“Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Elena defended herself. “How could I accuse Aunt Sadie and Nana Lisbeth of lying? Years and years after he left? I had no evidence. Just that one comment from Tina. Truly I didn’t know anything.”

  Questions swirled in May’s mind. She couldn’t settle on one. You are not who you thought you were pounded in her mind.

  Elena asked, “Why did he come back now? What’s he like?”

  May teared up. “He didn’t act anything like the father I dreamed of. And my mother chased him off so quickly that I didn’t get to ask him a single question.”

  May got quiet. She replayed the scene in her mind. It happened so fast that she didn’t easily remember the conversation, only her flood of emotion. Had her mother actually chased him off? Or had he left when he got his question answered?

  Finally May explained, “He asked her to sign papers so they could both become United States citizens. Apparently, they are still married. When do you suppose they last saw each other?”

  Elena thought for a moment and then asked, “You were born in 1894?”

  May nodded.

  “You were not walking when he returned. I can’t say if your mother saw him since then, but I think summer of ’95 was the last time I saw him.”

  “Momma said, ‘Over twenty years without a word.’ Why would he abandon us?” May asked.

  “I don’t know.” Elena shrugged then reassured, “But you are welcome to stay here while you solve your mystery.”

  “Thank you,” May replied. She was grateful to Elena for her generosity, and yet frustrated to need a place to stay once again. Elena smiled back and stood up to work on supper. She placed a bag of green beans, a cutting board, and a knife in front of May.

  May gazed at Kay Lynn. Could her anger get into her daughter through her breast milk? What a strange thought. Kay Lynn grinned up at her, causing thin milky liquid to stream out the corners of her lips. May smiled back. She would do anything for Kay Lynn. Didn’t her mother feel the same way?

  She sat Kay Lynn up and kissed her sweet cheeks. They grinned at each other. There was nothing as delightful as Kay Lynn’s smiles. May rubbed her daughter’s back to bring up a bubble. Elena laughed when it came out loud and long.

  “That girl can burp like an old man!” Elena declared.

  May laughed too. She tied Kay Lynn on her to free up her hands and got to work washing the vegetables.

  As the soothing, warm water ran over her hands, May was struck hard by the realization that no one else could solve this situation for her, nor did anyone else care as much as she did. Elena was supportive and kind, as she’d been when May was pregnant, but she wasn’t very affected by the return of May’s father, Heinrich. May was alone—yet not alone—as she faced her life. She wished, not for the first time, for a husband. Not John himself, but a companion for life’s decisions.

  Elena interrupted May’s thoughts. “Full warning: Leonardo is coming for supper tomorrow night.”

  Leonardo. May hadn’t seen him since they graduated from high school. She squinted her eyes and pursed her lips at her cousin.

  “We didn’t know you would be here when we extended the invitation,” Elena said defensively. “You can be somewhere else, but I am not going to cancel because you are staying with us. Peter arranged it with him days ago.”

  May took in a deep breath. She was being self-absorbed.

  “You will be nice to him,” Elena commanded.

  “Of course!” May said, offended at her cousin’s suggestion that she would be rude. “He has done nothing to cause me to be otherwise. And I imagine he’s way past his infatuation with me by now.”

  She looked down at the top of Kay Lynn, asleep in her wrap on May’s chest. Her sweet, full lips were shiny, her light-brown hair was pasted to her scalp.

  She didn’t regret her daughter, but she’d been naïve about her ability to conjure up a life entirely different from her mother’s. The weight of her situation pressed hard on her. She didn’t know how she was going to support herself. Living with her mother was not a permanent solution, nor was relying on her cousin.

  May kissed Kay Lynn’s warm scalp. “We will make our way—together. Somehow. I promise.”

  She blinked away the moisture in her eyes, grabbed her bag, and brought it to the room off the kitchen. They wouldn’t stay permanently, but May was enormously grateful to have somewhere to be for the time being.

  The next morning Nana Lisbeth walked into the kitchen while May was cleaning up from breakfast. Elena and Peter had left for work with Uncle Sam and Auntie Diana at the produce market, so Kay Lynn and May were alone in the house.

