Chapter 15: Telling Lindsey

I took her to the theater because it was empty and the door locked from the inside.

Lindsey let me lead her down the aisle. She kept looking back toward the hall, where the crowd was still clapping for my mother.

"Is she okay?" she asked. "Your mom? Did she really quit?"

"She really did. Sit down, please."

I pointed at the first seat in row A.

She read the brass plate on the arm. RESERVED FOR THE PRINCIPAL'S GUEST.

"That's the seat I sit in," she said. "I always thought it was the school's way of being nice."

"Sit anyway."

She sat. I took the seat beside it.

From my blazer I took the sailboat card and the photograph in its plastic sleeve, and I held them on my knee.

"I'm going to tell you something plainly," I said. "Then you can do whatever you want with it. Be angry at me. Walk out. I won't follow you."

"Marisol, you're scaring me."

"I know. I'm sorry."

I gave her the photograph.

She looked at the young man in the green sweater. She looked at the baby in the pink cap.

"Who is this?"

"Turn it over."

She read the back. I watched her lips move on the date.

"March third," she said. "That's my birthday."

"It's my father. He's twenty-nine. That's you."

She laughed. It was a small, sharp sound.

"No. That's a different baby. My dad left before I was born. My mother says he was a man in Houston who didn't want me."

"Lindsey."

"He didn't want me!"

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