I sat there in a garden center parking lot and hated how much I wanted that to mean something.

“Did you ever try to find me?”

“Once.” She said it immediately, like it had been sitting loaded for years. “October of 2013. I drove to that street. I had the address off a school directory Megan got hold of.”

“You never knocked.”

“You were at the kitchen table doing homework,” my mother said. “The window was right there. The nurse — Laura — was standing at the counter and she said something and you laughed and she put her hand on the back of your neck.”

Karen stopped. She had to work at the next part.