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“No,” Ulla said emphatically. “We’ve gone through this. I got you away so you’d never be duped into going back to that piece of shit, wouldn’t end up a statistic. You’re damn lucky you don’t remember anything.”

“Shouldn’t Pen and I know his name if he ever does come around?”

“If some random stranger shows up saying he was once your high school boyfriend, then run.”

She thought immediately of Taylor. She had his number. He might know. “We could’ve only been together for a few months, not even that long. I still remember everything up until the beginning of senior year.”

Ulla swiped the hair from her face and avoided eye contact. “Enough. My answer won’t change.”

“So we’re done then?”

“From dragging up the past?” Ulla palmed her chest and nailed the coffin in Swedish, “Ja. Du och jag är klara.” We’re done.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Analise

Analise idled her Pontiac outside Mora Elementary, waiting for Penelope to flop herself into the backseat with entitlement and complaints, as she did every day while expecting a different answer—Really, Mamma, why can’t I sit in the front seat yet?

Analise had stormed from Ulla at the autobody shop, dissatisfied and wondering why she bothered.

With Ed Sheeran serenading her over the radio, Analise waited and stared at Taylor’s napkin: Can we talk? It seemed though, from his elusive demeanor, his abrupt getaway, talking was the last thing he wanted.

The school bell rang. She folded the napkin back into a miniature square and placed it in the zippered pouch of her purse where she kept extra Tylenol and tampons.

Penelope cracked open the back door and sank into the seat with her two-ton backpack containing probably at least eight hardcover adult novels from the library, none of which she was allowed to read at home, let alone at school.

Analise greeted her as she always did. “Hi, Pen! I missed you!”

Her daughter curled her lips into something resembling a sneer or a smile—a snile?—before saying, “Ugh. It’s so hot in here! I can’t believe I forgot my lunch. Do you want to know what Mac did?”

Analise put the car in gear and drove, inserting appropriate head nods and empathetic lip pouts, when all she could think about was Taylor’s message burning a hole through her purse.

“You’re not listening,” Penelope accused.

“I am. Really.”

“Then what was I saying?”

“You were comforting MaKenna—Mac—from the horrors of her terrible mother who can’t make a decent lunch, but then your own terrible mother forgot yours, which meant you nearly starved⁠—”

“You so don’t care. You’re doing that thing with your face. With that fake smile.”

Should I tell Dany about Taylor? Analise thought of her fiancé.

“See? You don’t even say anything to me!”

Analise stopped at a red light by the DQ and flopped her head on the steering wheel. “I care, min lilla älskling, really I do,” she repeated with the type of lax effort that Penelope immediately called her out on.

When Penelope was a baby, only punctuated moments of bliss provided enough fuel for Analise to carry on through diaper explosions, chronic insomnia, puke stains, food in the hair, and a constant fear that at any moment Penelope might accidentally kill herself. The physical exhaustion eventually morphed into emotional exhaustion, along with an occasional gutting of the soul.

They drove the rest of the short way home. “Are you picking up Jules?” Penelope asked, yanking her backpack out from the floor of the car.

No, Dany was picking up his daughter, Julia, from her piano lesson at the school. Penelope stomped into the house, Analise slowly following, stepping over piles of shoes accumulated from years of visits by Dany’s extended family: Vans, Sketchers, sequined flip-flops, size thirteen Rockports, a pair of wooden clogs, and muddy work boots. Analise held onto the faint hope that maybe Penelope had moved on, skipped off to read a forbidden book, but no, she stood unmoving in the foyer.

She loved that her daughter could never let something go until it was repaired. And she hated that her daughter could never just let something go.

Analise extended her arms and went in for a hug. Penelope dodged it.