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meant she could pursue her dreams.”
    A surprising wave of relief swept over me. The Jack I knew, even though he wasn’t without faults, would never have knowingly abandoned his own child. I drained my cup, leaving it up to my face longer than necessary so that he couldn’t read my expression. He was too good already at reading my mind. Putting my cup down, I asked, “So what happened to Bonnie?”
    Jack motioned to the waitress for another refill and I did the same. “She killed herself.”
    I coughed on the final mouthful of crumbs. I hadn’t expected to hear that. “Intentionally?”
    “It appears so. It’s what’s on the coroner’s report, anyway. Drug overdose, although from what I’ve learned from the police detective assigned to the case, she wasn’t a stranger to OD’ing. She’d been rushed to the hospital at least three times in the last two years for taking various cocktails of prescription and street drugs.”
    “Poor Nola,” I said, remembering her expression when I’d met her, of loss and grief and something else that had been unnameable at the time. But now I understood what it was, because I’d seen it for so long in my own reflection: abandonment. “Who would take care of her when her mother was sick?”
    “No one, as far as I can figure out. Bonnie had had a long string of live-in boyfriends, and the latest one, Rick something-or-other, had been there for about two years. But I imagine Nola would have taken care of herself. She doesn’t seem the sort to want to have to ask for help.”
    “No.” I shook my head, in complete agreement with him for once. “She doesn’t.” I swallowed. “So how did she find her way to you?”
    “Bonnie left her an envelope—one of those ‘open only in the event of my death’ kind of things—and in it was my name, the name of my parents’ store on King Street, and a one-way Greyhound bus ticket to Charleston.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “She traveled cross-country on a bus all by herself? I can’t even imagine what kind of guts that took. She looks much older, but she’s only thirteen, for crying out loud.” I shook my head.
    “She hid at a friend’s house and then slept on a park bench for a night to evade child services before deciding that finding me might be a better option.” Jack kept his voice level, but I could tell it was hard for him.
    “Why didn’t she call you first to let you know she was coming?”
    Jack pushed away his empty mug. “Nola’s not very talkative about a lot of things—especially about her mother’s death—but she was very clear about this one thing: Bonnie had always told her that I knew about the pregnancy but chose to give them both up.” He looked up at the ceiling and blinked hard, and all I could do was place my hand on his arm and squeeze. After a moment, he said, “I believe she did that so Nola would never be tempted to leave her. And from what little I can get out of Nola, they had a good relationship when Bonnie was clean. Bonnie even taught Nola how to play the guitar, and they’d play together sometimes for extra change. Not that Nola will let me hear her play. She dragged that beat-up guitar all the way from Los Angeles and yet refuses to play a note.”
    I remembered how I’d developed an aversion to opera music after my own mother, a famous opera diva, left my father and me. “She needs time,” I said, hoping that she would require less than the thirty-three years it had taken me to get over it, and then only because my mother was still alive to explain that she’d left me to save my life. With Bonnie’s death, her reasons would always remain unspoken.
    “I know. That’s why I had to bring her to you. Sophie said you’d understand.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “No matter how many times I tell Nola that I didn’t even know she existed until I saw her on your front porch, she won’t believe me. And we can’t forge a relationship until she accepts that—which she won’t if