a clean table, and I’ll bring your food there.”
Billy and Jenny thank the waitress, nod at Mom and Pop, and walk out, Billy pulling Michael behind them by the arm. “Do you know how old that girl is?” I hear him mutter.
“She’s eighteen,” Michael says. “I know, but Dad—”
Then the door swings closed behind them, and they’re gone.
Marjorie heaves a sigh. “This has been very entertaining,” she announces. “But I should go, too.”
She picks up her plate and sees herself out.
So it’s finally down to Mom, Pop, Afton, and me.
Which is a good thing, because something else has just occurred to me.
“Wait,” I say. “When I said I knew about the affair, you acted like you knew what I was talking about. But you didn’t know about Afton and Michael, did you?”
“No,” Mom says grimly. “I didn’t know they had sex in my bed. I wish I’d never found out about that, honestly. But everything makes so much sense now—how you were acting out all week, why you were so angry.”
“So what affair did you think I meant?” I ask.
Silence.
Then Pop sighs. “We thought you meant our affair.”
“Your affair,” I repeat stupidly.
Mom clears her throat. “When your pop and I met, I was still married to Aaron, and Pop had a serious girlfriend.”
I blink a few times. This means that Mom and Pop had an affair while they were both committed to other people.
“Oh,” I say numbly.
“We weren’t trying to deceive you, honey, or keep it a secret from you forever, but you were very young at the time.”
“Oh.” I glance at Afton. Her face is totally unsurprised by this revelation. She must have known somehow, too. Which is why she was saying those things, in her fight with Mom, about not being a good role model herself. “I see.”
“We always meant to explain how it happened to you, someday,” Pop says. “We should have. You’re old enough to handle it now.”
Or not.
I stand up. I’ve been so wrong about everything. In all of human history, it feels like there has never been anyone so spectacularly wrong as I have been.
“I have to go now,” I say, and then I run.
43
When I finally stop running, I am, once again, at the rental shack for the paddleboards. It’s early enough that there’s very little line. I don’t even really think about it; I rent a board, collect it, and paddle myself into the exact center of the lagoon.
Where nobody will be able to find me.
Where I can be alone with my thoughts, with my wrongness, with the way I obliterated any semblance of dignity for me or my family, with all that I’ve been so clueless about, all that I didn’t know, because no one bothered to tell me.
I sit there on the board, legs in the cool green water, the sun beating down on my back, and I wish that the world would swallow me up. But the world cruelly refuses.
After a while I see something swimming toward me: a head, followed by a long, lean body in a red bikini. When she reaches me, she starts treading water. Which feels like a metaphor.
“I need to talk to you,” she says softly.
“You’ve been saying that all week.”
“Maybe now you’ll listen.”
“Fine. Come aboard, then.” I try to counterbalance so she won’t tip us over as she pulls herself up onto the board, water pouring off her. She arranges herself to face me, but then it seems like she loses her nerve.
The water laps at our legs. The wind stirs our hair. I can hear the agitated in and out of my sister’s breathing—I can almost see the words forming in her head, the excuses she wants to give me about what she’s done.
But I don’t want to hear it.
And she knows that. Because she knows me.
So here we are, having a non-conversation while, around us, kids splash and play, and couples pass by in kayaks, and the world goes about its business as usual.
I want to say, You said you need to talk. So talk. But I can’t be the one, this time, to break the silence.
Her jaw shifts. She’s chewing on the inside of her cheek, a habit I hate. Her breath, in and out, in and out. Until she finally says: “I’m sorry, Ada.”
“Apology not accepted. I can’t believe you let me think that it was Mom.” I swallow back tears. “Do you know what that was like for me? I felt like my life—our life—was over.”
“I made a