“What?” Simon exploded.
“She’s an old lady,” Duke said. “You can tell she loves Oliver. She’s probably moving into an old folks’ home or something.”
Simon pulled a textbook out of a backpack on the van floor. “Old ladies aren’t supposed to like lizards. And I need quiet to study.”
“Amelia and I will walk up to 41st. There’s gotta be a Starbucks or something up there.”
There was a Starbucks. Amelia knew that for sure. She and her dad used to go there every Saturday afternoon. She’d order a hot chocolate and her dad a cafe mocha, and they’d get a cinnamon bun to share. They’d take it to the same table in the back corner.
Amelia always ate the whipped cream with a spoon while her hot chocolate cooled, and her dad read emails on his iPhone and gulped his coffee. She didn’t care that they didn’t exactly talk. And when her dad always pretended that she’d taken the biggest half of the cinnamon bun, she’d grin even though she wondered if he thought she was still six years old.
Amelia thought she would be okay. It was just a Starbucks, after all. But she felt weird when they got to the door. It was familiar and not familiar, like she was coming back from a long voyage. She followed Duke inside. It was packed with people, and they joined the back of the line, behind three giggly teenage girls.
“Have whatever you want,” Duke said. “It’s on me.”
Amelia studied the board. “A cinnamon dolce latte.” Roshni always talked about lattes, and Amelia didn’t like to admit she’d never had one.
While she waited, she glanced over at the corner table.
A silver-haired man was sitting between two little girls, laughing at something one of them had said. Then he picked up a crayon and drew on a piece of paper.
He glanced up and saw Amelia staring at him.
He stood up and called out something. She thought he might be saying, “What a surprise, Amelia!” or “It’s not what it looks like, Amelia!”
She didn’t wait to find out. She turned and ran, out the door and onto the street. She raced down 41st Avenue, tears spilling down her cheeks as she dodged around pedestrians.
It was their table. Their tradition. How could he?
Her tears turned into sobs. As she turned onto Balsam, a woman getting out of a parked car said, “Are you all right?”
She kept running. When Simon’s van came into sight, she stopped and scrubbed her cheeks with the palms of her hands. She wanted to duck into the bushes beside the apartment building until Duke came back, but Simon glanced up and gave her a nod. She felt she had no choice but to get in the van.
She climbed onto the cracked vinyl backseat and stared at her knees. She could feel Simon watching her in the rearview mirror. Her face must look awful, red and blotchy.
“Please don’t look at me,” she mumbled.
“Gotcha,” Simon said.
For the next few minutes, the only sound was Simon flipping pages. Amelia didn’t feel like crying anymore. She felt empty and drained inside, like a squeezed-out sponge.
“Can I open a window back here?” she said. “It’s boiling.”
“They don’t work.”
“Oh.” Amelia slid forward so her bare legs wouldn’t stick to the hot vinyl seat. She peered down the street as far as she could. Where was Duke? Was he going to be furious?
She caught Simon’s eye in the rearview mirror, and he said, “Oops, I’m not supposed to look at you.”
Amelia felt herself smile. “I’m all right now. It was just the shock.”
“Right.”
She sighed. “My dad dumped me for another family.”
“Ouch,” Simon said. “That’s harsh.”
She told him the whole story. It spilled out of her. Even though Simon wasn’t as nice as Duke, she had to admit he was an awesome listener. When she got to the end, she said, “I don’t even know if he wants to get a divorce. And I don’t know if I care.”
“Hmmm,” Simon said. “You know what? There’s something to be said for the Mosuo’s approach to fatherhood.”
“What?”
“The Mosuo. They live in the Himalayas in China. The mothers rear their kids. No dads involved. They don’t even have a word for father.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m an anthropology major. I’m supposed to know stuff like that.”
“Is that true really? The fathers don’t have anything to do with their kids?”
“True.” Simon grinned. “You can google it if you don’t believe me. It’s spelled m-o-s-u-o.”
Just then Duke tapped at the van door with his foot. He was juggling three paper cups with lids.
Simon leaned over and pushed the door open.
“A latte for the lady and two cappuccinos,” Duke said.
Duke didn’t say one word about her running away, which was very cool. Amelia pressed her feet in her lime-green flip-flops against the back of Duke’s seat. She sipped the latte (delicious!) and examined her toenails. Tomorrow was the pedicure. Lime green, she decided, to match her flip-flops.
When they were finished, Duke said, “Time to go get Oliver. I need you to help me carry the aquarium, Si.”
“I’m your slave now too?” Simon grumbled. “Not just a taxi driver?”
As he slung himself out of the van, he winked at Amelia.
When Amelia got home, she googled Mosuo on the laptop. She clicked on a National Geographic article. Remote Group Has No Dads, And Never Did, the headline said.
Simon was right. Most Mosuo kids didn’t even know who their dads were. By most accounts, children seem to do just fine under this arrangement, she read.
She’d better tell Liam about this. He’d probably end up being an expert on the Mosuo. She clicked on another site with a bunch of information on division of chores and something called extended families, but it was boring and hard to understand.
The National Geographic site was the best, so she went back to it.
The article ended with a quote: “The society does kind of create this question: Are fathers really necessary?”
She sighed. How should she know? She turned off the laptop and headed downstairs.