Chapter 21: What's True

Lacey stopped three feet from me in the school hallway and did not come closer.

She had lost weight.

Her hair was pulled back plain, with no clip, and she wore a name tag from a laundromat in Duluth.

"I'm not going to make a scene," she said.

"All right."

"I wanted to ask you something. Not here. Not with him in the building."

"Eli's eating pancakes."

"I know. I watched."

Her voice caught.

"He said Dad to someone, and it was the right someone. I stood on the sidewalk for ten minutes and couldn't make my feet go."

I waited.

She looked at the baby on my hip, and then away.

"There's a hearing in January," she said. "In Duluth."

"What for?"

"Russ's lawyer wants me on Sundays only, with his father in the room. Mine says I can have Wednesdays and every other weekend."

She swallowed.

"If somebody who isn't family says I'm a fit mother."

"You want me to say that."

"I want you to say what you know."

"You left him on a diner floor."

"I know what I did."

She said it quickly.

"I've said it to a counselor eleven times. I was scared and ashamed. I thought if I left him there, you would have to take us in."

"That's what I thought."

"I'd have been a monster to think it. I'm not asking you to like me."

"Good."

"Maggie, I fed him every day of his life. I never missed a parent night. I read to him every night."

Her chin shook.

"That is true, and nobody in this town will say it, because of what else is true."

I looked at her for a long time.