Mom asked, “What do you mean?” I knew she wasn’t talking about Kate.

I licked my lips, digging my toes into the carpet, and tried to explain. “You have to admit, the way you ‘died’ was a little unusual. Then it started happening. I’m perfectly ordinary looking.” My mother looked like she was about to interrupt me, but I shook my head. “I don’t look anything like you.”

I don’t. My mother is five foot nothing and looks like she stepped out of a magazine. The swimsuit edition, at that. I’m six feet tall, and only beautiful after two hours of work and three beers- my work, and their beers. I spent a lot of time in that twenty years looking in the mirror trying to find something of my mother in my face, and never found anything.

She bit her lip and said, “Is looking like your father so bad?” Still queen of the guilt trip, Ma.

“Well, no,” I said, “But anyone who looks at you has an easy answer for why men and women follow you around like you’re Helen of Troy.”

She winced. I should have known.