Juno laughed at this. It wasn’t ironic, nor was it a coincidence. But she wasn’t about to confess that she knew Sam loved Froot Loops. How could she explain why she knew that about him?

“Hey, I’ve gotta go.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the house. Winnie would be getting home; she could tell that Sam was calculating how long it would take him to get around the lake and if he could beat his mother there. He had a dusting of cinnamon freckles across his nose that made Juno’s heart ache in a way it hadn’t in a long time. Marcus, her oldest, had freckles. It had been so many years since she’d seen him, and she had no idea if those freckles still appeared in the spring like the cherry blossoms had. Sam reached for the Froot Loops. Juno watched in amusement as he dropped to a knee and opened his backpack.

“Thanks for the snack, Juno!”

Juno thrilled. He was such a good boy.

She wanted to make the right decision. Sam did not belong to Winnie and Nigel; they’d taken him from a woman named Josalyn Russel. Her story was tragic: a runaway, young and afraid, got pregnant. She must have been terrified. But that meant Sam had a biological family somewhere: aunts and uncles and cousins, maybe even grandparents. Juno would never have the chance to be a grandmother to her grandchildren, and that cut at her heart. What these people had done was unthinkable.

In that moment, she made her decision: she would find these people, the Russels. She needed to see what type of people they were.

Running into Sam had thrown off the timing of her plan, so she spent the night on the west side of the park, too afraid to sleep, but tired all the way down to her joints. It was warmish outside, and from her bench she could see the Turlin Street house and that gave her some comfort. She considered taking something for her pain—the pills in her bag—but Juno preferred being alert in the park at night. As if emerging from some horror movie, an old drunk stumbled by. Juno knew him from the area; Vic, they called him. Angry guy, from what she recalled. She’d always steered clear. Some of them knew you were there and didn’t care to acknowledge it, but other guys—like Vic—they wanted to get right up in your face, make you uncomfortable. People were the same everywhere you went: the suburbs, prison, the gutters of Seattle: everyone was afraid of their own existence. Afraid they were getting it wrong…afraid of what would come after as a consequence. And in Juno’s opinion, that made people act like irrational assholes.