“I don’t know—but you look the way you look, and your mother wanted rid of you, and Barton tried his best to help her. Not that she loved him by then. You see how he is.”
“Yes. I see how he is.”
“She probably wouldn’t have come back at all, but she wasn’t a German citizen. She only had a tourist visa. She left him the next December, when you weren’t more than a few weeks old. Went back to her demon lover and left you behind. He didn’t want you—half-human. She didn’t want you, ‘cause you were half-whatever. Besides, Barton said you were meant to be a curse. A punishment meant to be left behind to hang over him all his life as proof of his wife’s infidelity. He said she called yousome fancy German word, all strung together. It means ‘shamed man’s child.’Beschämtenmannskinder,or something like that.”
I’ll look that up.
If I ever get access to a computer or a German-English dictionary.
My stomach twists, and I get a very different picture of my mother than the pretty young woman I’d recently begun to dream about.
“I need my birth certificate.”
“There isn’t one. She had you at home. I think they thought you’d... Well. You didn’t.”
They thought I’d die. But I didn’t. There’s iron under this thick pink skin. Survivor. I swallow hard. I have to keep believing it. “Look, he registered me for college. How? I needed papers, I needed—”
“Your mother’s name. He used all of her old documents. She didn’t take anything with her.”
Well. That sounds ominous.
“But they don’t call me by her name.”
“You can list what name you’re given, and what you want to be called, like a nickname.”
“Do you know where her papers were?”
“No. Barton must have had them someplace. You won’t need them. You can get new ones. Say you lost them in a fire or something. You don’t need them to find work. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know where I’ll end up.” I’m cautious about revealing too much, about who is helping me, about what I know about the outside world. Survivors are probably cautious, I realize. That’s how they live so long.
“You could call the college. Or show up there in person, maybe. Tell ‘em you need copies of your papers. You could go back. Without me there, with Barton gone for two weeks—”
“No.” I cut off Sarah’s speech, hating the eagerness in her voice. She wants rid of me. She’s even willing to leave me behind. I wonder if survivors cut people off like that, too, if they only care about saving themselves.
I hope I’m never like that.
“No, I’ll get by fine once I’m in Washington.”
I keep silent for the rest of the journey. I don’t know if what I said is true—but then again, I don’t know if anything that Sarah told me is true, either.
“CAROL, THIS IS A FRIEND. From the women’s shelter. She’s not going to be any trouble, just let her sleep it off.”
“I’m not drunk. I’m just... tired,” I extend my gloved hand and shake Carol’s hand, while Sarah looks on, horrified.
Carol, a wiry woman with spiky hair, smiles and doesn’t seem to think anything is odd about me.
“Welcome aboard. You travel light—thank goodness. I can put you down in Washington, or you can come on the next leg with me to Idaho.”
I picture a map of the country I’m part of, but have never explored. Idaho is closer, and planes are faster than trains—one assumes. “That’s wonderful. I’ll pay you back one day.”
“Oh, heck, honey, you don’t have to. You’d be surprised how many women I fly out of the far reaches. Men seem to think they own you in the wilderness. Assholes. Anyway, no shame. I was in a situation like yours and Sarah’s for far too long, and on a military base surrounded by good men and women. It took me thirteen years to walk away, but I’ve never looked back. But I don’t like anyone getting too much in my business on these trips. You never know when someone’s going to recognize someoneelse, tell a friend of a friend that he saw someone’s wife.” Carol looks me over. “Bundled up. That’s smart. And it’s freezing.”
We settle into the back, Sarah in one of the two front seats on the right, with me crouched low in the back seat on the left, as far as I can get from her—the way she wants it.
“What about the car?” I ask in a murmur.
“I don’t need it. It’s in Barton’s name. Let him find it when they tow it. I don’t want a thing to tie me to him.” Sarah doesn’t even look at me. Doesn’t turn around. She just falls asleep before we even take off.
