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“I know,” Ginny said.“Carla had to know the attention would be over as quickly as it started,” Ginny said, then stood up again.“Oh, now I forgot the coffee.Where is my mind today?”She went back into the kitchen.

Morgan called out toward the kitchen.“Was our mom about to go on a trip somewhere?”

“Not that I know of.Why?”Ginny asked, pouring coffee into all the mugs.

Morgan blew on the steam that was rising from her cup.She told Ginny about the money they found in Carla’s closet, how the suitcases were packed, and how her passport was inside.

“That’s strange,” Ginny said, wrinkling her forehead.“Maybe she thought she’d go somewhere to get away from all the attention.”

“Why wouldn’t she have told us?”Morgan said.

“It could’ve been a spur-of-the-moment decision,” Ginny said.

“I guess, but where would she have gone that she’d take both winter and summer clothes?”Charlie asked.

“I have no idea—she could’ve been stopping in New York on her way to someplace warm,” Ginny said, her eyebrows scrunched together like two caterpillars head-butting each other.

“Mom hated New York,” Morgan said more passionately than she intended.

“But that’s where she grew up,” Ginny said.

Morgan, Charlie, and Abby stared at Ginny as if she had two heads and had turned into a dragon.

“Mom grew up in Los Angeles,” Abby said.

“No, she didn’t.Your mom was born in New York.After she graduated high school, she went to Brooklyn College,” Ginny said.

“That can’t be right.She told us she’d only been to New York once and hated it,” Charlie said.

“I didn’t get the feeling she had a great childhood there, but Brooklyn is also where she met your father,” Ginny said.“Carla didn’t move to Los Angeles until she filed for divorce from your dad.”

“I lived in New York?”Morgan said.She felt nauseous and pushed her plate away from her.She couldn’t grasp this information any more than she could have held on to a tiny fluttering butterfly.

“You and Charlie lived there when you were first born,” she said to Morgan.“Abby was born in Los Angeles.”

“But Mom told us she went to UCLA.She took us on a tour of the school and said how proud she was to have graduated from such a renowned university,” Charlie said.

“And remember how she pointed out that older man with the long, scraggly beard who was walking toward Royce Hall?”Morgan said.“She said he was her Microeconomics professor and almost failed her.”

“How could she have known how good the hot chocolate was at the coffeehouse on campus,” Abby said.

“Well, now we know why she said she’d thrown out her diploma after ‘accidentally’ spilling red wine all over it,” Morgan said.

“This is crazy,” Charlie said.

“Why would Mom lie about all that?”Abby asked.

“I don’t know.”Ginny rubbed her hands together and shook her head.

The day had barely started, yet Morgan’s world had been shaken up even more.When they got back to Carla’s house, Morgan pulled out her list of AA meetings, grabbed her keys, and headed out the door.

CHAPTER 18

Charlie

Charlie prided herself on her ability to fall asleep easily.Every night in the past, she could be in dreamland in a matter of minutes and fully rested by seven a.m.Over the last few weeks, that had been far from the case.Four-thirty a.m.had become her new normal.

Since her mom had passed away, before Charlie even opened her eyes, her brain was on overdrive.Since she couldn’t come up with obvious answers for her mother’s actions, she began analyzing Carla’s life.Had Carla been happy, or was she an expert on pretending?Did she fulfill any of her dreams or live vicariously through her children?As Charlie contemplated these things, it hit her.Am I living the life I wanted for myself?