I arrived early at the Coffee Cup; I couldn't help it. I was surprised by how much anxiety I felt. I had no idea what Dexie's father — I decided I'd call him Mr. Lane — was going to say, and of course I had a lot of vicarious resentment for the way he'd treated Dexie over the years.

When I entered the Coffee Cup, I did what I always did: I looked up at its bare rafters and the underside of its shake shingles. I loved seeing it, though the lack of insulation made the place cold in winter. But its folksy, organic design wasn't fake. Sure, the wooden barrels, sacks of coffee beans, and crates of tea were all props, but they were the only phonies in the place. I loved the Coffee Cup. It had a warm, welcoming, happy feel.

And it had a nice crowd. It was always a calm, quiet place, and maybe that was why Mr. Lane picked it as a meeting place: so Dexie wouldn't make a scene. Oh well. If that was his strategy, it wasn't going to work. I wasn't going to let a crowd stop me. If I needed to make a scene, believe me, I was going to make a scene. And I was ready.

I scanned the crowd, looking for familiar faces, and was surprised to see Mr. Lane, reading the Sunday paper. Why was I surprised? I knew he would be there, but I didn't expect him to be early, and I sure didn't expect him to blend in.

My heart was pounding as I crossed the room. Remember, call him Mr. Lane. Don't smile! Don't give him an inch!

He looked up just as I reached the table, and I heard myself say, "Hi." Inwardly I kicked myself for sounding shy.

I had a difficult time reading him. His face didn't give much away. He didn't look apologetic. He wasn't tense, he wasn't smiling, he wasn't impatient… he looked pretty relaxed, but serious. Maybe this was how he always looked. Who knows? I'd never spent any time with the man. We'd only spoken once on the phone, and I'd only seen him at a distance. The most obvious thing about him was that he'd spent time in the military. If I had to guess, I'd say he was a Marine. (It turned out, I was right.) Aside from that, I couldn't tell anything else from looking at him.

"Hello, Dexie," he said, and gestured to a chair. "Please, have a seat." I sat, and he handed me a menu. "Take your time deciding. Have whatever you like," he said. "It's on me."

I expected him to say It's the least I can do, but he didn't.

I already knew what I wanted. "I'll have the Big Breakfast with the eggs over easy and English muffins instead of toast," I told the waitress. The Big Breakfast wasn't just big — it was enormous! It had everything: pancakes, hashbrowns, eggs, bacon, ham, and French toast. It wasn't that I was hungry: I ordered it because it was the most expensive item on the breakfast menu.

Mr. Lane raised his eyebrows in surprise. I saw him recognize the resentment in my order, but it was my turn to be surprised when he rose to my challenge and told the waitress, "I'll have the same, along with a piping hot cup of coffee. Oh, and fresh-squeezed orange juice for both of us."

Well! I sure didn't expect that!

After the girl went away, Mr. Lane drew an envelope from his pocket. "I have your birth certificate here. I know you've never seen it, and there's a reason. This document is yours, and I'm going to give it to you, but we ought to have a look at it together first, because it needs a bit of explaining."

He spread the document open on the table and flattened it with his palms.

"I don't know what you notice first, but the first thing that strikes me is your name." He put his finger down, pointing. I looked at it, glanced at his face, looked at the name again, and read it out loud. "Ur-Dexina Martineau? Seriously? Is this some kind of joke? What kind of a name is that?"

He opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Your birth-mother chose it," he explained. "You can see her name here: Elizabeth Martineau. I was not around. I would have given you a normal name. But in point of fact, I didn't know you existed until Lizzie brought you here. You were eight weeks old. Well, me and Laurie looked at that name, and I said, No child on earth should go through life with a name like that. We figured Dexie was a compromise. It was as close as we dared come."

"And Lane?" I asked. "Did you adopt me? Or change my name?"

"No," he said. "We just called you Dexie Lane. It was the easiest thing; it avoided a lot of stupid questions. When it was time to sign you up for school, I simply explained the situation to the principal, and the school administration was very helpful. Your diploma — just like your drivers license — reads Dexie Lane. However, if you decide to go with Ur-Dexina Martineau or even Dexie Martineau, the school will re-issue your diploma and you can get a new drivers license."

I frowned, puzzled. "How did you fix the name on my license?"

"Nothing illegal," he said. "I just had to produce some extra documentation and talk to a few people. Do you remember how long it took to get your permit? That was why."

"Huh," I said. I sure didn't anticipate any of this. Martineau was kind of a cool name, but Ur-Dexina sounded like something from outer space.

"Now, for all the more normal elements," he went on, pointing them out, "You see you were born in Spokane, in the hospital and not at home — which I'm very glad of, for your sake — there's your birthday, the doctor's name, etc. But here is the interesting and, I think, the most important part—"

At that point, inevitably, our food arrived, so he carefully folded up the document and put it back in his pocket. After we'd eaten a bit, he set down his fork and took the paper out again. This time he handed it to me. "You'll see it says the father is unknown. Now, *I* — whatever else I was or may have been — I was never unknown. You can see she knew well enough where to find me."

"But," interrupting, I asked, "Why did you keep me? I don't understand this story. If she didn't want me and you didn't want me, why didn't you give me up? Somebody might have adopted me!"