  “Your mother sent me to make certain you are both safe . . . and ask if you need anything,” Nana Lisbeth said.

  “I need to know the truth about my father!” May hissed at her grandmother. She sounded horrible even to her own ears, but she didn’t regret being angry.

  Nana Lisbeth took Kay Lynn out of the high chair and cuddled with her at the table.

  Her voice measured, she replied, “I agree that your mother should have told you long ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?!” May challenged.

  “It was her decision,” Nana Lisbeth said.

  “Why did he leave?” May asked.

  Nana’s face constricted . . . in thought? In pain? It was hard to know. She shook her head.

  “It still is her decision,” Nana Lisbeth replied, then requested, “Ask her directly, please. She knows she needs to tell you.”

  May’s ears buzzed in anger. She simply wanted to know the truth about her own life. Her emotion must have shown.

  Sympathy in her voice, Nana Lisbeth said, “I know she wanted you to believe he cherished you, not that he abandoned you. Her decision may have been misplaced, but her hope was to protect you.”

  May swallowed hard. She felt ill. “Protect me from what?”

  Nana Lisbeth sighed. May stared at her grandmother, her eyes demanding an answer.

  Nana Lisbeth exhaled. “You will be facing the same question, all too soon.” Nana Lisbeth gestured at the baby on her lap. “When do you tell Kay Lynn the truth? What story will you tell her?”

  May’s heart pounded. She suddenly considered the situation from her vantage as a mother, rather than as the child.

  “Is it your mother’s place to tell her?” Nana Lisbeth questioned. “Mine? Elena’s? Or yours?”

  May sat down. Tears stung her eyes.

  “We decided long ago to allow your mother to make her own decision when it came to informing you about Heinrich.”

  We. That word seemed a strong wall holding back a menace. Her family discussed this? Did she want to know the truth about her own father? Was she strong enough to know? May’s heart softened.

  “Thank you for coming all this way, Nana. You know you could have just telephoned,” May said.

  “Your mother would not have rested until I saw you both with my own eyes. She wants to telephone or call on you tomorrow,” Nana Lisbeth said, “but only if you agree.”

  May sighed. She didn’t know what she wanted.

  “Do you need some time to think about it?” Nana Lisbeth asked.

  Somehow her grandmother always knew what was in her heart. She nodded.

  Nana Lisbeth patted her hand. “Would you like company? Or to be alone?”

  May wished she knew what she wanted—for today, from her mother, for their future. It was all a jumble of thoughts and feelings.

  May looked at her grandmother and shrugged.

  “I’m going to visit with Matthew. You two can walk with me. We don’t even have to talk, but the fresh air might do you some good.”

  Being outside did sound nice. May nodded. Nana Lisbeth took Kay Lynn for a clean diaper. May packed dried fruit and they left the house, strolling in a comfortable silence for an hour—from Broadway up Piedmont and into Mountain View Cemetery. May hadn’t walked such a distance in some time—since before Kay Lynn was born. Nana Lisbeth was right; it felt good to be in the world, to remember it still went on despite her confusion and despair. Her life had narrowed since she’d become a mother. She kissed the top of Kay Lynn’s head.

  Entering the cemetery felt like walking into her own history. As a child May and her cousins came here nearly every week with Nana Lisbeth. It was a delightful afternoon activity. Sometime during high school May stopped going on these visits. Too occupied with her own life to consider death, it had been several years since May called on Grampa Matthew with Nana Lisbeth.

  The memorial park was familiar, and she felt like she should know how to get to Grampa’s grave, but she would not have been able to find it on her own. In contrast, Nana Lisbeth went confidently to it, winding her way through a maze of old markers. Nana Lisbeth placed a bright-yellow daisy she picked along the way against the double headstone.

  MATTHEW JOHNSON

  BORN FEBRUARY 5TH, 1835 CHARLES CITY, VIRGINIA

  DIED MAY 13TH, 1890 OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

  BELOVED FRIEND, FATHER, HUSBAND

  The blank space waiting for Nana Lisbeth stabbed May in the heart. Someday her grandmother would be under there, rather than standing beside May. As a child she’d somehow missed that painful reminder of mortality right in front of her.

