Page 27

“Close. You dated?”

“Yes. But not really.”

I lean back. “That’s helpful. Very clear. Love a mystery.”

“I’m trying to be honest.”

“Try harder.”

Her face sharpens, and now she looks exactly like the woman who raised me alone while working full-time and making sure nobody at school ever thought I needed pity. That woman does not like being challenged in her own kitchen.

Then she breathes out and lets it go.

“We met before he was Renny,” she says. “Before… all of that. He was just Henry then. A boy from over on Candlelight Lane. Smart. Funny. Ambitious when we got older. My only really close friend.”

That sounds like the man in the letter. Or the outline of him.

“He was gay,” I say.

“Yes.”

“You knew that?”

“Yes.”

“And you slept with him anyway?”

Mom’s eyes narrow. “Lower your voice.”

“There’s nobody here.”

“I’m not nobody.”

It should not make me feel ten years old. It does.

I look away first.

She takes a slow breath. “I knew what he was. He knew what I was. We didn’t lie to each other about anything.”

“What were you?”

The question comes out sharp and before I can stop it.

Mom looks at me for a long moment.

Then she says, “Not built the way most people expect.”

I stare at her.

She lifts one shoulder. “I loved Henry. I did. But not the way women were supposed to love men. Not with all the nonsense people write songs about and ruin their lives over. I liked being with him. I trusted him. I wanted a child.”

Not a family. Not love. A child.

“So I was a project.”

“No.”

“A plan.”