I bowed my head and made myself as small as possible. “We’re working on the animation. I got caught in the rain.”

“Your clothes aren’t wet,” she remarked.

“Used his dryer.”

“Are you cold, Maddy? You don’t want to catch a chill.”

“I’m fine.” I burrowed into her again. “Mama?” I began in the voice of someone outdone by the events of the day.

“Ye-ess?” crooned my mother as if she knew what was coming.

“Why did my father leave?”

I felt her arms go heavy and still. “What brought this on?” When I didn’t answer, she said at last: “Well, I don’t know why. Not really.”

“He had to go back home?”

“Yes, I suppose he did. One way or another.”

“But he could have stayed?”

“At the time I thought he could have.”

“Or come back.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he?” It was like talking across an echoey tank. “Didn’t he want a baby?”

Silence across the tank. “I guess he didn’t want one with me.”

“You? He didn’t want you?”

“Not enough, anyway.”

Shivers went up my back that my mother’s patting hand could not reach.

“Were you mad at him?”

“At the time I was. Mad and sad.”

“Are you still?”

“It was a long time ago, Maddy. It’s his loss. Think of everything he missed out on.”

“This?” I pushed away. “This?” Gesturing at the whole of my sorry, invaded self.

“You!” she cried. “He missed out on you.”

I don’t know what my face was doing, but my mother’s had expressions darting across it that I had never seen. She didn’t want to be having this conversation, but one of her principles was that a mother answers her child’s questions truthfully. Maybe that’s why I had never asked her so directly before. We always referred to Antonio in a certain way, as though he were a fairy-tale character whose actions had already been accounted for.

“Well, I am,” I said.

“You are what?”

“Mad and sad.”

“I know you are!” came the instant reply. “Of course you are, Maddy! I’ve known it all along.”

“I wasn’t so much before,” I said. “I didn’t used to think about it. But I do now. All the time.”

I could have told her then, one or both of my secrets. It was the logical thing to do. Antonio was already with us in the room, and there was time to put Jack out there too, like a troubling dream to be aired and given a daytime shape. My mother had that look again, of someone being forced to stare into harsh lights. I held my nerve, swallowing down the dread that filled my throat like laughter. Was it possible? Could I really? It seemed like another girl standing there thinking these thoughts, daring to withhold and to go without.