The words slipped as effortlessly from my lips as they did through the holes in the receiver. Leah was quiet again. Daryl crossed his arms behind his back and was softly hitting his fingertips against the glass. I closed my eyes and held my breath until it matched the rhythm he was tapping.

“What’s in it for you, anyway?”

“Excuse me?” As if she didn’t understand.

“I said, what’s in it for you?”

“I heard you the first time.” Her voice was flat, which for some reason filled me with rage.

“My mother gets to live like the world revolves around her and you get to have the daughter you’ve always wanted. Is that what this is all about?”

There was a quick gasp that reminded me of what I sounded like when I got hit in the stomach with a dodge ball in gym class—the wind, totally knocked out of me. Then there was silence.

“That’s enough,” she said.

But it wasn’t. It bubbled up inside of me and I knew that it would never be enough.

“Enjoy it while you can, because I am coming back for my sister. She doesn’t belong to you and I am going to come back for her. ”

“Goodbye, Matilda.”

I slammed the phone down hard, disconnecting from her first. I inhaled deeply, gloriously impervious to the stench of pee, but my body betrayed me, and I felt a sliver of weakness start to make its way up. I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve and shook the door to let Daryl know I wanted to get out. He eyed me up and down, seemingly expecting my expression to somehow give it all away.

“Well?” he asked as I brushed past him.

“Well, what?”

“Did she tell you? Your father’s name?”

“No.”

“His name is Tim. Timothy Yaga. I looked it up.”

He smiled, shaking his head back and forth, enjoying my obvious look of surprise.

“You knew? Why did you just let me waste my time calling Leah?”

“Because I thought maybe you should hear it from someone who’s actually involved in this whole thing,” he said with a slight shrug.

I didn’t know what to say, though I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell him that I had found a copy of my birth certificate in my mother’s nightstand drawer when I was eight, but that my father’s name had been blackened out. I was going to tell him that it didn’t matter anyway and that he was an idiot if he thought that the answer to all of this would be contained in a three-minute phone call to Leah or that there was anything my father could do to fix things. More than anything, I wanted to wipe that smug look off of his face.