"Was she a prostitute?" the girl asked.

Kimmy shook her head and told a lie that felt like truth. "Never."

"But she stripped."

Kimmy said nothing.

"I'm not judging her."

"What do you want then?"

"I want to know about my mother."

"It doesn't make any difference now."

"It does to me."

Kimmy remembered when she first heard the news. She'd been onstage out near Tahoe doing a slow number for the lunch crowd, the biggest group of losers in the history of mankind, men with dirt on their boots and holes in their hearts that staring at naked women only made bigger. She hadn't seen Candi for three days running, but then again Kimmy had been on the road. Up there, on that stage, that was where she first overheard the rumors. She knew something bad had gone down. She'd just prayed it hadn't involved Candi.

But it had.

"Your mother had a hard life," Kimmy said.

The girl sat rapt.

"Candi thought we'd find a way out, you know? At first she figured it'd be a guy at the club. They'd find us and take us away, but that's crap. Some of the girls try that. It never works. The guy wants some fantasy, not you. Your mother learned that pretty quick. She was a dreamer but with a purpose."

Kimmy stopped, looked off.

"And?" the girl prompted.

"And then that bastard squashed her like she was a bug."

The girl shifted in her chair. "Detective Darrow said his name was Clyde Rangor?"

Kimmy nodded.

"He also mentioned a woman named Emma Lemay? Wasn't she his partner?"

"In some things, yeah. But I don't know the details."

Kimmy did not cry when she first heard the news. She was beyond that. But she had come forward. She risked everything, telling that damn Darrow what she knew.

Thing is, you don't take too many stands in this life. But Kimmy would not betray Candi, even then, even when it was too late to help. Because when Candi died, so did the best parts of Kimmy.