The Real Father. Kathleen O'Brien

that disarming smile at her, and suddenly the mockery was gone again “—didn’t everyone?”

      The sound of Liza’s favorite nursery rhyme jingle broke into Molly’s response, the little girl’s high, clear notes making their way like birdsong through the boxwood wall.

      Jackson looked toward the sound, then slowly turned his gaze back to Molly. “I don’t have to ask if she’s your daughter, do I?” He smiled. “She’s exactly like you at that age.”

      Molly took a deep breath. She knew the similarity was dramatic. Molly had been lanky, too, always outgrowing her clothes just like Liza. And both of them had identical wispy blond hair, wide-set blue eyes, and fair cheeks that pinked at the slightest breeze.

      “Do you think so?” As Molly tried to think of what else to say, Liza’s song changed to a show tune, her young voice swaggering with a pretty good approximation of early Madonna. Molly couldn’t help smiling, meeting Jackson’s raised eyebrow. What an amazing kid she had. Where did she learn these things?

      “As you can hear, though, the similarities are all on the surface,” Molly said over the noise. “Liza’s nobody’s clone. I never could carry a tune. And she’s got tons more gumption than I ever dreamed of.”

      Jackson tilted his head and let his gaze settle on Molly’s face. “Maybe,” he said, answering her smile with one of his own. “But, you know, M, I sometimes thought you might have underestimated yourself in that department.”

      “Are you kidding?” Molly shook her head incredulously. It felt surprisingly nice to hear Jackson’s old nickname for her. “I was a mess. I was afraid of my own shadow.”

      Jackson shrugged. “I think you’re still selling yourself a little short. After all, your daughter must have inherited all that confidence and charisma from somewhere.”

      She stared at him, realizing, suddenly, just like that, the moment of truth had come. This was where she should say, quite casually, “No, actually, she inherited that from her father.” Jackson obviously was expecting that, waiting for it, as if he had planned it.

      Perhaps he had. Perhaps, without realizing it, she had been running through a conversational maze, and now she had hit the dead end, the unanswerable question that rose up between them as insurmountable as a thick, thorny hedge.

      The big question. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, the one no one ever quite spoke out loud.

      The question Jackson had nonetheless been leading her deftly toward since the first moment he set eyes on Liza.

      If these lucky genes had not come from Molly, then where?

      Who was Liza’s father?

      ORDINARILY LIZA WOULD have been in no hurry to get back to the grown-ups, who talked about the most boring things on earth. Meeting new grown-ups was the worst, because they always wanted to ask her the same dumb questions, like what subject do you like best at school, or how did you get so tall?

      But this new grown-up was different. She’d been looking for someone to be King Willowsong for nearly a year now. She’d almost given up. But it was as if the maze had led her to him, as if she had banged into him for a reason. When she had looked up into his awesome green eyes, and seen his hair shining all silvery in the sun, her first thought had been that maybe, finally, she had found a King for Planet Cuspian.

      But it would take more than silvery hair and green eyes if he was really going to be King. The true test was much harder. If he was truly the King, he had to be able to recognize that her mother was the Queen.

      So she had to hurry. She’d noticed a funny look in his eyes when he had said hello to her mother. It might have been the right look, the look a king should give a queen. But her mother had sent her away before she could be sure.

      She was almost at the entrance to the maze when she heard people coming up the walk behind her.

      “Hello?”

      For a minute Liza wished she could just pretend she hadn’t heard the lady calling out. But that wasn’t nice. The Princess of Cuspian didn’t do things like that. At least not very often.

      She turned and saw a woman about her mother’s age, but sexier, like someone on TV, and not quite as soft, with her tight shiny black belt and tight blue pants. Still, somehow Liza knew that the lady wasn’t a Mudbluff. She might smell like too much hair spray, and her lipstick might be the color of a really bad bruise, but she wasn’t a Mudbluff.

      Her mom thought it was weird, but Liza always tagged everyone right away using the different species from her imaginary planet. Everyone was either a Willowsong or a Mudbluff. A good guy or a bad guy.

      It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the difference between made-up and real. It was just that tags made life simpler. Mostly, she had discovered, people were Willowsongs, which was kind of a relief, kind of comforting, when you thought about it.

      Most of the Mudbluffs she’d seen were in the movies. Well, there was Mrs. Geiger who taught piano and hurt your fingers trying to make them reach the keys—she was a Mudbluff. And once Liza had watched a woman at the grocery store squeezing her kid’s arm until he cried. Definitely a Mudbluff.

      But mostly Liza’s world was made up of Willowsongs.

      As Liza slowed down to see what the lady wanted, she noticed that a little boy slouched along behind the woman, scuffing his sneakers across the brick walk. Liza looked closely at his blond hair. She knew him. She had seen him at the Radway School when she’d gone to visit a couple of weeks ago.

      Tommy, maybe? Yes, she was pretty sure he was Tommy.

      Tommy was hard to forget. He’d spent the whole day in trouble with the teacher. At first, Liza had thought Tommy was a Mudbluff for certain. But then she had looked into his eyes, cool eyes the color of rye grass, and she hadn’t been so sure. Those were the tricky ones, the people who did Mudbluffy things, but their eyes were sad, or tired, or scared, and you suddenly could tell they had reasons, big reasons, for the bad things they did.

      “Hi,” the woman said as she drew closer. “I’m Annie Cheatwood.” Her blue eyes swept Liza’s face, smiling and frowning at the same time. “I guess you’re Molly’s little girl, aren’t you? Good grief, look at you! Is this déjà vu or what?”

      Liza nodded. She knew what the lady meant—her grandmother said that all the time. And she’d seen pictures of her mom as a little girl, so she knew they looked alike. Especially the ones where her mom was smiling. There weren’t very many of those, as if her mother had always been hiding a missing tooth or something.

      “Yes,” she said, curious to think that her mother had ever known this lady, who, now that she was up close, smelled of hair spray, Juicy Fruit gum, and, most surprisingly, wood chips.

      It was actually kind of a nice smell. Nothing like her mom, but still. Definitely not a Mudbluff. “I’m Liza,” she added politely.

      “Well, it’s great to meet you, Liza,” Mrs. Cheatwood said, sounding as if she meant it. “It’s really kind of a kick. This is my son Tommy. I guess you two are probably about the same age.”

      Liza looked over at Tommy, who had his hands behind his head, stretching his head back to stare at the sky, thought there wasn’t anything happening up there, not even an airplane. There didn’t seem to be any point in saying “hi.”

      “Actually, we’re looking for Jackson,” Mrs. Cheatwood said. “Jackson Forrest. He lives here, but nobody answered the door up at the house. Is he around?”

      “Maybe,” Liza said. “My mom just met a man in the maze, but she didn’t say his name.”

      “Hot damn, he cornered her in the maze, did he?” Mrs. Cheatwood shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe how funny that was. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Sorry, didn’t mean to say ‘damn.’ That’s what comes from selling lug nuts to guys in dirty shirts all day. Anyhow, was it a tall, gorgeous