Chapter 13: Both Mothers

Hannah steered us both to a booth in the corner.

She said "Come on" to Cynthia and "Come on" to me, in the voice she used on a classroom of five-year-olds.

We slid in on opposite sides.

She took the end of the table between us and set her shoes on it.

"Cedric's mother is explaining to thirty people why I left in the middle of the salad," she said.

"I have about four minutes."

"Hannah," Cynthia said. "Sweetheart."

"No. You get one question each, and then I go back."

She turned to Cynthia first.

"What happened when I was four months old?"

Cynthia's hand went flat on the table.

"I was twenty-two," she said. "I had nothing. His father came to my apartment and said you'd have a real home."

"And you let him?"

"I thought it was the only way you'd have one."

"He told me you left."

"I did leave."

"That's not the same."

"No," Cynthia said. "It isn't."

Hannah looked at me.

"Now you."

"I was hired to take care of you," I said. "You were fourteen months old and you had a rash on your neck and you wouldn't eat anything but toast."

"I remember the toast."

"You can't remember that."

"Dad told it at my graduation."

She almost smiled, then stopped herself.

"What did he tell you about my mother?"

"That she died in a car crash."

"And you believed him."

"For twenty-two years."

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