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The detective cocked his head. “Come again?”
“My father,” said Henry. “She told me once that he was sperm donor. That she didn’t have any idea who he was.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
Henry shrugged. “I guess?”
“Did she say where the sperm bank was?”
“No.”
“No,” echoed West. “Of course not.”
“I’m sorry.”
The older man blew out a breath, rubbed at his wide neck. Henry noticed that there was a small stain on his tie, looked like ketchup.
“Nothing to be sorry for, son. I’m going to figure this out for you. Who you are, who your mom was, what happened to her. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Henry. But Henry didn’t believe him. Because Henry was a ghost, and he knew it.
“Is there anything else, Henry? Any other detail you can share about your mother that might help us?”
Henry shook his head. There were a million little details—that sometimes she stayed in the shower for more than an hour, that she liked old movies, that she tucked him in every night, read to him from the newspaper, always made sure he had a good breakfast, did his homework, had the things he needed. But that there was something—wrong. Something missing between them. He didn’t have any words for that.
When he didn’t say anything else, the detective handed him a card. “Sometimes things come back. Like that diner name. Those are the kind of things that might help me, okay?”
He promised the old detective, who he could see was trying hard to understand the puzzle in front of him, that he would think and call if anything else came back to him. He would.
Back at Miss Gail’s, he found Piper sitting on the front steps waiting for him. Her house wasn’t far. He’d go back to the same school, Miss Gail told him, when he was ready. He was ready. He’d go back on Monday. Alice would say:No use sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.
He went to sit next to Piper.
“How is it?”
She looked back at the big Victorian which was rundown a little but still managed to look well-kept and cheerful with big planters filled with flowering bushes, rockers with red cushions on the porch, checkered curtains, stained glass in the front door.
“Not bad.”
She nodded, her hair shining in the afternoon sun. She rubbed at her nose which was covered, like her cheeks, with a wild smattering of freckles. Rangy, the fastest runner at school, bold, full of laughter, Piper was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen.
“You haven’t cried,” she said. “Not once. My mom said you hold it all inside. That you need to let it out—all that sadness. That it will make you sick if you don’t.”
He wanted to tell her that he didn’t feel anything at all. Her mom was wrong. He wasn’t holding anything in. There was nothing there. But he sensed that it might frighten her. It frightened him.
“I cried. Some,” he lied.
She seemed satisfied with that.
“You’re an orphan now.” She said it easily, with a touch of wonder. A thing that was true and couldn’t hurt because of its essential truth. She was a practical girl; he understood her. Butwasit true, if his father was out there somewhere? Maybe orphan just meant that no one cared more about you than they cared about anything else. That much was true now that Alice was gone.
“Yeah.”
She held out her hand and she took it. “Don’t worry. You’ll always have me.”
He wondered ifthatwas true.
17
