“They weren’t even one yet,” Lucy said. “To them, Claire’s always been Mom. But to me, I had a mom, and Aunt Claire was always Aunt Claire.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. She’s great. And I should be over it by now.” Lucy stared into space for a moment before snapping her attention back to him. “What about you? You said you’d just found out you were adopted?”

He nodded. “Yeah, a few weeks ago. For those few weeks, I thought my biological mom was alive. Now I find out she’s gone so…yeah.”

Lucy covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry. You lost your mom in the plane crash too.”

“What did people say about her? What was she like?” asked Marty.

Lucy sat back, squinting her eyes, deep in thought. “I don’t know. When I was younger, no one really talked about her – except for Claire. She’d talk about everyone who’d died in the crash, tell us their favorite movies and foods. She tried to keep us connected, you know?”

Marty nodded. “That’s nice.”

“Then when I got older, things started slipping out,” Lucy said. “From other people, I mean. They’d say that your mom was fun, and wild, and that she had an addiction problem.”

“Ah.” Marty nodded. “When she was living with my parents – my adoptive parents – I think she was healthy. They said she just seemed sad.”

“Really?” Lucy pondered this for a moment. “Maybe she should’ve stayed with them and not gone to that rehab. Things might’ve all turned out differently.”

Marty hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe.”

“When were you born?”

He cleared his throat. “November 7th, 1992.”

“Right, so just a few months before the crash.” Lucy waved a hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to say stuff like that. It just pops in my head – other possible lives. You know?”

He smiled. “Yeah.”

“That was dumb, I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “I’m pretty sure Aunt Becca called Grandma and asked for help, actually. Becca said she’d been doing great, but it all fell apart and she didn’t know where to go.”

He frowned. He felt sorry for his mother. Giving him up must’ve been hard on her. Or at least, that’s what he’d like to believe – that he wasn’t easy to leave behind.

Lucy proceeded to tell him about the rest of her life. She and her sisters went to public school, and true to what Claire had said, it didn’t seem like they’d ever had much money.

Lucy got into college “by the skin of her teeth,” as she put it, and was open about her struggles.