And then: she remembered breaking it.
Loo held the cup tightly in her hands, but in her mind she could see the china hitting the black-and-white tile at her feet. The single thorn snapping off and sliding into a crevice near the wall. She saw herself crawling underneath the table, and trying to fish the broken thorn out with her finger. Loo put down the teacup. She glanced under the tablecloth. There, in a crooked gap against the baseboard, was a fleck of white, no bigger than a grain of rice. It was as if she’d placed it there for herself to find.
Suddenly the tea in Loo’s mouth was too sweet, so sweet as it went down her throat that she nearly gagged. She stood up and dumped the rest into the sink.
“It’s the only way I could get you to drink tea when you were little,” said Mabel Ridge. “Lots of milk and sugar.” She reached for the pot. “Here. I’ll pour you another.”
Loo’s legs felt weak. She watched Mabel refill the cup. The tea was hot and steaming, tiny dark specks swirling against the porcelain and then coming to rest.
“I’ve been here before.”
“I thought you remembered that night when I gave you the car. And then I realized you didn’t. That your father had never told you.” Mabel took a drink, slurping a bit, and then let out a small sigh of satisfaction. She set the teacup back down on the saucer. “I didn’t want to scare you off, so I decided to wait. But that’s why I wanted you to come back. So I could tell you the truth.”
“I don’t understand,” said Loo.
“Your father abandoned you. After Lily died. He left you here with me. You spoke your first words in this house. You took your first steps on this floor.”
Loo stared at the baseboard, the tiny white speck. Everything Mabel Ridge had said was impossible. And yet—she could feel the past tugging at the corners of her mind. It was like trying to remember a dream while dreaming another.
Mabel’s eyes narrowed. She was watching carefully, and as Loo grew more confused, a look of pleasure spread across her weathered face. “You’re remembering.”
“No. You’re lying to me.”
“I have proof.” The old woman pushed herself up from the table. “Wait here. I’ll show you.”
As soon as she shuffled out of the room, Loo took the screwdriver from her pocket, climbed under the table and slipped the flat edge into the crevice. In one short movement, she flicked the bit of white out onto the floor. She pressed her finger against it. The thorn was real. It did not give.
“What are you doing down there?” Mabel Ridge’s legs hobbled into the kitchen. She slid something heavy onto the table.
“Nothing,” said Loo. She put the thorn and screwdriver into her pocket and crawled out. The old woman was fondling the edges of a leather photo album. She opened the cover and quickly turned the laminated pages, each crinkling like a layer of skin peeled away. Loo caught glimpses of faces. She could smell the dust and glue.
“Wait,” she said. “Is that Principal Gunderson?”
Sealed under the plastic was a glossy photograph of two teenagers dressed for prom. One was a thin boy wearing an oversize tuxedo, his face beaming and his white-blond hair like a beacon against the fake backdrop and balloons. The other was Lily as a young girl, with braces and heavy black eyeliner, wearing a short dress with matching lace gloves.
“He told me they were just friends.”
“They were—but he kept trying.” Mabel Ridge shook her head. She lifted the photograph from the album, rubbed the edge of Principal Gunderson’s ruffled shirt with her finger. “I always thought they would have made a lovely couple.”
Loo looked closely at the picture. She thought of all the times Principal Gunderson had tried to help her. And then she saw the reason on his pimpled teenage face, in the brightness of his smile. He had loved Lily. And she hadn’t loved him back.
Mabel Ridge set aside the picture of Principal Gunderson and continued flipping through the album. Then she stopped and turned the book toward Loo. She pointed to another picture.
Lily was in a hospital bed, her face flushed, her dark hair askew. She was wearing a green kimono the same color as her eyes—the same robe that Hawley kept hanging on the back of their bathroom door—and she was looking down at a baby in her arms and smiling the biggest smile Loo had ever seen.
“You.” Mable Ridge pressed a wrinkled blue finger against the photograph. Then she pulled the plastic and removed the picture. “She sent this to me when you were born.”
It was an instant photograph, with a thick white border, a Polaroid—like the one of Lily in front of Niagara Falls in their bathroom—the coloring thick and slightly blurred. Which meant, Loo realized, that her mother must have held this picture in her hands right after it was taken, just as Loo was holding it now.
Slowly, Mabel turned another page. And then another. They were all full of snapshots of the same baby, taken in this very house. The baby was sleeping on a blanket. The baby had chocolate pudding all over her face. The baby was at the beach, her fists full of sand. The baby was getting older. The baby was walking now. The baby was wearing shoes. The baby was turning into a little girl. The little girl was getting her hair cut, a towel wrapped around her shoulders, her eyes full of tears. The little girl was sitting on a swing. The little girl was wearing some kind of Halloween costume made of silver cardboard.
“What was I dressed up as?”
“An electric toothbrush,” the old woman said. “You couldn’t get enough of them, for some reason. I don’t know why.”
Loo and Hawley had always used the free toothbrushes given out by the dentist. When she was little, they had even brushed their teeth together. She remembered the sound of her father gargling Listerine. She remembered contests to see who had the longest drool. But she did not remember this costume. Or the child who wore it, holding out an empty pillowcase for trick or treat.
“How long did I live here?” Loo asked.
“Until you were four years old,” said Mabel Ridge.
Inside the palm of Loo’s hand was the thorn. She squeezed her fingers around it. The tiny bit of porcelain was the only thing that seemed real. The only thing connecting her to this story.
“I raised you like my own daughter. And then he came one night and stole you away.” Mabel Ridge turned her cup in the saucer but didn’t pick it up. “I told him that if he took you he couldn’t bring you back. But he took you all the same. And then he showed up here years later, without even a phone call or a letter to let me know you were coming, and expected me to roll over.” She shook her head and closed the album. “I’m an old lady now. And I wasn’t going to let him ruin my life again.”