Chapter Ten
Lucy
Harrison’s handsome face falls into an apologetic crumple.
“What are you doing here?” Lucy asks, bewildered.
Vivian tilts her head. “You two know each other?”
Looking uncomfortable, Harrison extends a hand. “Vivian? Harrison Gray, hi. It’s nice to finally meet in person. And, well…Lucy and I have gone out a couple times.”
Vivian’s eyes go wide. “Wait, you’re the library guy?”
Something isn’t adding up, and it’s making Lucy frantic. “How do you know each other?”
“He’s selling my house,” Celeste interjects, leaning a hair too heavily on “my.” “Not very quickly, though.”
“No.” Lucy wants to cry. To Vivian, she says, “You told me it was off the market.”
Guilt floods Vivian’s face. “It was.”
“And now?”
Vivian’s pinched expression says it all. The room feels too hot, like Lucy’s being boiled alive in her own cluelessness.
“I was going to tell you,” Vivian says. “Really. I’m so sorry.”
A thousand-pound silence stretches out for too long.
“And you,” Lucy says to Harrison. “You told me you were a lawyer.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “I’m with my dad’s firm. He just had a knee replacement, so he’s not working much these days. I’ve been helping Vivian instead. I should’ve told you the full truth about what I did earlier. I’m so sorry.”
For lying? Or for taking away her favorite place in the whole world?
“Did you know who I was?” The question embarrasses Lucy—she’s not Celeste, she doesn’t expect people to recognize her—but she has to ask.
“I only pieced it together right as we were saying goodbye last time, I swear. I was trying to figure out how to tell you.”
Celeste marvels at the whole scene. “This is good,” she mutters, like she’s taking mental notes for her next book, probably something called Betrayal in Belize.
Dread settles over Lucy like a heavy blanket. She’s really going to lose the house; Vivian never had any intention of keeping her end of the deal. The thought of another family—a nice, normal, nuclear bunch—moving in sickens her.
Harrison rubs the back of his neck. “Celeste, do you still want a ride to Portland?”
“Yes, I should get going.” She pauses uncertainly. “Vivian, do you want to join me? Come to the signing, we’ll get dinner after. You can stay in my hotel, too, if you want.”
“You’re not staying here?” Vivian asks.
“I’m flying to DC first thing tomorrow. It’s easier this way.”
“Um. Sure?”
Celeste squeezes Vivian’s upper arm. “Great, come with us then.”
She leaves. Harrison follows.
“I’m so sorry,” he says as he passes Lucy. He sounds stricken.
She can hardly look at him. “Right. Thanks.”
He pauses in the doorway, wincing like he’s trying to find the right words. But all he comes up with is “Bye.”
Vivian
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Vivian tells Harrison.
Then she and Lucy are alone, sequestered in the kitchen like that first awful afternoon they met.
Lucy crosses her arms tightly and stares at the burnished wood floor. Wiping a tear from underneath her glasses, she says, “When, exactly, were you planning to tell me?” she asks.
“I was waiting for the right time.”
Vivian hates to hear echoes of Oscar in her excuse. She needs to stop keeping secrets.
Lucy shakes her head. “You lied to me.”
“I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for that. I should’ve been honest with you.”
Vivian really means it—she feels bad.
“You were going to give this place a real chance. It seemed like you were actually starting to like it here.”
Vivian knew this conversation had to happen at some point, but she wishes it had unfolded differently. “I know. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t really need the money. I’m going forward with opening the bar—just all on my own instead of with my ex.”
Lucy presses her fingers to her temples. “It’s not all on your own , Vivian, if you’re funding it with family money. You’re not exactly bootstrapping it.”
“Well, I—”
Lucy cuts her off with a snap. “Dad died and I didn’t even get a sympathy casserole. You’re getting handed a fortune.”
Mortified and ashamed of her lack of self-awareness, Vivian says, “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
She’s grateful for the foundation her parents laid for her— not just private school but also tutors to get into college and even preschool; $3,000 transferred to her checking account every month when she was a jobless student, then an underpaid postgrad. And if family money is involved in whatever comes next, she’ll be grateful for that, too. She’s unfathomably lucky—she knows that. But there’s no point in having all that and not putting it to good use for herself.
“I acknowledge my privilege,” Vivian says slowly. “But I’ll be running it on my own. Its success or failure will all be on me.”
“Sure,” Lucy says coolly. “All on you, just with Dad’s rich friends and your famous mom’s fans stopping by.”
Exasperated, Vivian says, “What do you want me to do, take a vow of poverty? I can’t help how they raised me.”