  Nana Lisbeth rested a bony hand on the top of the headstone; her white-haired head bent over and her mouth moved, in private prayer with God or a conversation with her husband. May felt honored to be watching this tender moment—and a little embarrassed to be intruding. After a few minutes Nana Lisbeth kissed her fingers and touched the top of the stone. Tears filled May’s eyes. Grampa Matthew died twenty-six years ago—and somehow he was still a comfort to Nana. May wanted that kind of love in her life, and would never have it. She brushed away a tear.

  “Would you like to talk to him?”

  May’s heart jolted at the question.

  “He’s very good at listening,” Nana Lisbeth joked.

  Could she find comfort in talking to the grandfather who died before she was born?

  Nana Lisbeth explained, “It isn’t necessary to touch the headstone when you speak to him. You can talk to him from anywhere because he is not here—he is everywhere. However, I find I feel his presence best in this place. It has more to do with me than with him.”

  May felt she was being let in on a secret. She walked forward and touched the top of the gray stone. She rubbed Kay Lynn’s back with the other. Her daughter would need to eat soon, but she was still asleep.

  Grampa Matthew? Just the words felt strange in May’s thoughts. Cousin Tina was four when he died, and she was the only one of them who remembered him and used that name as if it meant an actual person. For May he’d been a two-dimensional image from photographs and a character in stories. She conjured a picture of him. He was her grandfather too, inside her in some way even though she never met him.

  Grampa Matthew, she thought again. Help. Please help me. Tears spilled over onto her cheeks. She waited. She took some deep breaths with her eyes closed. She waited for more words, more desire, but nothing came. She needed help, but she didn’t know anything more than that.

  Like her Nana, she kissed her fingers and placed them on the stone in a silent benediction. Her heart felt full, but not relieved. He might be listening, but she couldn’t hear him speaking.

  Nana Lisbeth walked to a bench and sat down. May followed. She untied Kay Lynn and fed her before she’d fully woken. No one was near so she didn’t need to cover up in any way. It was lovely to sit in the warm sun, next to her grandmother while holding her daughter. Suddenly she was overcome with thoughts and feelings.

  “Nana. How could I have been so foolish not to realize my mother didn’t love my father? I made up a story that she cared so much she could not bear to mention him, but that was not the case. I see all the evidence so clearly now.”

  May continued, “I found a photo of him when I was five or so. I hid it under my mattress. At night I would talk to him. Sometimes I took it out to study it, searching for me in his features.”

  Nana Lisbeth nodded.

  May asked, “You knew it was there?”

  “I found it one day when I changed your bedsheets.” Emotion in her voice, the old woman said, “I told Sadie. I implored her to speak of him to you. It didn’t seem right that you didn’t know anything about Heinrich besides his name. But . . . I do not know what she was afraid of, but she didn’t.”

  “And now I am just like her with a baby and no husband. How will we survive? I can’t go back to the university.” The thought of walking into her department laid a heavy blanket of humiliation on her heart. “How did this become my life?”

  Nana Lisbeth replied, “When you’re a child you believe your parents know a special truth about the world, that they know what is right, and that life unfolds in a predictable manner.

  “That understanding does not get shaken unless something very dramatic happens. Then you see your parents are fallible humans making imperfect choices given their circumstances. There are no crystal balls like the witch had. In truth we are all much more like the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. We are people pretending we have more skills than we do.”

  Nana Lisbeth kept speaking. “We are Unitarians—and as such we do not believe in predestination. Our free will gives us choices—and we must live with the results of them.”

  The two women and the baby sat in the warm sun in silence. May looked around at the gravestones. Each of these was a life. Some short, some long. The few words on each marker left out more than they told.

  Nana Lisbeth broke the silence. “May, I know this is not the life you expected. However, it is the life you have. Try to see the joy in it even while you mourn what you’ve lost.”

