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other people are waiting for your father’s money. You need to—”
    “Who?”
    “Well, for one thing, your father left a trust for a woman in Virginia.”
    Such a funny word—“trust.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. I really don’t . . . I could guess. But . . .”
    “Does my mom know about this?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    I closed my eyes, the phone pressed to my ear, and asked Saul for a name.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    A small gift—that the woman receiving my father’s money was Azalea Bellham; it took seconds to learn from the Internet that she was a social worker and therapist in Bridger Heights, Virginia. Her shoddy website displayed her head shot—her mirthless smile, her 1980s hairdo (a thin gate of bangs with more bangs above them, blown back and sprayed). The home page said, “Sometimes reaching out is the most difficult step to recovery. Call me.” The website linked to her blog, which, for the next six months, I would refresh on my computer screen seventy times a day: Tales of a Single Mother.
    The first post I read was called When Life Throws You Lemons, Make Lemon Meringue Pie Cupcakes: A Recipe Even Your Teenager Will Love! A handful of readers left comments like, “I tried this recipe with white chocolate sprinkles. Perfect refreshing dessert after a lazy summer barbecue!”
    Azalea wrote in a vague way about raising children, spouting clichés as if she’d learned about child rearing from bad sitcoms (“Do you ever get the feeling that your child has gotten too smart? LOL!”), but she never mentioned her own child.
    Until, one day, she did.
    I was reading comments on a post she’d written about children and the Internet. In response to a commenter’s lament about her son’s password-protected blog, Azalea wrote, “My teenager left her blog up on her screen last night. Who knew my kid has a blog??? Apparently she hated the grilled Hawaiian and hazelnut chicken I made for dinner! Fifteen-year-olds!”
    Fifteen.
    My heart jerked in my chest. Fifteen years ago was the period I’d always thought of as my father’s midlife crisis—when he switched careers and began to pray.
    I googled “grilled Hawaiian and hazelnut chicken.” And I found Azalea’s daughter. And I realized that when I was eleven, Azalea must have told my father that he had a second child.
    Azalea Bellham’s daughter didn’t reveal her name on her blog, but I read her posts until I gathered enough information to narrow my Google search.
    Eden.
    On her blog, Chef Girl, Eden focused primarily on her cooking classes, on the recipes she was trying, on her dreams of becoming a chef and her opinions on various shows on the Food Network. But some posts were simply expressions of teen angst. She thought her mother was an idiot. She hated everyone in her high school. She hated girls who shopped at Anthropologie, who dyed their hair, who paid for French manicures. She hated boys who loved those girls. She knew that her real life would begin in culinary arts school and she wished the time would just hurry up and pass.
    I clicked on her pictures over and over—Eden with her southern cooking class; Eden holding a baby; Eden alone at a desk, alone on brick steps wearing a sweatshirt with a hood, alone on a bed and in a car and in a Santa hat.
    Eden’s skin was dark. Her eyes disappeared into slits when she smiled for the camera. She had a thick stomach, fat arms, and skinny legs. She was fat on top and skinny on the bottom, her weight a virus that hadn’t finished spreading.
    Yes, I saw my father in her. He was in her forehead when she squinted at the sun, in her mouth when she half-smiled. He was everywhere in her body.
    I stood and went to the kitchen. I had the apartment to myself and had just made lemon meringue pie cupcakes. Seeing them cooling on the counter, I felt my body grow fatter, as if a bicycle pump were inflating me. I carried the tin back to the computer and opened Eden’s blog again. She had just posted something