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I can’t even come up with my order, but Tillie has it. “Two coffees. Mine with as much cream as seems reasonable. Gabe likes his black with one sugar cube.”
“How cute,” she says. “Just like ...” She pauses. “His mom! I see it. Or an aunt, maybe?”
Both my gaze and Anita’s shift to her cup. We take our coffee the same way.
“Thank you,” Tillie says, and the girl bounces off.
“I’ve heard of things like this,” Anita says. “Genetic predispositions. I guess we just proved it.” She lifts her cup, but it rattles on the saucer, so she sets it down again.
We’re both nervous.
“How did you know it was me?” I ask.
“You’re the spitting image of your father.” She smiles, but it doesn’t hold, and her eyes are bright with emotion.
“That’s Donahue, then? My father?”
“Yes.”
After this, we sit and hold the silence. The coffee arrives, and I stir it idly.
Finally, Anita says, “I suppose you’ve come to find out why a mother would leave her newborn in the hospital of a foreign country and fly away.”
I clear my throat. “I know some of the story. That you were already pregnant when you arrived on a seasonal work permit. You were a server.You made a lot of ... connections with people there, but nothing would stick. That you tried to nurse and take care of me, but then you bolted.”
Anita draws in a shaky breath. “That’s quite a lot of information you have.”
“It was a big deal at the time. Your name comes up around me way more than you might think.”
“I suppose not many foreigners give birth and run away.” She tries again to lift her cup, and this time gets past the rattle to take a sip.
Tillie watches us both. I’m glad she’s not from La Jarra. Her view of Anita isn’t discolored by decades of rumor.
“I’ve made many mistakes in my life,” Anita says. “Having you wasn’t one of them. But the reality of you in my arms, in a country where I had no friends, no family, no help, was something else.”
“You couldn’t take me with you?”
The cup rattles so hard as she sets it down, I’m sure it will crack. She draws another long breath. “I think maybe I should start at the beginning.”
Chapter 31
ANITA
November 1994
I met Donahue Fitzgerald at a concert in Savannah, Georgia. I was nineteen, rebellious, and had just moved from the oppressive home of my mother and stepfather. I was sick of listening to fights and crying and wanted to be free.
I answered a want ad—we still had those in the nineties—and found a roommate, Miranda. She was wild. Totally crazy. Her boyfriend was a drummer in a band, and I had an instant social life.
I got a fake ID and more than once got kicked out of a bar for dancing on the tables. This is not something I did before Miranda and her crowd. I would never have had the confidence. But we acted crazy, and the friends I made ate it up.
I got spotted by the manager of a gentleman’s club, and not the kind where businessmen sip brandy. He offered me a job, and when I saw the earning potential of that line of work, I jumped on it. It was the best act of rebellion I could think of against my horrible parents. I hoped they learned about it and lost their minds.
One night after work, Miranda told me her boyfriend, Arsenal, was doing a pop-up concert on the rooftop of a building in downtown Savannah, not far from our place.
I had my stripping outfit on under my coat when I met them there. The coat was missing two buttons, so every time the wind blew, you could see my fishnets and the tiny red vinyl skirt.
Most of the working girls were sensible and left the club in sweats unless they were doing a backdoor endgame with a customer. But I liked the feeling of dressing like that. My stepfather would have killed me. I loved the idea that I was wearing it out into the regular world. I felt powerful in it. I was in control.
