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she won’t facilitate it. Owen’s had his staff try to find a way to contact them as well, but your family is off the grid. So, we’re stuck with each other until then.”
    Your family. Stuck. Stuck. Your family.
    The words swirl in my head, along with other words, words I can’t seem to get enough air to say.
    Something about family —her family, your family—and the fact that I call her Mother, because we supposedly have a relationship. Because…
    “Why did you even have me?” I ask. I’m not talking about bringing me here. I’m talking about giving birth to me. It seems that the nine-month commitment she made to carry me was the longest commitment she ever made to me.
    She uncrosses her arms. Then she wipes the fingers of her right hand over her mouth, and looks down. I’ve never seen her unsure of herself before, but suddenly she is.
    “Don’t ask me that,” she says softly.
    “I am asking,” I say. “I’ve already asked.”
    She raises her head. That angry expression is gone from her face. Instead, there’s something else, something…scared? Vulnerable? I suddenly realize I don’t know her well enough to tell what, exactly, that emotion is.
    “Your father insisted,” she says.
    “ What? ” The only story I heard was that he showed up in the delivery room because I’d turned it back into a womb the moment I was born. Like he hadn’t been there at all before that moment.
    “Your father showed up at my first appointment, where I asked the doctor to get rid…I mean, I asked how much it would cost to…”
    She isn’t finishing her sentences, but I know what she means. She was asking how much it would cost to abort me.
    “Your dad barged in. He wasn’t there and then he was, and he told the doctor that no one would mess with me. Then he pulled me outside, and he said if I ever tried anything like that again, he’d lock me up in a room like he’d done to one of his other girlfriends.” She looks pale. “I believed him.”
    Daddy made her have me? Why would he do that?
    “That womb story? It’s not true?”
    “I don’t know if it’s true,” she snaps. “I was hallucinating after you were born. It was a good story to tell in Greece, when all those other mothers had weird stories. I saw a womb, and I think the doctors humored me. But that’s not why I gave you to your father.”
    “You were planning to all along,” I whisper.
    “You’re his, not mine,” she says. “And it’s time you understand that.”

 
     
     
     
    SIX
     
     
    MY LEGS WON’T hold me anymore. I manage two steps off the rug and sink onto a couch that’s as uncomfortable as it looks. Every part of me aches.
    I know she doesn’t want me, so why does her actually saying it hurt so much? Because she cares so very little about me that it doesn’t matter how she talks to me?
    Because she’s being honest?
    “I could have told you that if you’d only consulted with me before volunteering me for this awful program you and your therapist designed,” Mother continues, apparently oblivious to my reaction. “I could have told you there was no point in coming here. I did tell Megan, after things got underway, but she said that I would learn to appreciate you.”
    Mother laughs. She laughs , like this is all one big joke.
    “No one appreciates teenage girls,” she says. “I could have told Megan that, and probably should have, but she was a teenage girl once. She should have remembered what it was like.”
    My mouth is dry, but my eyes are wet. I pick at my skirt, head bent.
    “So I told myself that I could at least teach you what the real world is like,” Mother says. “I can do that much. We are related, after all. And I figured it wouldn’t hurt the boys to learn they have a sister.”
    I am not going to wipe at my face. I’m not. But I can’t look up at her either.
    “But you don’t like me,” Mother says, “and I’m not that fond of you.”
    The words slice into me. I can’t look at her. I’m