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“I’ll tell you the truth,” he says quietly. “But it’s bad. Worse than you’re thinking.”

34

LEVI

Carmen sits on the bed beside me, watching me quietly.

I drag a hand over my face. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to put this shit in her head. Don’t want her looking at where I came from, seeing the ugly parts, the parts Theo doesn’t even know.

But she wants the truth.

And if I don’t give it to her, she’ll pull away again. I already know I can’t handle that. Three days of her being polite and distant nearly drove me out of my skin. I’m not doing that again.

So I reach into my back pocket and pull out the photo I grabbed before coming over. For a second, I just stare at it. Then I hand it to her.

“That’s my mom,” I say quietly. “Our mom.”

Carmen takes the photo carefully.

It was taken the day Theo was born. Mom’s sitting up in a hospital bed, smiling tiredly at the camera with newborn Theo tucked in her arms. Her dark hair is loose around her face, and her blue eyes look straight at the lens.

Theo has those eyes.

So do I.

Carmen studies the photo for a long moment. Then, because of course she notices everything, her gaze flicks from Mom in the picture to me—to the hoop in my ear.

It’s in Mom’s ear in the photo. Just a bit of gold. Not worth much to anyone else. But she liked them. Kept them even when she’d pawned half the things she owned. I took it years ago, when she lost the other one, and now I reach up and touch it before I can stop myself.

Carmen looks back down at the photo. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yeah.” My throat tightens around the word. “She was.”

I nod at the baby in the photo. “That’s Theo. He’s not mine. Alright?”

Carmen doesn’t answer straightaway. Her eyes stay fixed on the picture, searching.

Then she asks, “How old was she here?”

Fuck.

She’s clocked it already.

“Forty.”

Carmen looks down at the photo again. She’s dreadful at math but I watch her do it. Theo is ten. Mom died this year. She would have been fifty.

Which means⁠—

Her eyes widen. “Oh God. I’m older than your mom.”

“But you’re not old enough to be my mom,” I say, cutting that off fast. “She was twelve when she had me.”

The room goes quiet. All the color drains from Carmen’s face.

“Oh,” she says.

She looks down at the photo again. I can see the question in her eyes, but she’s too decent to ask it. How does a twelve-year-old get pregnant?