the dead fairly much in stride. The most noticeable thing about Carlos was his car, a reconditioned hearse that he had turned into a rolling shrine. “Can you imagine Carlos bringing the Muertomobile into Glenwood? The security guards would have gunned him down in the driveway. Be reasonable. I’m sure he’ll cruise by this afternoon.”
    â€œProbably La Hag Gonzales didn’t want him seen with me in public.”
    â€œIf I had a son, I wouldn’t let him date you either.” I found I could take the cordial down in bigger swallows, now that I was used to it. I emptied my glass. “You know, of all Momma’s potions, I think this is the best she ever made.”
    Candy sloshed another shot into my glass.