I pushed away from the wall. “You’ll have your own babies soon enough. And then you’ll be glad not to have to deal with this one. Like I said, we’ll be fine.”

“Hey, wait,” Zach said, snagged my hand as I moved past him. “If you ever change your mind, and I mean ever, I’m right here. An hour from now, next week, next month, next year. Anytime.” He squeezed my fingers. “You know where to find me.”

I didn’t believe him, not really. No one would willingly let someone implode their life. I had a pretty strong inkling that if I showed up on Zach Logan’s doorstep a year from now, our baby clutched in my arms, he’d march my ass right back down his front walk and deny ever having met me. But the fact that he’d made the offer warmed me. He was a good man, or at least was trying to be one. If I was going to get knocked up by a stranger, I could have done a lot worse.

I had thought that was the end of it. And for a long time, it was. Until first grade when Junie came home talking about her new friend Izzy, how they both had double-jointed fingers and a birthmark on their elbows. Asking with pleading eyes if she could spend the night at Izzy’s house. Please, Mama, please, please, please. And I realized some things will always find their way back to you, no matter how much you wish they’d stay lost.

FIFTEEN

My mama was the last person I expected at my front door the next morning. When the pounding first started, I thought, Reporters. And then, right on the heels of that thought, Jenny. She’d spied those scratches on Zach’s back and was coming over to re-mark her territory. I was braced for a fight I had no interest in winning when I swung open the door, then stood shocked into momentary stillness when my mama marched into my apartment and kicked the door shut behind her. She looked me up and down, shook her head. “At least you aren’t still wearing that potato sack from yesterday. Good God, girl, did you try and find the ugliest dress in the store?”

Given her torn jean shorts and too-small T-shirt emblazoned with a faded skull and crossbones, I didn’t think she had much room to give fashion advice. But I kept my mouth shut, made my weary way toward the kitchen to start the coffee maker.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. She hadn’t been inside my apartment since before Junie’s birth. Had come sniffing around when I was eight months pregnant and barely moved in; Cal paying the first month’s rent for me so I could escape the trailer before the baby was born. I’d told her then she wasn’t welcome in my life anymore, but she’d still shown up at the hospital, drunk and smelling like sex, when Junie was only a day old. Raking me over the coals for not giving birth in the trailer, called me a stuck-up bitch, a weak, spoiled brat thinking I was too good for the midwife who had brought both me and Cal into the world. Ranting loud enough that security had come to escort her away. That had been the first and last time she’d been in the same room with my daughter.