“Is it a good thing?” asked Natalie.

“What it is,” Mom said, finally looking up, “is none of her goddamn business.”

Natalie always felt a little forbidden thrill when her mother swore. She didn’t do it often, because she said too much swearing watered down the effect.

“Can I tell her that?”

“Sure, but brace yourself for the reaction.” Mom carefully placed the book in the case, laying it open to a page with an illustration of a bird. Then she went over to the coffee area and gave Natalie a cookie from Sugar, the bakery across the street, and poured her a glass of cold milk. It was their afternoon ritual each day when Natalie got home from school.

Blythe set the tray on a tiny table in the coffee area. She often said she wanted to make more room for coffee to serve to customers but didn’t want to sacrifice shelf space for the books. “I love our family. And I know you do, too. Just because it’s not like other families doesn’t mean a thing. It certainly doesn’t mean we are freaks.”

Natalie took the city bus to school. Her friends had carpools, some of them with drivers in polished chauffeur’s livery. Mom didn’t even have a car. Natalie’s friends all had fathers. Or stepfathers. Or two mothers. Or two dads. She had only ever met her birth father a couple of times. His name was Dean Fogarty, and she didn’t like him much. Mainly because he didn’t seem to like her. Mom called him her biggest mistake that had resulted in her greatest accomplishment. “He gave me you, Nat,” Mom would say. “So I can never have any regrets.”

Natalie took a bite of the soft, sugared ginger-molasses cookie. She wasn’t sure being someone’s greatest accomplishment was as important as it sounded.

“We had to draw a picture of our family and I felt weird about it.” She took her sketch out of her backpack and laid it on the counter. She had drawn the people as precisely as she could—her mother’s wavy black hair, Grandy’s wonderful height, her own missing front tooth, May Lin’s half-moon smile, and Gilly the shop cat, curled into a marmalade-colored ball.

“What made you feel weird?”