  “Nana, you had a great love,” May said. “You do not know how lucky you are.”

  “My life with Matthew was not only love; we had our struggles, I assure you,” Nana Lisbeth snapped. “Our marriage didn’t come from luck. It was born from a painful choice to leave the only home I’d ever known.”

  May felt appropriately chastised. Nana’s family hadn’t approved of her marriage to Grampa. May didn’t know any more details because no one spoke openly about it, but May knew that Nana was estranged from her family after their wedding.

  May nodded and mouthed a silent apology. Nana Lisbeth patted her in acceptance.

  “Nana, can I ask you a personal question?”

  “You may ask, though I may not answer,” her grandmother replied.

  “How is Willie your nephew? He is colored isn’t he?”

  Nana Lisbeth scoffed, then bit her lip and replied, “It’s a shameful part of our family history, so I don’t speak of it, but I never intended it to be a secret from any of you grandchildren.”

  May nodded to encourage her to keep going.

  “Willie’s mother, Emily, was my half sister. My father forced intercourse on her mother. On the plantation it was a well-known secret the white men raped the colored hands.”

  May’s throat closed tight and her head spun. She couldn’t remember being told her Nana Lisbeth was the daughter of a plantation owner; she’d always known it. But she’d never thought about the specific horror of it.

  “Oh, Nana Lisbeth, that is terrible,” May responded.

  Nana Lisbeth nodded, clearly upset, but wanting to say more.

  “I’d been so naïve that I didn’t question all the shades of workers—the enslaved.” Nana Lisbeth blinked back tears. “I was so ashamed.”

  “Nana, it wasn’t your fault. You were a child.”

  “May, from the age of twelve to the age of twenty-one, after Mattie escaped, Emily was my handmaid. She dressed me, combed my hair, and washed my clothes. She was going to be a wedding gift to me.” Nana’s voice was high and tight.

  She exhaled. “I had eyes to see and ears to hear, but I chose to ignore the ugly truth hiding in front of me until I was forced to understand the evil of my situation.”

  May nodded, considered her words, and then finally said, “I’m glad you did.”

  “Sadie was not always an ideal mother,” Nana Lisbeth said. “She has difficulty expressing her loving feelings and lived primarily with the fear she would not be able to provide you what you need. I believe you can have more empathy for her challenges now, but never, ever, doubt her devotion to you.”

  May looked at Kay Lynn and nodded.

  “I hope you will find a way to make peace with her,” Nana Lisbeth directed.

  “Me too, Nana,” May said. “I just . . . I’m afraid if I see her while I am this angry I will say something I regret and we will not be able to forgive one another.”

  Nana Lisbeth nodded.

  “But tell her I love her and I need some time before I see her. She can understand that, can’t she?” May’s voice broke. “Can’t you?”

  Nana’s blue eyes softened. She nodded slowly. “You are wise not to speak from fury. Could you manage a telephone conversation?”

  May exhaled, considering Nana’s request. She nodded once. “Tell her I will call at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  The ends of Nana’s lips pulled up into a small, tender smile of approval.

  May mouthed, Thank you. She sat back and leaned her head against her grandmother’s shoulder. She didn’t have any more answers to the pile of uncertainty, but she felt calmer, as if she gained space and time to make sense of her mother’s deception and create a decent, if not easy, life for Kay Lynn.

  Back at Peter and Elena’s home, May was somber as they prepared for supper with Leonardo. Fortunately, Elena didn’t attempt to cheer her spirits. She left May to her own thoughts and allowed her to pound her confusion into a loaf of sourdough. Kneading dough was soothing.

  By the time Leonardo knocked at the door she was ready to face company. May greeted him in the dining room with a smile; she carried Kay Lynn in one arm and a plate of roasted chicken in the other.

  “Hello, Leonardo.”

  Leonardo was more handsome than he’d been in high school. He’d filled out, so his features fit his face, and he carried himself with more confidence. His dark-brown eyes stared at her, his eyebrows drawn in confusion. Then recognition dawned and he beamed at her.