Panic surged and Dana struck down, knocking the hand away hard.
Heads turned. Eyes lifted from phones and laptops. Chelsea was on her feet, yanking out her earbuds.
“I’m sorry!” The woman, Jeannie, held both hands up. See? They’re empty. “My mistake! I’m sorry!”
Dana swallowed, trying to get her breathing back under control. Cut it out, cut it out, nothing happened.
“Which name did she give you?” the woman asked very gently. “Cathy Hale? Teresa Sullivan? Casey Yost?” She paused. “Debbie Watts?”
Dana hesitated, and the woman nodded. “Yeah. Okay. That’s my given name—Deborah Ann Watts. But I haven’t gone by that since I was maybe nineteen. When you live under the radar, you have to change things up a lot, and well…anyway. Mostly I’m Jeannie Bowen now, except on your mother’s birth certificate. That’s still Debbie Watts.”
Dana swallowed her breath. “And you’re now going to pull that certificate out?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s long gone. There’s a copy somewhere in Maricopa County, probably. It’s true, though. I was born Deborah Watts. My mother was Elizabeth Watts, and my father was some kid who got drunk at a high school football game and wouldn’t take no for an answer. We lived in a trailer outside a small town in Indiana. When I was seventeen, I met Todd Bowen and ran away from home and didn’t go back until after I had your mother.”
Dana glanced toward Chelsea, and Chelsea jerked her chin toward the door. Dana shook her head. Chelsea threw up both hands and dropped back into her chair, shoving her earbuds back in and thumbing her screen.
Slowly, Dana sat down at the table.
Jeannie pulled the lid off her cup. “That was really smart, bringing somebody with you.” She picked up one of the six packets on the table and tore it open, pouring the long white stream of sugar into what was left of the coffee.
Dana shrugged and turned her phone over in her fingers. “Mom told me she lived with her grandmother until she was, like, five or something.”
“Yeah.” Jeannie held the cup in both hands like she was trying to draw some leftover warmth out of the cardboard. “Right after she was born, me and Todd—your grandfather—we were going through a bad patch, and we needed money. I thought, you know, my mother would be ready to help, because of the baby. But instead, she threatened me. Said she’d get me declared unfit if I didn’t leave Todd and come home. She always was a hard-assed old bitch. Sorry. Anyway, in the end, my mother gave me a thousand dollars to go away, and I gave her your mother.” She was talking to the bottom of her cup. “I thought I needed the money more than I needed my daughter.”
“But you did go back,” Dana said softly, so the woman—Jeannie—wouldn’t hear how her voice shook. “You took her away again.”
Mom had only told her about it once. Dana was nine and having some kind of relapse. She couldn’t stop crying, and she couldn’t go outside without screaming. When Mom forced her to go to school, Dana hit the teacher and the nurse just so she’d get sent home again.
So Mom got her another therapist and sat curled up with her on the sofa for hours, holding her close. She helped make Dana’s bed into a blanket fort so the room wouldn’t feel so big when she was trying to go to sleep.
And one time, Mom took Dana’s face between her hands and whispered.
It wasn’t your fault, Dana. It’s easy—so very, very easy—to just go with someone when they tell you to. When my parents came for me, I was barely five, and after an hour—seriously, one hour—I was ready to go away with them forever just because they gave me Oreos.
“She was my daughter,” said Jeannie. “Mine. She belonged with me. So, yes, I went and got her. Just as soon as I could.”
“But then you dumped her again.”
Jeannie sighed. “Going straight for the jugular? I’d hoped maybe we could start with, How are you? Or, Was it a long drive? Or, Do you like sweet potato fries? Stuff like that.” She smiled hopefully, and for some reason, Dana’s temper snapped.
“Look, are we doing this or aren’t we? Because I have to get home.” Being angry was easier than being scared and confused. Because the story she was hearing was not the story she’d pieced together for herself. It sure as hell wasn’t the one Mom told her. And whether