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Maybe, if patient enough, she wouldn’t need to channel her daughter’s hardcore quest for truth. The answers to her past would come in their own time.

Maybe that time was now. With Taylor Barnes searing her mind, Analise went around the back of the stucco-spackled garage, past a line of cars, and opened the glass door. She fluttered a wave to Jorgen, who always reminded her of some ancient Norse god that would probably live for 150 years. He’d been married three times and sent Ulla roses on her birthday and every holiday. Analise once asked Ulla why Jorgen didn’t know she preferred women, to which Ulla had shrugged and said, “Who says he doesn’t?”

Analise found Ulla, an ageless Norse goddess herself, wiping a wrench with a grease rag. An Alanis Morrisette song played on the radio. “What are you doing here? Where’s Pen?” she asked Analise.

“I have about fifteen minutes before school’s out.”

“Do you need something?”

“No . . . ” She stuck a hand in her pocket, surprised to find a LipSmackers chapstick. When did Penelope borrow her jean jacket? Analise took the cap off the Strawberry Swirl and sniffed. “I was talking with Oscar today.”

“Oscar doesn’t talk with anyone but himself.”

Analise squeezed out a laugh, but Ulla eyed her. “What did he say?”

“He mentioned the Larsson family.” She studied Ulla’s movements. “He said you were best friends with Linnea Larsson.” Ulla stiffened so fleetingly, had Analise not been ready, she would’ve missed it.

Ulla continued cleaning her tools at a slightly more aggressive pace. “Yeah, they had a daughter about my age. The girl never talked. Probably because her parents were stoned twenty-four-seven and never taught her how.”

“So you did know her.”

Ulla sighed, clearly annoyed. “That’s why you came here? To ask me about a girl I vaguely remember from over thirty years ago?”

“What was she like?”

“I don’t remember, Isa.”

Liar. “You seem upset.”

“I don’t like pointless conversations.”

Analise applied the LipSmackers to suppress her jittery hand and then capped it, switching tactics. “The nurse called me from school and said Pen forgot her lunch, which I had to drop off, but she was crying about something or other. Was I emotional when I was her age? I don’t know what to do with her.”

Ulla’s posture relaxed as if relieved by the change in topic. “You were shy. When you got older, you were more emotional, but you also had two back-to-back concussions, so your moods were all over the place. You’d cry at the drop of a hat. You still do.”

This was true, and Penelope loathed it. “Do you think she takes after her father? She definitely didn’t get her smarts from me. I can’t relate to her at all.”

Ulla wiped her hands on her coveralls and walked to a Honda Civic with its hood open. She released the catch and caught the hood, closing it securely.

“Is that possible?” Analise probed.

“Is what possible?”

“That maybe she takes after her father?”

“I hope not.”

Analise tightened her jaw. “She discovered these websites, where you can send in your DNA and somehow find your long-lost ancestors.”

Ulla opened the driver’s door of the Civic. “Sounds like a scam to me.”

“But what if? What if she finds him someday? What if he finds us?”

Ulla paused before turning the ignition. “Penelope never needs to know her father. You never knew yours. I didn’t know mine, and I think we’re living proof that women turn out just fine without men. In fact, I’m convinced no father is better than a shitty one.” She started the car. The engine purred.

Ulla revved the gas pedal, silencing Analise’s aggravated sigh, and then turned the car off. She got out. “Why the sudden curiosity?”

“Just tell me his name.”