“Is Oscar okay with you doing this without him?”
“He doesn’t know, and even if he did, he probably wouldn’t care,” Vivian says. “He’s too busy taking care of his pregnant wife he was supposed to be leaving.”
“His pregnant wife ?” Lucy repeats, horrified. “He’s married?”
Vivian groans. It just slipped out. The stress is getting to her; the fight is spiraling out of control. She tries to backtrack to the important part. Her mom and Harrison are waiting outside; she needs to get going.
“Look, I’m sorry he didn’t leave the house to you—but that’s not my fault, okay? I didn’t ask to be in this position.”
“And I did?” Lucy asks incredulously.
“He’s the one you should be mad at, not me.”
“He’s not here!”
“You only put Dad on a pedestal because you didn’t really know him. He wasn’t a good person, Lucy,” Vivian says angrily. “Maybe he was to you for one month of the year—congratulations. But the rest of the time, he screwed over your mom, he lied to mine, and he could be a real piece of shit to me. I can’t keep this house just for him.”
“What do you know about being a good person, Vivian, sneaking around behind a pregnant woman’s back? Real classy. You’re just like Dad, a pair of selfish cheaters.”
Lucy’s face reddens, as if she’s embarrassed by her own insults. She grabs her keys. “I’m done. I’m leaving.”
“Lucy, wait!”
With a slam of the door, she’s gone.
So, Vivian fucked up with Lucy. Again. Everything collided all at once, like two busboys carrying stacks of fine china loaded with surprise visitors, white lies, and unfortunate truths smacking into each other at top speed. Vivian simmers with guilt in the back seat of Harrison’s car. She wants to text Lucy an apology, but what is there left to say?
Celeste isn’t as bothered. “Did everything settle down in there? Lucy seemed upset.”
Vivian pinches the bridge of her nose. “You ambushed us.”
“You wanted me to come,” Celeste says, surprised. “This date was convenient for me, and it’s not like you’re doing much these days.”
“Normal people schedule visits in advance,” Vivian says.
“Oh, come on. I’m your mother. I don’t need to be ‘normal people.’?”
She couldn’t if she tried.
“Besides, my tour schedule was posted all over Instagram. It went out in my newsletter. Everyone knew I’d be in Maine this week.”
“Everyone but your daughter.”
Celeste glances at Harrison. His eyes stay locked on the road.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I should’ve called,” Celeste says, irritated. “I won’t drop in on you like that again.”
Vivian doesn’t get too many apologies from her mother. “Great. Thank you.”
“See, what happened is that the first few tour dates got postponed, obviously, and so the whole schedule got rearranged. Portland really only got booked at the last minute. Since I was up here, I figured I’d come check on the house. The original floor plan didn’t quite seem accurate to me, I wanted to measure a few things. I didn’t understand what’s taking so long. Aren’t people snapping up houses around here these days?”
“Lucy would say yes,” Harrison mutters. “And she’s right.”
“Anyway, Harrison told me the real holdup was actually you! Waffling back and forth about whether you want to sell it after all.”
Damn it.
Harrison looks at her in the rearview mirror. “It’s okay to take your time if you need it. The market for places like yours isn’t going anywhere.”
“You actually want to keep it?” her mother asks.
Vivian isn’t thrilled about discussing her plans for the future. The house is inextricably linked to the bar, which could tip the conversation dangerously close to Oscar territory. She’s not ready to go there with her mother yet, especially after it had gone so terribly with Hank and Lucy…and that was before anyone knew Carla was pregnant with twins.
“I wish I could. I’d just rather have the money.”
Nobody questions this. Who wouldn’t want to have that kind of windfall?
And yet Vivian is nauseated with shame and frustration. Deep down, she knows Lucy isn’t being unreasonable. And while it’s true that this mess is Hank’s fault, it’s also true that Vivian has the power to right his wrongs. It’s just not fair that she’d have to sacrifice her own dreams in the process.
Celeste’s book signing, a cozy affair in a colorful indie bookstore, is going perfectly. Seated ramrod straight with her legs crossed at the ankle in front of a rapt audience, she reads an excerpt of Bored Housewives in Bora Bora. (As she once told Vivian, crossed thighs photograph terribly.) The interviewer, a local author, asks about Celeste’s writing process and career, and Vivian’s mother answers each question with honed charm, maneuvering around one about what she’s working on next.
“I can’t announce it yet, but…trust me, I wish I could,” she says with a wink.
A murmur of excitement ripples around the room. That’s typically the final question, but a middle-aged woman in the audience raises her hand.
“Do you have time for one more?” the other writer asks.
