The daughter who called her twice at eighteen is the daughter who would not sit in a room with her at twenty-two, and anybody who thinks those are a contradiction has never been the child of somebody who left.

Bea came to the wedding.

I will get to how.

Part Six: The Order I Never Filed

There is no unpaid child support.

There is no judgment.

There is no Department of Child Support Services file with Maren Ostlund’s name on it, and there never has been.

The reason is that in the spring of 2012 I sat in a legal aid office on Weber Avenue in Stockton with a man named Alvin Prager, and he told me exactly what I was entitled to, and I did not do it.