Chương 3
Dana exhaled.
“Of course.”
Rachel’s chin lifted.
“You’re Leah’s sister.”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
Dana glanced at Maya.
“Enough.”
“How long?”
“Rachel,” Ethan said.
Rachel turned on him.
“I asked her.”
Dana studied Rachel for several seconds.
“I found out four years ago.”
Rachel absorbed that too.
“Four.”
“Leah told me after Sophie got pneumonia and she panicked about what would happen if she died.”
Sophie looked up.
“She told you because of pneumonia?”
Dana’s expression broke.
Children had a way of finding the one sentence adults wished they could retrieve.
“Your mom worried a lot when you were sick.”
“I only stayed in the hospital one night.”
“I remember.”
“You slept in the chair.”
“I remember that too.”
“You snored.”
Dana touched Sophie’s hair.
“That part is slander.”
Sophie looked almost offended.
“You did.”
Maya smiled.
Rachel pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose.
The scene was becoming intolerably normal.
That, more than the accusation, more than the lockets, more than Ethan’s confession, made something inside her recoil.
Sophie and Maya were children.
They could become sisters over a ridiculous argument about snoring while four adults destroyed the structure around them.
Rachel turned toward the path.
“I need to go.”
Maya took a step after her.
“Mom?”
Rachel stopped.
Every instinct in her body wanted to leave alone.
She had driven behind Ethan’s car after seeing a text on his lock screen while he was in the shower that morning.
DANA: She agreed to meet. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
Rachel had spent forty minutes telling herself it might involve work, family business, an old client, anything except what the words sounded like. She had parked two blocks away because she felt ridiculous. She had followed him into the park because she felt worse.
Then she saw Maya.
That had confused her.
Ethan had taken Maya for pancakes, he said.
Their Sunday thing.
Rachel had watched from behind the maple while a strange little girl waited on a bench.
She had thought, for perhaps fifteen merciful seconds, that Ethan was arranging some elaborate playdate.
Then he took out the lockets.
Rachel looked at Maya now.
Her daughter’s lower lip trembled once before she bit it.
Rachel held out her hand.
Maya took it.
Rachel bent and kissed the top of her head.
“I’m going to sit in the car for a few minutes.”
“Are we going home?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Is Dad coming?”
Rachel looked at Ethan.
“I don’t know that either.”
Maya’s fingers tightened.
Rachel crouched until they were eye level.
“You are not in trouble. Sophie is not in trouble. Nothing about this is because of either of you. Okay?”
Maya nodded uncertainly.
“Can I stay with Sophie?”
Rachel almost said no.
The answer reached her mouth.
Then she saw Sophie watching them with the expression of a child waiting to be rejected by a woman she had learned existed five minutes ago.
“Yes,” Rachel said. “For a little while.”
She stood.
Ethan moved toward her.
“Rachel, please let me—”
She held up one hand.
He stopped.
“If you follow me right now, I swear to God, I will say things in front of these children that I will regret for the rest of my life.”
He stayed where he was.
Rachel walked away.
She made it past the maple, past the drinking fountain, past an elderly man tossing crumbs to birds despite a sign asking people not to feed wildlife.
At the edge of the park she realized she had no idea where she had parked.
She stood beside a row of cars and began to laugh.
It came silently at first.
Then the laughter turned into a sound she did not recognize.
She put one hand over her mouth.
A woman loading groceries into an SUV looked at her, hesitated, then asked, “Are you okay?”
Rachel nodded because there were certain questions strangers did not actually want answered.
“Yeah. Thank you.”
The woman gave her one more concerned look and closed the trunk.
Rachel found her car three minutes later.
She sat inside without turning on the engine.
On the passenger floor was Maya’s pink water bottle. Rachel picked it up and noticed the sticker Ethan had put on it two weeks earlier: a smiling cartoon planet wearing sunglasses.
He had spent ten minutes fixing the sticker after Maya complained about a bubble beneath the edge.
Rachel stared at it until the letters on the bottle blurred.
She did not cry dramatically.
That irritated her.
Some part of her believed betrayal should produce a cleaner physical response.
Instead she felt nauseated, thirsty, embarrassed, furious, and absurdly concerned that the milk she had bought that morning was still on the kitchen counter.
She texted Ethan.
Do not come to the car.
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Finally:
Okay.
She hated him for obeying.
She hated him for everything.
Back at the bench, Maya had begun asking Sophie questions.
“What grade are you in?”
“First.”
“Me too.”
“What school?”
“Riverside.”
“I go to Whitman.”
Sophie nodded as if collecting neutral facts might stabilize the afternoon.
Maya pointed at Milton.
“How old is he?”
Sophie considered.
“Maybe thirty.”
Maya looked impressed.
“That’s older than my mom.”
Dana coughed.
Ethan stared at the grass.
Rachel, had she heard it, might have laughed against her will.
Sophie examined Maya’s locket.
“Does yours open?”
Maya nodded.
She pressed the tiny catch.
Inside were two engraved letters.
M.C.
Sophie opened hers.
S.B.
The girls looked at Ethan.
“Who made them?” Maya asked.
He sat on the edge of the bench, careful to leave distance between himself and Sophie.
“I bought them before either of you were born.”
Dana’s expression sharpened.
Maya frowned.
“Why?”
He ran one thumb over the locket still in his palm.
“Because I was scared.”
“Of what?”
Dana interrupted.
“Maybe this isn’t the right place for the whole conversation.”
Ethan nodded.
She was right.
May you like
He also suspected there would never be a right place.
Sophie looked at her aunt.
