I rolled onto my side and smoothed his hair. I did it the way a mother might, if he still had a mother. I said, “Once, my mother was a girl of fifteen. Just like our very own Emma. She met a boy at a party, and soon she found out that she was . . . going to have a baby.”

“You?”

“Me,” I said. “Yes. They didn’t mean for it to happen, but sometimes people make mistakes. She knew she wanted to have me, but she didn’t know if the boy should be my father.

“She decided to give him three tests. If he passed them all, the answer would be yes.

“She called him up to see if he wanted to go to the movies, and he did. He drove to her house, wearing clean clothes, and knocked on her front door instead of waiting outside. That was the first test, and he passed it.

“When it was time to buy tickets, she said, ‘I invited you to the movies, so I’m paying.’ The boy put his wallet away and smiled and thanked her. That was the second test, and he passed it, too.

“Once the lights went dark in the theater, the boy kissed her. She kissed him back, but then turned to the screen when the movie started. He put his hands on her. ‘Let’s watch the movie,’ she said. She already knew what his hands on her body felt like. She needed to learn other things about him.

“When the movie was almost over, she knew it was time for the third and final test. She found his hand in the dark and squeezed it. She wanted to know—Was this boy patient? But instead of squeezing back, his hand sat limp in hers as punishment. And so, after the movie was over, she said goodbye and never saw him again.”

“Then what happened?”

“Her daughter was born and raised by her mother and her grammy and grandpa. She grew to be a girl, and they were mostly happy, most of the time. Life was simple and good.”

“And then what?”

But I couldn’t tell him the rest, even as it unspooled in my mind. I looked up at the sky and let the story continue, but only silently now, only for myself.

My mother met a man who lived in a skeleton house, cold enough in wintertime that he spent the nights drinking coffee at the diner where she worked. Night after night, she refilled his coffee cup. They found places to be alone together, did the things people do when they are falling in love. She invited him home to meet her family. In he walked, tall and strong in a green flannel shirt meant to accentuate his eyes. He smiled and flattered, but my grandparents saw something in him that felt dirty and dangerous, and they told my mother not to bring him back.