“Sorry. But you’re so tense you look like you might just break in half,” Maggie said. “Please, try to take some deep breaths and relax. You’re going to give yourself high blood pressure.”

“I know. I’m trying.” Quinn knew she wasn’t very good company, but Maggie couldn’t possibly understand. Maggie knew her entire family history. How could she know the deep sense of longing that came with feeling as though you had no one in the world who shared your blood? Or they were out there somewhere, but unreachable?

This wasn’t just a regular meeting for her. It was everything.

Unless it was nothing.

Quinn’s phone rang, and she jumped. She fumbled in her bag until she found it, then looked at the screen. It was Auntie Wang.

“Hello?”

“Quinn, this is Wang,” the old woman said. “Are you still at the restaurant?”

“Yes. He hasn’t shown up,” Quinn said, trying to keep her voice steady. Something about the motherly figure Auntie Wang presented made her emotions bubble to the surface.

“I know,” she said. “He sent me an email. He came, saw you, and then left.”

Quinn didn’t know what to say. He had been there? Watching her? Her skin tingled eerily.

“Why did he leave?” she finally asked. She scrolled through images in her head, trying to remember every male who had come around their table or walked up the ramp. No one had looked suspicious. She hadn’t caught anyone staring at her. And she’d been looking, scrutinizing every man.

“He just said he wasn’t ready,” Auntie Wang said.

He wasn’t ready? What about her? If he was her father, he was abandoning her once again. How many times in her life was she going to have to experience that feeling?

Auntie Wang cut into her thoughts, breathless as she spoke faster than normal. “But listen, Quinn. It doesn’t matter. I think I stumbled upon the direct path to the truth.”

The truth.

Two words that held so much promise. And this time, Wang’s words sent goose bumps creeping up Quinn’s arms. Could that mean something? Was the universe trying to tell her that this was really it this time?

“Just a minute, Auntie Wang, I can’t hear you well enough.”

Quinn signaled to Maggie that she was going to walk outside, away from the clattering sounds of dining around them. When she got outside, she turned away from the beach and went to stand under a huge banyan tree on the path leading to the parking lot.

“What do you mean by the truth?” Quinn was beginning to believe she’d never know the truth of who she was. And this person claimed to have it? Sounded too good to be true.