was giving the wrap-up speech.
Maddy wasn’t watching. Something was not right with her. She was lying down, one bare foot hanging off the sofa, braced hard and tense against the floor. Her other bare foot rested in Luca’s lap in what looked like a girlfriend pose to me. Her hands were thrown over her head, as abandoned as Oliver in his deepest sleeps, and her head was propped on a throw pillow against the sofa’s other arm. Her face was tipped back, and her eyes were closed, but too tight for her to be sleeping. Her eyebrows were knit up, and her cheeks were very pink. A strange little smile played over her face. It was not an expression I had ever seen before.
It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. I even opened my mouth to call her name, to ask if she was all right, but then I realized Luca’s arm was stretched out, running parallel to the tensed leg in his lap. His right hand disappeared up under the skirt of her pool cover-up.
I froze for the endless half second it took for me to make sense of what was happening. Luca himself was completely dressed, his other hand innocently resting along the top of the sofa. Maddy gasped, her head tipping back farther and her little smile widening. It broke my paralysis. I found myself retreating up the stairs, rapidly, silently, unsure what to do but very sure I did not want Maddy to know that I’d seen this.
If they had been making out, I would have slipped upstairs and then started banging noisily around, giving them a minute so Luca could wipe away Mad’s strawberry lip gloss and she could straighten her hair. But this? I did not know what the hell to do with this.
Luca watching TV, and yet his hand had been busy, moving between her legs. What the hell was that? It felt clinical and weird and not appropriate. They were definitely rounding third base, but they hadn’t been kissing. Her cover-up was still on, all the way, and I’d seen the strap of her tankini top, so that was on, too. What teenagers go straight to third base?
None I had ever heard of. Especially not with the girl on the receiving end. I had read all the warning articles about Maddy’s generation, how the boys were hooked on porn, expecting girls to service them. I’d read that girls Maddy’s age were under constant pressure to send naked selfies and to give out hand jobs like they were no more serious than good-night kisses. I didn’t want that for my Mads. Neither did Davis. We had both talked with her frankly about sex and self-respect, telling her she didn’t owe any boy alive that kind of favor.
But I had never thought to warn her about this.
I wasn’t even sure what the hell this was, but I was sure that Davis wouldn’t like it. I was even more sure it could not be healthy.
“Hey, kids! I’m home!” I yelled down the stairs, trying to sound cheery and not as if my eyes had just been burned out of my head.
There was a pause, a very short one.
“Okay,” Mad called up.
I was still loath to step down far enough to see. For her dignity—and my own. “Mads? Can you come up here?”
I wanted her out of that room. Away from Luca.
“Now?” she called back.
“Right now,” I called back.
I found myself hoping, near praying, that Roux was running from a warrant. Warrants didn’t beat women the way Roux had been beaten. Warrants didn’t produce sons or stepsons with disturbing ideas about sex and boundaries. Luca seemed like such a nice kid, but what if he was on the run from a seriously messed-up father figure? They could be fleeing unimaginable abuse. If I told this man where to find them, I’d be no better than Roux. Considering there was a child involved, I might be worse. Dear God, let Roux be running from a warrant.
I also had no idea how much I should tell Davis. How much would Davis want to know? She was his kid, but dads and daughters—too much detail might do more harm than good. At the same time, how many secrets could I wedge between me and my husband before they stretched us too far from each other?
“We’re almost finished,” she hollered, and I immediately thought, Finished with what? I hoped to God she meant the video. Surely