“He likes to drive when he’s upset.”
“Oh.” Alice goes through the house, turning on lights. I follow her into the kitchen.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be all right.” She opens the refrigerator door and crouches down. “He just doesn’t know what to do with you.”
“He wants to put me in the camp, then.”
“Oh, not that. He just never had a daughter who talked back to him before.” She carries a Tupperware cake holder to the table. “I made carrot cake. Can you get down the plates?”
She’s such a small woman. Face to face, she comes up only to my chin. The hair on the top of her head is thin, made thinner by the rain, and her scalp is pink.
“I’m not Therese. I never will be Therese.”
“Oh, I know,” she says, half sighing. And she does know it; I can see it in her face. “It’s just that you look so much like her.”
I laugh. “I can dye my hair. Maybe get a nose job.”
“It wouldn’t work, I’d still recognize you.” She pops the lid and sets it aside. The cake is a wheel with icing that looks half an inch thick. Miniature candy carrots line the edge.
“Wow, you made that before we left? Why?”
Alice shrugs, and cuts into it. She turns the knife on its side and uses the blade to lever a huge triangular wedge onto my plate. “I thought we might need it, one way or another.”
She places the plate in front of me, and touches me lightly on the arm. “I know you want to move out. I know you may never want to come back.”
“It’s not that I-”
“We’re not going to stop you. But wherever you go, you’ll still be my daughter, whether you like it or not. You don’t get to decide who loves you.”
“Alice . . .”
“Shhh. Eat your cake.”