He turned hard into a parking lot and screeched into a space. For a second, I got scared that he was going to do something dangerous. “I ask myself that every day,” he said, his nostrils flared. “Maybe ’cause Tonette’s right and I’m some sorta sap. Guess I figured after all these years of your mom keepin’ you from me, I deserved somethin’ outta you.”

We were staring at each other now, each of us with hate in our eyes. “What are you talking about?” I said. “She never kept me from you. You walked out on us. You never came back.”

A slow grin spread across his face and he began nodding as if it all made sense to him now. “Is that what she told you? That I walked out?” He tipped his head back against the seat and laughed, then turned to me again. “I got tossed out. Christine ‘wanted somethin’ better.’ ” He made air quotes with his fingers when he said the last three words, then jammed a stubby thumb at his chest. “I told her I could be somethin’ better, I’d get a job and stop drinkin’ and would take care of you. But she said she deserved more and I’d see you again over her dead body and that was that. And look. She’s dead and now here you are.”

“You lie,” I said through my teeth, but a part of me could tell that he wasn’t lying. A part of me could see it in the slight tremor of his thumb, could see it etched into the lines around his eyes. “You never wanted anything to do with me.”

His eyes hardened and he paused, sizing me up, the muscles of his jaw working. “Damn shame that’s the story she gave you. ’Cause it ain’t the truth.”

“It’s not a story. It is the truth,” I said, but my voice was wavering, getting softer.

He put the car into reverse and began backing out of the parking spot. “When I threatened to get the law involved, she started sayin’ you weren’t even mine.” He put the car into drive and glanced at me one more time. “I believed her at the time. She was some kinda messed up and I wouldn’t a put nothin’ past her at that point. But anyone with eyes can see we got the same DNA.” He pulled out onto the road and started heading toward the house again. “And then she was gone. Moved. Wasn’t the first time she’d disappeared on someone. I gave up. Met Tonette, started over. Forgot I even had a daughter named Jersey. Didn’t seem like there was anything else I could do.”

We drove along for a few minutes in silence, the town giving way to squat cookie-cutter homes. I wanted to get back to the house, to retreat to my couch and pull the blanket over my head, try to disappear from the lies, try to ignore the sinking suspicion that the liar was Mom, not Clay. Just thinking it made me feel like a traitor.

If what he said was true, the story of my life was a lie. I’d spent so many hours wondering about him, imagining him, wishing he’d come to my birthday party or to Christmas mornings or would stop by or call to see how I was doing. He never did, and I’d spent so much time hating him for abandoning me.

But according to him, he hadn’t. She’d kept him away.

She let me think it was about me. She let me pine for him. She told me he was a monster, worthless, dangerous. She made me afraid of him. She encouraged me to hate him. I refused to believe it. I couldn’t.

“So why, then?” I croaked. “If what you say is true, if you tried so hard to stay connected with me, why don’t you want me here now?”

“Because I don’t need no paternity test to tell me whether or not you belong to me. At this point, I already know you don’t. You were Christine’s from day one. You ain’t my kid. You’re a stranger. And you’re messin’ with my real family.”

“I never had a chance to be your real family,” I said.

He shrugged. “That ain’t my fault.”

He pulled into the driveway roughly, and I leapt out. I swung the door shut and tromped around the back of the house while he laid on the horn. I heard the front door open and Tonette’s nasal voice squawking, “I’m coming! I’m coming! Jesus, keep your wad in your pants, Clayton!”

I was so busy thinking about my mom as I flung open the door to my porch, I didn’t even notice Lexi and Meg until I was practically on top of them.

My half sisters were sitting on my couch, laughing.

“You look like an old lady,” I heard one of them say, but my mind was unable to make sense out of what exactly I was seeing.

They had Marin’s purse. It was open on Lexi’s lap, the contents bared to the world. Marin’s things. My things.

“What…?” I started, but then I noticed that both of them were chewing gum, the foils wadded up and tossed onto the couch, and they both had pink, lipstick-smeared mouths. Lexi was clutching Mom’s lipstick in her hand, rolled all the way to the top, the pretty slanted point ruined. Across the front of the purse they had written “COW” in Mom’s lipstick.

“You got some seriously messed-up taste in lipstick, Granny,” Lexi said, but she looked nervous as she said it, as if she knew they had crossed the line this time.

I reached out and snatched the lipstick out of her hand. “That was my mother’s,” I said, feeling a rage swelling so big inside me, I wasn’t sure how to contain it. I’d unclenched my teeth, and everything I’d been feeling in that car ride home—hell, everything I’d been feeling since the tornado—strained to get out of me. I felt bare and taut, an exposed nerve, a caged animal, a spring.

I’d lost everything at this point. I had nothing left but my memories—the ones that came from me, the ones I could trust—and they were trying to steal those, too. They couldn’t. I wouldn’t let them. If I let go of my memories, I might never recognize me again.

“Well, your mom has gross taste, then,” Meg said.

I reached down and picked up the purse, grabbed the foils they’d discarded on the couch, dropped everything inside, then hurriedly zipped the purse shut and hugged it to my shoulder, the lipstick they’d drawn on the outside smearing up against my skin.

“Hey,” Meg said, standing up, her nose a couple inches away from my chin. Lexi followed half a beat later but took a small step to the side, hanging back a little. Meg grabbed for the purse, but I clamped my elbow down on it. “Nobody said you could have that back.”

“It’s not yours to take,” I said.

“Anything in my house is mine to take,” she said. “And if I want to take your ugly-ass lipstick and your little gum stash, I will. And that goes for anything else you might have, Jersey Cow. Because you don’t get to say what goes on in this house. You don’t belong here and everyone knows it.”

“Meg,” Lexi said. I glanced over. Lexi was looking worriedly between her sister and me. “Come on, let’s go to Jeff’s party now.”

“What?” Meg said defensively. “It’s the truth. The only reason she’s here is nobody wants her.”

She had turned toward her sister, but my eyes were firmly planted on Meg. On her delicate little ear with the earrings snaking up the side. On her sharp, freckled cheekbone. On the corner of her hateful little mouth, where lipstick collected in a pink pool.

My mother’s face swam before my eyes, coming out of the bedroom, the pink lipstick making her skin look creamy and smooth. Marin’s voice echoed in my ears: It’s for special. I like it sharp.

And now the tip was blunt and ragged, ugly. It had been stretched across the lips of two horrid girls who had only worn it to be cruel, had been dragged across the face of Marin’s purse, no longer special, no longer new. That lipstick had probably been Marin’s most prized possession, and these two bitches had no right.

Before I knew what was happening, my hand reached out and grabbed Meg’s face, slapping up against her mouth as I dug my fingers in and clawed, trying to wipe the lipstick from her lips. She didn’t deserve it; she wasn’t special enough. These were my memories. Mine. And I would die before I would let anyone take them from me.