The computer won’t help me. My father can’t. But there is one person I can think of who can help me understand. She might not have wanted to talk to me before, but I’m not going to give her the option of turning her back on me again.

Eleven

I hurry upstairs and do a search for the address of Kacee Anderson—my mother’s friend from work—the one I spotted when I was there the other day. She hugged me at my mother’s funeral. She promised she would be there if we needed her, and yet she pretended not to see me when I was at the City Pride Department this week. It’s time to find out why.

I hide the Stewards’ books, leave my father a message on the kitchen tablet letting him know I’ll be out for the day in case he gets home before I do, and quietly slip out the back door so the men in the car out front won’t see me.

The trip to Kacee’s condominium building, which has a view of the sun-kissed, sparkling sapphire lake takes twice as long as I zigzag up and down alleys and side streets to make sure no one is following behind. I’m drenched with sweat and quivering as I climb off my bicycle and awkwardly navigate wheeling it into the building’s oak-paneled entryway. I punch the apartment number into the keypad and wait as the intercom signals Kacee upstairs.

“Hello?” a young girl’s voice chirps.

“Hi . . . April,” I say, digging up the foggy memory of the little girl I’d seen smiling from Kacee Anderson’s personal screen. “Is your mom around?”

The girl babbles something incomprehensible before yelling, “Mommy!”

The intercom crackles, and a few seconds later I hear a warm, familiar voice ask, “Who is it?”

“It’s Meri Beckley, Mrs. Anderson. I need to talk to you.”

A woman with a cotton-candy-pink double-wide stroller rolls down the sidewalk. Somewhere cars protest something with offended honks. Finally, the door-lock buzzer sounds and Mrs. Anderson instructs me to come up.

I leave my bike in the lobby and press the elevator panel for the twelfth floor. A short, sandy-haired man and a skipping girl in a yellow dress with matching hair bows are coming out of a door just down the hall as I step off the elevator.

“You guys play on the swings,” Kacee calls to them from the open doorway. “I’ll be right behind you with the picnic.” Her eyes meet mine. “Ten minutes. Tops.”

“Don’t worry about us, right, Munchkin?” The man tousles the girl’s hair and gives me a smile dripping with the pity that I despise. “Maybe there will be some ducks for us to feed.”

“Duck, Daddy. Duck,” the girl babbles. Kacee waves and smiles as they get on the elevator. When her family disappears, both her hand and smile drop. “Come inside,” she says. She then turns her back and heads into the apartment.

“You don’t seem surprised I’m here,” I say, following her inside. The Andersons’ living room is colorful, with a pink dollhouse and at least a dozen dolls of varying colors, sizes, and hairstyles sitting in the middle of the floor.