He was silent for a while, and put his hand on his chin. He was clearly trying to get a grip on his emotions. "I'll tell you why," he said. "I know your life hasn't been what you'd like, or maybe what it should have been, but… You have to understand how everything unfolded. Your mother made a big effort to abandon you. She traveled all the way down here from Spokane. Eleven hours by car, and eleven hours back. Without a word of warning, without a call or a letter, she came to my house and knocked on my door. She said, Do you remember me? I said, Yes, I do, and she said This is your baby. She put you in my arms and said, She's yours. You made her, you raise her. Then she got in her car and drove back up North. You can imagine that Laurie was furious. In the beginning I think she wanted to have you around as a living reminder of my infidelity. A stick to hit me with, if you will. But at the same time, Laurie loves babies. And you might not believe this, but when you were a tiny little thing, she loved you like any mamma loves her child.

"But when your brothers came along, she cut you off, and you took it hard. And by that time, of course, we knew, so Laurie wanted to put you out of the house." He drew a heavy sigh and stopped.

My head was spinning. I had weird sense of unreality, as if the whole world around us, the floor and walls and roof had disappeared, and we were floating in a surreal, empty space. Dexie's life was stranger and more complicated than I ever imagined, and the facts were difficult to process. I shook my head, as if that would clarify matters, and then something he said echoed in my brain. I asked him, "What do you mean, we knew? What did you know?"

"Well," he said, "We discovered that you're not my child."

"What!?"

He took a deep breath before going on. "I realize this may be a shock. There never was a good time to tell you, and I invite you to verify this yourself. I will not be offended if you don't believe me. If you want to do a DNA test for paternity at any time, I'll be glad to. I don't expect you to take this on my say-so. But the facts are very simple: blood don't lie. My blood type's AB, and yours is O. If you were my child, you'd be A or B or AB, like me."

"What if my mother was type O?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Anyone can have a child of blood type O — unless one of the parents is type AB. If either parent is type AB, the child cannot be O. Now, doctors have explained this to me, and I've looked it up myself. But I don't want you to take my word for it; I want you to ask, to investigate, to find out for yourself. I'm telling you the truth, but I'll gladly go for a blood test or a DNA test, whenever you like."

I was stunned. "So who is my father?"

"I don't really know," he replied. "But I have a very strong suspicion." He pulled a second envelope from his pocket. The way it bulged, it was obviously full of money. "I'll tell you about that in a moment, but I have something else for you here. I want to give it to you now, because I don't know what your feelings are towards your birth-mother, and you might not like what I have to say about her."

He held the envelope close to his chest as he spoke. "You asked me why I didn't give you up for adoption. Let me tell you, adoption does not always work. It is not always the fairy-tale solution, and often it never happens at all. I don't know the real numbers, but I believe that there are something like half a million kids in foster care in this country. Did you know that?"

"No," I whispered.

"Only a quarter of them are even eligible for adoption, and I don't know how many actually get adopted. But I don't really care about the numbers. The fact is this: I grew up in foster homes. I don't know how many families I went through. I never knew my father. I have a very dim memory of my mother, and I'm not even sure if that memory is real." He stopped to take a deep breath; he pressed his lips tightly together. "I will not tell you what I endured as a child," he told me, "except to say that I would not wish my childhood on any living being."

He struggled for a few moments to keep his emotions in check. Then he went on. "By this time we knew you weren't mine, you weren't a baby anymore. And babies are what people want to adopt. Laurie and I argued and we fought, and we spoke to Child Services. I told them that if they found a couple, that I approved of, that wanted you, then I would let you go. But they told me that the system didn't work like that.

"And that is when Laurie and I struck our bargain: You could stay. Well, you know the rest. You know how you grew, like a stranger in our home."

He looked me in the eyes and said, "I'm not going to say I'm sorry. I wish your life had been different, but at least you didn't bounce from family to family. We don't know what would have happened if you'd gone with Child Services, but I did the best I knew: I made my bargain with Laurie so you could stay. What that cost me is between me and her, but I did it willingly, and if I had to, I would do the same again.

"Now," he said, as he handed me the envelope. "When I was in foster care, the minute I turned 18, they kicked me out. No warning. Nothing but the clothes on my back. Eighteen years old. That's why I went into the military, but I don't think that's the answer for you. I didn't want that to happen to you. So what I did was this: every week you were under my roof, I put away ten dollars for you. Needless to say, Laurie doesn't know about this."

Ten dollars a week. My brain got as far as ten times 52 is $520 a year, but when I tried to multiply $520 times eighteen, I got stuck.

"There's over nine thousand dollars in there," he said. "It might sound like a lot of money, but remember that it's all you've got. You can blow through it in a single day if you're not careful, but you can make it last if you're smart. Money goes out fast when none's coming in." He cleared his throat and took a sip of coffee. "That's all the help I can give you. That's it. It may not be fair, but it's a hell of a lot more than I ever got."

"Thanks," I stammered as I shoved the envelope into my bag. I realized that my body was shaking. None of this was what I expected at all.

"Now the last thing," he said. "I can tell you all I know about your birth-mother and the man I think is your birth-father. You can ask me any question you like and I will do my best to answer. If at any time while I'm talking, you want me to stop, I'll stop. If you get upset and run out of this place, no hard feelings. But this is the deal: right now, today, I will give you all the time I can, to answer every question I can. After today, I make no promises. Understood?"

I nodded and said, "Yes."