they had every right to take it.
Even if they had to take it from her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Mom shut the door, Dana flipped up the lid on her laptop. She pulled the photo out and propped it against the screen and stared at it. And started typing.
Deborah Ann Watts. That was her grandmother’s name. She’d searched it a hundred times. It never did any good. The name was too common, and she had no way to narrow down the search. No birth date, nothing. Thomas Jankowski, her grandfather, had a less common name, but the search on him had never gone any better.
Not even today.
But she always kept looking. She kept her Google alerts primed and updated. She couldn’t understand why she was supposed to look away. How could Mom just ignore them? Dana understood they were dangerous. Mom’s parents were criminals—actual, got-arrested-but-skipped-bail criminals. They stole from gas station clerks, she said. They shoplifted and traded pills with security guards so they’d look the other way. They rigged pool games and card games and cheated the drunks in bars and lifted their wallets.
There was no “code,” no red line, Mom had said. If they needed something and they could take it off you, you were a sucker and you deserved it.
Dana understood all that, like she understood Mom wasn’t actually trying to lock Dana out of her own life. Not like Dad.
But how could she not want to know?
She looked at the photo again. If this was real, it was the only picture Dana had of her mother’s mother. Every now and again, some teacher made the kids bring family photos to school for a multicultural day, or for a family tree project—something like that. Dana always brought pictures from her dad’s family—a grandmother and grandfather she’d never met. “Aunt” Julia and “Uncle” Ron, who she’d met maybe twice. Her twin cousins Shelly and Kelly, ditto.
She hadn’t even gotten them from Dad. His wife, Susan, copied and FedExed them for the first project back in first grade. Dana had been recycling them ever since.
Dana knew plenty of kids whose parents were divorced. Some of them had whole long strings of half and step siblings. Amanda Hollander’s dad didn’t even know she was alive.
But none of them had anything like this mess.
And then Mom came in here and just lied all over the fucking place about what was up with her. Like she’d lied when she got home. There was no guy at work.
What the hell is the matter with all of you? Dana thought in sudden, fierce exasperation. What the actual fuck are you all thinking?
Didn’t they get it—that all their lying and running away made things worse for her?
The woman (her grandmother? Really?) said she’d be at the Starbucks tomorrow at four o’clock.
Maybe I should go. Just talk to her. Maybe I could find out…
No. Stupid. Why do I even care? Mom was all the family that counted. Mom took care of her, and she took care of Mom. Who else had ever been there for her?
But no matter how hard she tried to smother it, Dana wanted to know more. She wanted to know them. She wanted to stand in front of them and see if there was anything of herself reflected inside.
I’m not a little kid. Dana bit her lip. Not anymore.
She rolled over and picked up her phone and started texting Chelsea. Need your help tomorrow.
I have a right to the truth about my own life.
Dana hit Send.
CHAPTER NINE
Beth could remember the first time she saw her parents. She was five.
Her name was still Star Bowen then. She lived with Grammy. From her perspective, she always had. Grammy’s home was a green-and-white trailer beside the long dirt drive that ended at the gravel road. They had chickens and a vegetable garden and an apple tree. Everything was dusty in the summertime and freezing cold in winter. Their “neighbors” drove five or six miles to sit in the folding chairs Grammy set out among the weeds and the chickens. Sometimes they’d bring their kids and she’d have somebody to play with.
She was going to kindergarten in the fall. Grammy said they’d walk together down to the place the bus would stop each morning. Star would have to get up good and early, and no complaining. Star promised solemnly that she would.
Grammy didn’t smile much. Grammy smelled like tobacco and Lysol. Grammy had spotty pink skin, hard hands, and a hard body. She sewed and crocheted and made do.