"Can I come in?" Lucy said.
Paige didn't answer. After a moment the doorknob turned and found the lock, and stopped. Then there was a soft sound, a sliding, settling sound, and Paige realized the kid had sat down on the floor in the hall with her back against the door. Paige could almost feel it, through the wood. The two of them sitting back to back with an inch and a half of hollow-core door between them.
For a long time neither of them said anything.
"Did you know?" Paige said finally. Her voice was rough. "Before today. Did you know?"
"No."
"Swear."
"I swear. I swear on—" Lucy stopped. Paige heard her breathe. "I swear on the coat."
Paige laughed, a wet, ugly little sound, and pressed the heel of her hand hard into her eyes. "That's such a weird thing to swear on."
"It's what I've got."
Paige looked down at the birth certificate. Dana Marie Doyle. Her mother's name in neat state-issued type. Her mother, who had sat up with her through the stomach flu in seventh grade, who had driven her to Minneapolis for the orthodontist every month for two years, who had cried in the parking lot of the high school on the first day of freshman year and pretended it was allergies. Her mother. Who had lied to her every single day of her life. Both of those things were true at the same time, and Paige did not know how to hold them both. Her hands were not big enough.
"I was so mean to you," she said.
Lucy didn't say anything.
"Like, the whole time. Since you moved in." Paige stared at the ceiling. "I thought—my mom told me Dad cheated on her. She told me when you were coming to live here. She sat me down and she cried, and she said your father made a terrible mistake a long time ago and the mistake is coming to live with us, and we have to be kind because none of it is the little girl's fault. She said that. None of it's the little girl's fault. And then she'd look at you at dinner like—" Paige stopped. "And I just. I wanted to be on her side. That's all. I just wanted somebody to be on her side. I thought your mom wrecked our family. I thought she was this—this person who came and took my dad away on Wednesdays."
"She was," Lucy said quietly. "Kind of."
"Yeah, but she was also—" Paige couldn't finish it. The word was stuck. It was like a stone in her throat.