Apparently the taxi driver had seen enough. Putting the vehicle in gear, he pulled away from the curb. “Hey!” her father yelled, chasing it down the street. “Come back here! Do you hear? Come back!” The driver stuck his arm out the window and flipped her father off.
By the time he returned to the lawn, her mother had the man they’d called Andy back on his feet again. He just stood there, docile, his head hung low, as if to concede that all this was his fault.
“Now what?” her mother wanted to know, seemingly of both men.
“Now we go for a ride,” her father said, grabbing the man by the elbow.
“Don’t you dare hurt him,” she called after them as Jacy’s father dragged the man to the Mercedes and shoved him roughly inside. As he went around to the driver’s side, the stranger’s face was framed in the passenger window. At first Jacy thought he was looking at her mother, but then saw that, no, he was looking straight at her.
When the Mercedes raced up the street and out of sight, her mother didn’t immediately turn around. When she finally did, she just stood there staring at the house, as if seeing it for the first time. To Jacy, still frozen in the doorway, she looked like a woman casting around for nonexistent options.
* * *
—
Q&A. THE KITCHEN. Twenty minutes have passed since the scene on the lawn. A pot of coffee has been brewed. Jacy’s mother has wrapped some ice cubes in a dishcloth and applied it to the fat lip she somehow got in the struggle. Mother and daughter are seated on opposite sides of the kitchen island.
Her mother’s first words are predictable. “Thank God there’s never anybody around this time of the afternoon. I don’t think anyone saw.”
“Who is he?”
“A drunk.”
“Who is he?”
“A drunk,” she repeats. “A falling-down drunk. Couldn’t you see?”
“Who is he?”
Finally her mother meets her gaze with a pleading expression of her own. “Someone I knew a long time ago.”
“Tell me.”
“He has nothing to do with you. Forget about him.”
“He said my name. He tried to say my name.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“I heard him.”
“You heard something.”
“He reached out. To touch me.”
“He’s never going to get his hands on you. Ever.”
She says it. Just fucking says it. “He’s my father, isn’t he.”
Her mother looks away.
“Isn’t he.”
When her mother turns back, her eyes have gone icy hard. It’s a look she’s seen before, but it’s always been directed at her father, never at her. “You’ve got a choice to make, little girl, and you’re going to have to make it now, before your father gets home.”
“My father’s not coming home.”
Her mother actually laughs. “Hey, you’re lucky. You get to choose. Who do you want in your life? The man you’ve always known as your father, who treats you like his daughter, who pays for the food you eat and the clothes on your back and the roof over your head. Or that…thing”—here mimicking the man’s spastic arm motions—“you saw on the lawn.”
“He has a name. Andy. I heard you say it.”
“Yes, his name is Andy, and we’ve said it for the last time in this house.”
“Andy,” she repeats.
Lightning quick, her mother reaches across the island and slaps her face. “You ungrateful little bitch. Do you have any idea what I saved you from?”
She doesn’t. She has no idea about anything, except that it’s all a lie, that it’s never been anything but a lie.
Outside, her father’s Mercedes pulls into the driveway. No, not her father. It’s Donald. That’s who he’ll be from now on. And her mother will be Vivian. Don and Viv. And one day soon—though not soon enough—she’ll be free of them.
* * *
—
LIKE ON THAT LONG-AGO evening, their last together on the island, the temperature tonight had continued to drop, and despite their windbreakers and the whiskey bottle, all three friends were now shivering in the chill. When Lincoln went inside to search for blankets they could drape around their shoulders, Teddy said, “Look, Mick, you don’t have to do this.”
“I do, though,” he said. “I should’ve come clean a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“She made me swear.” Which was true, though not, he had to admit, the whole truth and nothing but. “Also, I was ashamed. When we left the island that morning and you guys dropped me off at the Falmouth parking lot? I convinced myself that not telling you how Jacy and I were planning to meet