And she was really enjoying talking to someone who didn’t tell her God would solve her problems.

“I could have… I can’t think of anything else.” My sister waited for my reaction.

“Neither can I. I guess you had an impulse, and you acted on it, and it didn’t turn out well for you. What happened to Lindsay?”

“She lost four recesses,” Mariella said. “For being a bully.”

“So that was good, right?”

“Yeah. But it would have been better if she’d kept her mouth shut in the first place.”

Whoa. Little warrior woman. “You’re right about that. It’s not your fault that your birth dad used drugs. You know that. But there are some kids who don’t understand what it’s like to have parents who do bad things. Those kids are lucky, but they can’t seem to get that it’s nothing you want to talk about. They just know it’ll make you feel bad. So when they want you to feel bad, that’s the first thing they’re going to throw at you.” I took a deep breath. “We went through that, too, Mariella. Tolliver and me. When you were really little. Everyone at the school knew how crappy our parents were.”

“Even the teachers?”

“Maybe not the teachers. I don’t know how much they guessed. But the other kids, they all knew. Some of them bought drugs at our trailer.”

“So they said mean stuff to you?”

“Yeah, some of them. Others thought we were doing the same bad stuff your mom and dad were. Drugs and stuff.”

“Sex stuff?”

“That, too. But the kids who thought we were the same as our folks? Those were the kids that didn’t really know us. We had friends who knew better.” Not too many, but a few.

“So, did you date?”

Whoa! She wasn’t even having periods yet. Right? I almost panicked. “Yes, I dated. And I never went out with a boy who thought I was going to have sex with him right away. The more careful you are, the more reputation you get for being the other way, being very…”

“Holding out,” Mariella said knowledgeably.

“Not even that,” I said. “Because if you say ‘holding out,’ that means you’re going to give it up someday, that you’re just waiting for some boy to say the right thing to unlock your legs. You can’t even let that be a possibility.” I knew Iona would explode if she could hear this conversation. But that was why my sister was having it with me, not Iona.

“But then no one will date you.”

This was simply awful. “Then to heck with them,” I said, recalling just in time to rein in my language. “You don’t need to go out with a guy who’s sure you’re going to give him sex if he goes out with you long enough.”

“Why are they gonna go out with you, then?” she said, looking baffled.

That was nothing compared to the way I felt. “A boy should go out with you because he likes your company,” I said. “Because you laugh at the same things, or you’re interested in the same things.” At least, that was the theory. Was it ever that way in practice? And it shouldn’t even be arising at Mariella’s age, which was what? Twelve?

“So he should be your friend.”

“Yes. He should be your friend.”

“Is Tolliver your friend?”

“Yes, he’s my best friend.”

“But you’re, you know…”

She couldn’t quite bring herself to say the words, and I could only be thankful for that.

“That’s kind of our business,” I said. “When it’s the real thing, it means so much you don’t want to talk about it with other people.”

“Oh.” Mariella looked thoughtful. I hoped she was. I hoped I hadn’t just committed a colossal blunder. I’d told her not to have sex with the boys she was going to date. Then I hadn’t contradicted her assumption that Tolliver and I were doing that very thing. I felt totally inadequate.

I was so glad to see Tolliver and Gracie waiting for us, I found myself hurrying toward them. Tolliver gave me a funny look, but Gracie was simply impatient.

“Let’s get our skates!” she said. “I want to skate!”

After we’d all put on our skates and Tolliver and I’d helped the girls out onto the rink floor, then seen that they were okay when they stuck to the wall railing, we skated off to do a round by ourselves. We held hands and went slowly at first, because it had been a good eight years since either of us had skated. There’d been a rink within walking distance of the trailer, and since it hadn’t cost too much at the time, we’d spent hours there.

We enjoyed a few rounds together, and then we went back to our sisters, who were already arguing about who was doing the best. Tolliver took Mariella and I took Gracie, and we got them away from the wall and went around with them, slowly and carefully. I couldn’t stop Gracie from falling once, and another time she took me down with her, but she was improving by the time we called it quits. Mariella, who’d played basketball at one of the after-school clubs for kids, had fared a lot better, and she was inclined to brag about it until Tolliver cut her short.

We were coming off the floor, laughing, when I realized someone was watching us: a gray-haired man about five foot eleven, pumped up and muscular. My eyes passed over him once, and then came back to his face. I knew him. I looked right into his dark eyes.

“Hello, Dad,” Tolliver said.

Five

OUR sisters shrunk closer to us, their eyes fixed on their biological father with-at least on Gracie’s part-a mixture of loathing and longing. Mariella seemed more hostile. Her little hands had clenched into fists.

He wasn’t my father. My feelings were relatively unmixed. “Matthew,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

He’d been looking at Tolliver and Mariella, his eyes avid. He glanced at me briefly, without affection. Gracie shrunk behind me. “I wanted to see my kids,” he said. “All of them.”

There was a long moment of silence. I digested the fact that his voice was clear: no slurring, coherent. Maybe he wasn’t using, as he’d told Mark; though I knew it was only a matter of time before he reverted to his old ways.

“But we don’t want to see you,” Tolliver said, keeping his voice carefully hushed. We drew aside, to get out of the way of other skaters. “We didn’t answer the feelers you put out through Mark. I didn’t answer your letters. I’m willing to bet Iona hasn’t given you permission to see the girls, and she’s their legal mom now. Hank’s their legal dad.”

“But I’m their real father,” Matthew said.

“You gave them up,” I reminded him, giving each word a lot of weight.

“There was a lot of pressure.” He reached out as if he wanted to stroke Mariella’s hair, but she flinched back, still gripping her brother’s hand as if she would lose him if she let go.

The rink wasn’t really crowded, but people had begun to cast sideways glances at our tense little group. I didn’t give a damn about the spectators, but the last thing I wanted was any confrontation, physical or verbal, in front of the girls.

“You need to leave,” I said. “We’re taking the girls back to their home right now. You’ve ruined our good time. Don’t make it any worse.”

“I want to see my children,” he said again.

“You’re looking at ’em. You’ve seen them. Now go.”

“I’m only leaving because of the little ones,” he said, nodding toward Mariella and Gracie, who were confused and miserable. “I’ll see you again soon, Tolliver.” And he turned on his heel and left the rink.

“He followed us,” I said stupidly.

“I guess he was waiting somewhere around Iona ’s house,” Tolliver said. We stared at each other, silently postponing more discussion. Simultaneously, we took deep breaths. It would have been funny if we hadn’t been so jangled.

“Well,” I said to my sisters, trying to sound brisk and upbeat, “I’m glad that’s over. We’ll talk to your mom about this, okay, tell her all about it? It won’t happen again. We had a good time until this happened, right?” I sounded like an idiot, but at least the girls began stirring, removing their skates. They stopped looking quite so much like deer in headlights.