Cole’s comment brought a quick smile to Ileana’s face. She gave him a mockery of a curious look and asked, “Oh like what?”
Ileana looked down at her plate, idly wondering if she was even going to eat the brownie she ordered. She leaned her elbows on the table and looked back up at Cole as she said, “It is pretty normal though to wonder. I think you always look for some sort of reason when things just don’t make any sense. But you have your mom there and it always counts more than any missing person.”
It was a long pause before Ileana spoke again. She was inwardly cringing at the conversation turning toward this. Her tone as she spoke was a brittle lightness and almost too casual. “She never told my father about me after she left him. So one day she just…called him and told him to pick his daughter up at a bus station. She gave me a ticket for a Grayhound and left me at the station and I took a bus ride from Philly to Kansas with the hope my father would actually be there. I was ten.”
She cleared her throat and nudged the plate with the brownie forward with a quick change of the conversation. “Do you want to split this with me? I’m not all that hungry.”