Free About a Girl by Sarah McCarry Page A

mine to tell,” he said.
    “Then it’s her fault for not telling me.”
    “I’ve brought that up with her before.” I looked at him with new interest; they’d always presented a united front, but whatever I had started had caused Raoul to split ranks in my presence for the first time.
    “Do you think Jack might be—” I was almost afraid to say it out loud. “Do you think he might be my father? I mean, could he be?”
    I’d surprised him. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ve never—that’s never even occurred to me. But I barely knew Aurora, and I never saw her again after she went—” He paused. “After she went away. I don’t know if anyone knew her, to be honest. Maybe your aunt.”
    “Who would want to know her? She was a jerk.”
    “You could look at it like that, yes. She was never happy, in the time that I knew her.”
    “She gave me away, Raoul.”
    “I know, sweetheart. I know. I’m so sorry you’ve had to grow up with that. But from where she was, it probably looked like the best thing to do.”
    “Where could she have possibly been that leaving her kid behind seemed like a good idea?”
    “She was in hell,” he said simply.
    I kicked at the floor. “I’m not ever going to forgive her,” I said.
    “I don’t blame you, and you don’t have to. But I don’t think she didn’t love you. I think she knew she couldn’t take care of you. She didn’t leave you just anywhere; she left you with us. She left you with the most responsible people she knew—”
    “The only responsible people she knew.”
    “Probably,” Raoul conceded. “But she left you with us because she knew we would love you, and she knew we would take care of you.”
    “She foisted me off on you.”
    “I know it feels like that to you. But that’s certainly not what it felt like to us—we loved you the moment we saw you. If Aurora were here, I’d thank her every day for leaving you with us. But for her—I don’t think that’s how she saw it, either, as hard as that might be to believe. I think for her it looked like the best decision she could have made, under the circumstances.”
    “It was a terrible decision.”
    “Sometimes all the decisions available are terrible decisions.”
    “That’s not true at all,” I said. “Everybody has a choice, all the time—anyone can make good decisions. You just have to want to.”
    “You might find out as you get older that things are more complicated than that.”
    “Now you’re patronizing me.”
    “I wouldn’t dream of patronizing you, Tally.” He paused. “Have you heard from Sh—”
    “ No, ” I said, so fiercely that he bit down on the end of the word and looked at his plate.
    “I’m sure he’ll—”
    “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Very well,” he said. “Can you pass me the salt?”
    Long after I turned out the light that night I looked up at the faint glow of my ceiling constellations, wishing there was some map in them that could navigate me like a sailor safely through what lay ahead.
    When I finally fell asleep I dreamed of the girl I’d seen in Mr. M’s apartment, the girl I’d seen on my birthday: I was running after her, through a forest in the dead of night, running barefoot, leafless branches white as bone clacking all around me although there was no breeze. “Wait!” I called after her. “Please wait!” However far we’ve come / you were ever the only one. But she did not turn or slow, and though I was running as fast as I could she drew away from me, vanishing among the trees. I tripped and fell, landing hard on my hands, panting—and then a terrifying howl split the darkness, once, twice, three times—something coming closer through the trees—“No!” I shrieked aloud, and woke myself up, frantic and tangled in the sheets, soaked in sweat. It took me a long time to fall asleep again.
    The night before I left I considered calling Shane, and then squashed that foul treachery of a thought like a