“Yeah. When we were around twelve. I had come over to stay the night, and you and I got into a fight. Your mom was upstairs talking to you, and your dad gave me a soda in the kitchen. He said that being your friend would never be easy, because you were always going to trust yourself more than you trusted anyone else. He said you were just like your mother in that way.”

It’s strange hearing something about my dad that I didn’t know. Something I’m willing to believe, anyway. Something that makes me sad in a good way.

“I pretended I knew what that meant,” Amira says. “But I didn’t really. I don’t think I truly understood what he was saying until just now.”

I pull the plastic wrap from the plate I brought and take a cookie from the pile. “Well, maybe you can explain it to me.”

“I think he meant that you’re never going to be good with faith. In other people, or in anything else. And he’s right. It’s not that you don’t believe what other people tell you. It’s that you can only truly trust things you find out for yourself.”

“Great. I am just like my mother.”

“I don’t know her well enough to say that. But your dad was right about you.” Amira takes a cookie. “So, what did you find out for yourself that made you believe me?”

“Wow. When you put it like that, I sound like a real jerk.”

She shrugs and takes a bite.

“Penn’s paternity test came back negative.”

Amira frowns. “That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be my baby. Just that it isn’t his.”

“I know. But the only reason I thought it might be yours was that you slept with him, and Lullaby Doe was found wrapped in his shirt. So there’s nothing left linking you to the baby.”

“Well, as long as you’re satisfied,” she says, brushing crumbs from the front of her shirt.

“Like I said. I’m a jerk.” And she has every right to stay mad at me.

“At one point or another, we each suspected the other of the same thing. So why don’t we call it even and just move on?”

“Yes. Thank you.” I break another cookie in half and hand her one of the pieces. “I’ve missed you this year.”

She takes a bite, then she covers her mouth as she speaks around it. “You had Jake.”

Hopefully I still have Jake. Hopefully I haven’t quite screwed that up beyond repair. “Yeah. But that’s not the same.”

Amira had Sophia and Cabrini, and it may be selfish of me, but I hope that wasn’t the same for her either. I hope she missed me.