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choice," Mom said. "Dwayne wouldn't give permission. He wouldn't budge."
    "But couldn't you have sued him or something?" I asked. "How could he have any legal rights if he didn't have any contact with me?"
    "I'd hear from him," Mom said. "Around your birthday usually. A couple of times at Christmas. A couple of times for no occasion. He'd send a little money to buy you a present."
    "What did you do with the money?" I asked.
    "What do you think I did with it?" Mom snapped back. "Bought myself diamonds? If the money came before your birthday, before Christmas, I bought you a present. If the money came too late, I used it on clothes for you. Trust me, ten bucks once or twice a year doesn't go very far."
    "But he remembered me," I said. "He remembered my birthday. And you didn't tell me."
    "Don't second-guess me right now," Mom said. "Just don't, Willa. I'm exhausted and I don't need that. In a good year, he remembered you twice. Jack remembered you every single day. Jack read to you at night and chased away your nightmares and cried at your middle-school graduation. Jack's been a wonderful father to you."
    "I love Jack," I said. "You know I do. It's just..."
    "It's just what?" Mom said. "That you feel deprived because I kept you from your drunken, murdering daddy?"
    "I do have another question," I said. "Do I look like Budge? Is that who I look like?"
    "Yes, you do," Mom said. "You have his mouth. You have his eyes."

Six
    I WOKE UP EARLY the next morning, peeked into the living room area, and saw Mom sleeping on the sofa. She hadn't even opened the mattress, just stretched out on the sofa and slept there instead.
    There was no way of knowing when she'd fallen asleep. It wasn't like we'd sat around chatting. I'd gone into my room and she'd stayed in hers, and we both watched TV. Different shows, though.
    I tiptoed back to my bedroom and turned the TV on to one of the cable news networks. It took about twenty minutes before the early-morning anchor said, "There's a new development in the story we've been covering of four-year-old Krissi Coffey, missing since the murder of her mother and two sisters in the small town of Pryor, Texas, two days ago. It was reported that a man fitting the description of Krissi's father, Dwayne Coffey, was seen taking a young child into a restroom at a gas station in Clayton, Ohio, late last night."
    They showed a picture, like one of those Sears family portraits, of three little girls.
My sisters,
I thought. Three little blond girls, one slightly older than the other two. None of them had my mouth, my eyes.
    "It's uncertain if the man was Dwayne Coffey, a person of interest in the murder of his wife and two of his children, or if the little girl was Krissi Coffey."
    They showed a police officer then, saying, "We can confirm the deaths of Crystal Danielle Coffey, age twenty-five, her daughters Kelli Marie, age six, and Kadi Coffey, age four. Her husband, Dwayne Coffey, age thirty-seven, is wanted for questioning."
    They cut then to a picture of Dwayne Budge-Not-Daddy Coffey. The man with my mouth, my eyes.
    It was some kind of ID picture, but not a mug shot. Not a great picture, but you could see what he looked like, if not who he was.
    Mom had been right. I did look like him. The shape of our faces, the way our mouths turned down so we always look sad even when we aren't.
    Maybe he was sad. I had no way of knowing.
    "Willa?"
    I turned off the TV, feeling as guilty as if I'd committed a crime.
    "I'm here, Mom," I said, opening the door and showing her that I was still alive, still part of her life.
    "I heard the TV," she said. "Were you watching the news?"
    "Yes, Mom," I said. "They may have spotted them in Ohio. A man took a little girl to a restroom in Ohio."
    "Men take their little daughters to restrooms all the time," Mom said. "Why assume it's them?"
    "I don't know, Mom," I said. "They have pictures of them. I guess they've been showing the pictures on TV, and someone saw them."
    "What does he