For a second Ginger looks confused, then surprised. “Didn’t your mom tell you I’m a lawyer? I work in estate law, but I know enough about custody cases to ask the right questions.” She looks at me a beat longer. “She didn’t tell you anything about me, did she?”

“What’s estate law?” I ask instead of admitting that no, my mom has hardly mentioned you in my entire life.

Ginger isn’t fooled, but she answers anyway. “Estate law is managing other people’s assets—houses, property, businesses. It’s your net worth. Whatever you can rightfully call yours.”

I think about my net worth. Borrowed guitar. Donated iPod. Clothes on my back. Imagine having enough that you’d need someone to keep track of it for you. I pick a yellow leaf off the rail of the bridge and tear it into tiny pieces. “Do you talk to my grandparents?”

She laughs, but she doesn’t sound happy. “No. They weren’t exactly thrilled when I got a scholarship to college, or what they called… and I quote… ‘that highfalutin place.’ They felt like I chose school over them.”

“That’s nuts.”

She laughs again. “Yes, nuts is a good word for it. Lou, your grandparents are proud people. But they’re proud about the wrong things. They wanted us both in our rightful places, whatever they decided those were.”

“It doesn’t make sense.” I shake my head.

Ginger picks up her own leaf to shred. “I was a sophomore at the state college back in Arkansas when your mom told me she was going to have you. But she didn’t tell our parents until after she dropped out of her senior year of high school. It was a sticky situation. Next thing I knew, she sent me a postcard from Little Rock saying she’d left home.”

“Did you know my dad?”

This is a sneaky question, and I know it, because Mom has never answered this one either in the handful of times I’ve bugged her about it. But this is already more information than I’ve had on my family in twelve years, and I’m greedy for it. If Ginger’s willing to talk, I’m going to ask.

She sighs. “Did you know I was named after Ginger on Gilligan’s Island? Mama used to call me the red-haired starlet. But your mom, she was the knockout of the family, with that blond hair down to her waist and legs for miles. By the time she turned fifteen, the boys were lined up.” She looks at me sideways. “She always told me she wasn’t sure who your daddy was, and she didn’t want to be sure either.”