“Over there.” She used her elbow to indicate a small desk area at the end of the counter.
Andy opened the drawer. She was expecting to find the usual junk—spare keys, a flashlight, stray coins, too many pens—but there were only two items, a sharpened pencil and a pad of paper.
“So, art’s your thing?” Paula asked. “You get that from someone in your family?”
“I—” Andy didn’t have to see the look on Paula’s face to know that she’d done it again.
Instead, she flipped open the notebook, which was filled with blank pages. Andy didn’t give herself time to freak out about what she was about to do, to question her talents or to talk herself out of having the hubris to believe she still had any skills left in her hands. Instead, she knocked the sharp point off the pencil and sketched out what she remembered of Hoodie’s face.
“Yep.” Paula was nodding before she’d finished. “That looks like the bastard. Especially the eyes. You can tell a lot about somebody from their eyes.”
Andy found herself looking into Paula’s blank left eye.
Paula asked, “How do you know what he looks like?”
Andy didn’t answer the question. She turned to a fresh page. She drew another man, this one with a square jaw and an Alabama baseball cap. “What about this guy? Have you ever seen him around here?”
Paula studied the image. “Nope. Was he with the other guy?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.” She felt her head shaking. “I don’t know. About anything, actually.”
“I’m getting that.”
Andy had to buy herself some time to think. She returned the pad and pencil to the drawer. This whole conversation was going sideways. Andy wasn’t so stupid that she didn’t know she was being played. She’d come here for answers, not more questions.
Paula said, “You look like her.”
Andy felt a bolt of lightning shoot from head to toe.
You-look-like-her-you-look-like-her-you-look-like-your-mother.
Slowly, Andy turned around.
“The eyes, mostly.” Paula used the point of a large chef’s knife to indicate her eyes. “The shape of your face, like a heart.”
Andy felt frozen in place. She kept playing back Paula’s words in her head because her heart was pounding so loudly that she could barely hear.
The eyes . . . The shape of your face . . .
Paula said, “She was never as timid as you. Must get that from your father?”
Andy didn’t know because she didn’t know anything except that she had to lean against the counter and lock her knees so she didn’t fall down.
Paula resumed chopping. “What do you know about her?”
“That . . .” Andy was having trouble speaking again. Her stomach had filled with bees. “That she’s been my mother for thirty-one years.”
Paula nodded. “That’s some interesting math.”
“Why?”
“Why indeed.”
The sound of the knife thwapping the chopping board resonated inside of Andy’s head. She had to stop reacting. She needed to ask her questions. She’d made a whole list of them in her head on the seven-hour drive and now—
“Could you—”
“Dollar bill, kid. Could I what?”
Andy felt dizzy. Her body was experiencing the odd numbness of days before. Her arms and legs wanted to float up toward the ceiling, her brain had disconnected from her mouth. She couldn’t fall back into old patterns. Not now. Not when she was so close.
“Can—” Andy tried a third time, “How do you know her? My mother?”
“I’m not a snitch.”
Snitch?
Paula had looked up from her chopping. Her expression was unreadable. “I’m not trying to be a bitch. Though, admittedly, being a bitch is kind of my thing.” She diced together a bundle of celery and carrots. The pieces were all identical in size. The knife moved so fast that it looked still. “I learned how to cook in the prison kitchen. We had to be fast.”
Prison?
“I always wanted to learn.” Paula scooped the vegetables into her hands and walked over to the stove. She dropped everything into a stew pot as she told Andy, “It took over a decade for me to earn the privilege. They only let the older gals handle the knives.”
Over a decade?
Paula asked, “I gather you didn’t see that when you googled me.”
Andy realized her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. She was too astonished to process all of these revelations.
Snitch. Prison. Over a decade.
Andy had been telling herself for days that Laura was a criminal. Hearing the theory confirmed was like a punch to her gut.
“I pay to keep that out of the top searches. It’s not cheap, but—” She shrugged, her eyes on Andy again. “You did google me, right? Found my address through the property tax records. Saw my course schedule, read my shitty student reviews?” She was smiling. She seemed to like the effect she was having. “Then, you looked at my CV, and you asked yourself, UC-Berkeley, Stanford, West Connecticut State. Which one of those doesn’t belong? Right?”
Andy could only nod.
Paula started chopping up a potato. “There’s a women’s federal corrections facility near West Conn. Danbury—you probably know it from that TV show. They used to let you do a higher ed program. Not so much anymore. Martha Stewart was a guest, but that was after my two dimes.”
Two dimes?
Paula glanced up at Andy again. “People at the school know. It’s not a secret. But I don’t like to talk about it, either. My revolutionary days are over. Hell, at my age, pretty much most of my life is over.”
Andy looked down at her hands. The fingers felt like cat whiskers. What awful thing did a person have to do to be sentenced to a federal prison for twenty years? Should Laura have been in prison for the same amount of time, only she had stolen a bunch of money, run away, created a new life, while Paula Kunde was counting the days until she was old enough to work in the prison kitchen?
“I should—” Andy’s throat was so tight she could barely draw air. She needed to think about this, but she couldn’t do that in this stuffy kitchen under this woman’s watchful eye. “Leave, I mean. I should—”
“Calm down, Bambi. I didn’t meet your mother in prison, if that’s what you’re freaking out about.” She started on another potato. “Of course, who knows what you’re thinking, because you’re not really asking me any questions.”
Andy swallowed the cotton in her throat. She tried to remember her questions. “How—how do you know her?”
“What’s her name again?”
Andy didn’t understand the rules of this cruel game. “Laura Oliver. Mitchell, I mean. She got married, and now—”
“I know how marriage works.” Paula sliced open a bell pepper. She used the sharp tip of the blade to pick out the seeds. “Ever hear of QuellCorp?”
Andy shook her head, but she answered, “The pharmaceutical company?”
“What’s your life like?”
“My li—”
“Nice schools? Fancy car? Great job? Cute boyfriend who’s gonna do a YouTube video when he proposes to you?”
Andy finally picked up on the hard edge to the woman’s tone. She wasn’t being matter-of-fact anymore. The smile on her face was a sneer.
“Uh—” Andy started to edge toward the door. “I really should—”
“Is she a good mother?”
“Yes.” The answer came easy when Andy didn’t think about it.
“Chaperoned school dances, joined the PTA, took pictures of you at the prom?”
Andy nodded to all of this, because it was true.
“I saw her murdering that kid on the news.” Paula turned her back on Andy as she washed her hands at the sink. “Though they’re saying she’s cleared now. She was trying to save him. Please don’t move.”
Andy stood perfectly still. “I wasn’t—”