Aimee swings the door open. “Hey, Dels.” Then she gets serious. “Wow. You look like you need water. You want water?”

I nod furiously.

“Come on in.”

“No. I have to talk to you. Outside.”

She looks worried. “Okay.”

When she comes back out with my water, I stop thinking about how to say it and just start talking. “You know how at every open house at school, when the teacher meets your mom, they tell her, ‘Oh! Your daughter looks just like you. She’s your Mini-Me.’ And you smile because your mom is pretty great?”

“Yeah . . .”

“And you know how every spring you complain because you have to wear a dress and go to the father-daughter dance? But you always have fun?”

“Yeah . . .”

“You know how you wanted to know what it’s like to be an orphan? For real?”

“I’m sorry, Dels. I shouldn’t have asked that. I was just so excited—”

“It’s okay, Aims. I’m not mad at you. I just didn’t know how to answer, that’s all. But that’s the answer. Never in my life will I go to a father-daughter dance. And no one will ever call me their daughter, and I’ll never get to call anyone Mom. That’s what it’s like.”

My hands curl into fists and my voice cracks as I feel the anger hit me like a giant swell in the water. I try to hold it all, but I think I’m doing a terrible job of it.

Even so, Aimee stands shoulder to shoulder with me. “Gee, Dels. That ‘Tomorrow’ song probably doesn’t cut it, huh? ‘The sun will come out tomorrow’ and ‘bet your bottom dollar’ and all that. It’s terrible, isn’t it? I mean, really terrible.”

And we laugh. And it makes me feel so much better.

Chapter 20

SEEDS THAT GROW AND SEEDS THAT DON’T

I talk to Ronan on the phone and tell him I’m okay. He says he can come over for a Monopoly game, but I say maybe tomorrow. Instead, I share popcorn with Grammy on the couch and watch the Game Show Network. We like seeing happy people win things.

It’s raining the next morning, and when I wake, I stay in bed and try to hold on to a dream I had of Papa Joseph. We were out searching for old coins with his metal detector.

One of our favorite things to do after a storm was to head to the beach to see what we could find, because a hard rain helps the metal detector pick up signals. We’d see other “detectors” down there, but Papa knew that searching along the walls after a storm was a good way to find things. We found lots of coins—mostly new money but also some buffalo nickels and a silver dollar from the bicentennial.

Papa also loved to go to wooded areas around Concord and Lexington. We found some pieces of metal that could have been musket balls from the Revolutionary War. He was so excited. But he wouldn’t take them to a dealer. I think he was afraid he’d find out they weren’t anything and he’d rather just keep them and hope.