Caddie stood up. “You’ll never know who I am,” she said harshly. “Because I’m not you. And you’re the only thing you care about. Oh, except maybe for your stupid nudibranchs. Why don’t you just stick with them?”

She rushed from the room, stomping up the stairs, deliberately hitting each step with a forceful “clop” of her clogs. Then she was in the bathroom with the water streaming into the sink. It was too hot, but she didn’t temper it with cold. She scrubbed her hands until they were raw and red. Only then did she turn the cold tap on and try to soothe the burning on her skin.

As she let the water run she looked into the mirror. Her face was red from the sun; she’d forgotten to apply sunscreen before going diving, and now she had an angry-looking burn. It was going to peel, she could tell.

She touched her nose gingerly with one finger, testing it for pain. The skin was hot, as if the sun were trapped beneath it. She ran her finger down the length of her nose, then pulled it away and looked at herself.

She didn’t resemble her mother. Her nose was wider, her lips fuller, and her cheekbones higher. Her eyes, too, were dissimilar. When she was younger it had bothered her a little. She used to look in the mirror, searching for some proof that she had come from the woman who claimed to be her mother. For a time—her fantasies fueled by watching one too many made-for-Lifetime movies—she had thought she might be adopted, even stolen from some other family.

Looking at herself now, she knew why she didn’t have her mother’s features. She had her father’s. When she looked at her nose, she saw his nose. Her mouth, her cheekbones, even her eye color—they all belonged to him. Only her hair was her own. She grabbed it in her fists, pulled it across her face so that her features were hidden behind it. She peered out through the thicket of curls, and her eye stared back at her.

You can’t hide who you are, she thought.

She let go of her hair, and it fell back. Revealed, her face looked back at her accusingly. She scrunched up her nose, pushing the tip up with her finger so that she appeared to have a snout. Even your teeth look like his, she thought, noting the slightly crooked eye teeth on either side of her mouth. They were longer than the others, and pointed. She hated them, but her orthodontist wouldn’t file them down, citing the potential for damage to the nerves. It was something else to blame her father for, she realized, adding it to the list of grievances she carried in her head.