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“What happened to your locket?” he asks, staring at the spot where it should rest, where my hands even now still search.
“I lost it. I can’t believe you remember that.”
His eyes flicker over my face, dancing across my mouth one extra beat. “I remember everything,” he replies, turning away.
I remain in place as his door closes behind him. I wish he hadn’t left quite so fast.
19
KATE
When I wake in the morning, I’m dumbfounded by all the urges I had the night before, by how close I came to acting on them.
But it’s not entirely behind us, either. When he walks inside from his workout, shirtless, gleaming with sweat, there’s a sick twist of desire in my gut.
“Rachel’s coming in today,” Beck warns, pulling out a chair at the counter while I slide his breakfast in front of him. He gulps a scalding cup of coffee like it’s ice water. “So try not to be a dick this time.”
“I wasn’t a dick,” I mutter. “No more so than I usually am.”
“That’s plenty on its own,” he replies just as my phone chimes.
It’s probably Ann, but I check anyway. One of these mornings it will be Caleb, telling me he misses me. Telling me the world is too G-rated without me in it.
The message isn’t from either of them.
Unknown number
Hi, Kate! This is Sarah Decker (it was Dow in college). I got your message on Facebook. Yes, I was roommates with your mom. I’m so sorry to hear she passed away. We lost touch after she left Berkeley, but she was a lot of fun.
I’m guessing there are many people who thought my mother wasa lot of fun. Including, I suppose, my father. For a few minutes, anyway.
“What’s up?” Beck asks.
“It’s from my mom’s college roommate,” I reply, already typing a response.
I’m actually trying to figure out who my father might be. She would have been pregnant by the time she left school. Do you know who she might have been dating?
I don’t remember her dating anyone specific. There was this professor she was obsessed with and possibly seeing, though for obvious reasons, she never gave me his name. He was in economics, maybe?
There’s a whisper up my spine.
Economics. My major. It could be a coincidence, of course, but...it came so easily, felt so natural, was so consistently fascinating to me. Maybe it’s not a coincidence.
Beck waits patiently until I finally glance his way. “My mom was spending a lot of time with some economics professor.”
He frowns. “I wonder if you can still get her class schedule?”
I lean against the counter behind me, defeated already. It’s a total crapshoot and even if they have her schedule, who’s to say he’s my father? My mom was, after all, ‘a lot of fun.’ For all I know, she was even more fun than I was at my worst. Maybe she slept with the entire economics department.
“It seems like a waste of effort. I’m sure they haven’t saved a schedule from 1995.”
He narrows one eye. “A waste of effort or are you just getting uncomfortably close to the truth?”
“I’ll just...” I shrug. “Maybe I’ll take a DNA test.”
He laughs. “Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re lying to me or lying to yourself. Just fucking call the school and ask.”
I flip him off, but once he’s gone, I reluctantly place the call. In a turn of eventsno onecould have predicted, the woman who answers scoffs at my request.