“Of course,” Celeste says, never one to rush out of the spotlight.
“I know you lost your husband last month. I’m so sorry. I’m a widow, too—I know how hard it is. I wanted to ask: How are you holding up?”
The warm energy in the bookstore abruptly vanishes, and it’s replaced by somber tension. The audience waits, immobile. Celeste’s lips pucker. Her grip tightens around the mic. Vivian had been tuning out, ruminating over that awful fight with Lucy, but this snaps her to attention.
With a deep breath, Celeste holds the woman’s gaze and says, “Thank you for your condolences. It was quite a shock. He was incredible—so full of life that it’s surreal he’s gone. I wish you all could have met him, though of course there are pieces of him in every man I write. I only hope each of you is lucky enough to be loved the way Hank loved me.”
Her eyes shine with tears, yet her voice remains steady. The effect is poignant but not too raw; it sounds personal, but it’s actually quite vague. Vivian recognizes parts of what Celeste said from the tribute she posted online, then reused in her eulogy. Several audience members clutch their chests.
When Celeste looks down to switch off her mic, a flicker of anguish slips through her polished mask, subtle enough for only Vivian to notice.
After every book has been signed, every selfie has been snapped, and the crowd has dispersed, Celeste is ready to go. Vivian follows her outside. Celeste folds her arms tightly and walks at a brisk clip.
“Are you okay?” Vivian asks.
“I thought that went well.”
“Yeah, but I meant are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“That last question…”
“Was nothing new,” she says firmly. “It’s come up a few times recently. I can handle it.”
“Right, but do you have to handle it? Do you really need to put yourself through a whole tour right now?”
Celeste isn’t exactly performing brain surgery, and she’s not a show pony. She’s not in this for the money, not anymore. The world would keep spinning if she gave herself a break; readers would get it. If anything, in Vivian’s opinion, it seems weirder that her mother presses on.
“I’m not going to cancel anything. This could be the last…” Celeste exhales slowly, then shuts down. “It doesn’t matter. Everything is fine.”
Before Vivian has a chance to respond, she barrels on. “Let’s find somewhere to eat. You know, the food scene here is supposed to be incredible? I wanted to go to that place—what’s it called…the one everyone says is amazing?”
“Fore Street.”
“Yes!” Celeste claps her hands in delight. There’s no trace of their conversation from moments ago. “How did you know?”
“Because everyone says it’s amazing.”
Foodies didn’t really flock to Portland until Fore Street opened in the ’90s. Now the small city is practically synonymous with critically acclaimed restaurants.
“Like I was saying, the tour dates kept moving around, and so we couldn’t get a reservation, which is such a bummer.” Vivian knows that “we” means Celeste and her assistant, Jessica, which really means just Jessica. “You don’t think you could pull some strings, could you?”
“I don’t know anybody there.”
Celeste tsks. “Well, then where to?”
They get a late lunch at the Press Hotel. Vivian once read that the building was originally home to the Portland Press Herald , and today it houses a newspaper-themed hotel and upscale restaurant. In the lobby, a swirl of dozens of vintage typewriters creates a 3D mural; the scale in the gym once weighed rolls of newsprint; the café is called Inkwell. She can’t help but think Lucy would like this place.
The hotel’s restaurant exudes cool elegance with sleek walnut furniture and an open kitchen behind a marble bar. They order a few plates to share: charred Brussels sprouts topped with plump dollops of aioli and a slice of lemon; campanelle pasta in a truffle butter sauce with crab and pea tendrils; sea scallops on a bed of corn and bacon bits drizzled in gochujang. Vivian would happily drown in this menu. She picks a French chardonnay that’ll stand up to their meal’s flavors, one she knows her mother will like. She can’t remember the last time it was just the two of them in a restaurant.
Celeste keeps her composure while eating around the pasta and prying for gossip about Lucy and Dawn, but when Vivian mentions Hank, her expression wobbles again. She sniffs once and furtively dabs behind her glasses.
Vivian hesitates before reaching across the table to hold Celeste’s hand. “Mom, it’s okay to be sad.”
Celeste glances around the full dining room like she’s scanning for fans from the event. “Not here.” She withdraws her hand and changes the subject. “So,” she says, insistently stoic. “What else is new?”
Vivian rambles a bit about how she’s gotten back into painting and tries to ask about the next book.
Celeste flaps her hand dismissively. “Ugh. It’s not going so well. No need to discuss it. Jocelyn’s new book is, of course, on the list again this week.”
“I’m sorry. Though you once had a bestseller for, what, three months?”
“Sixteen weeks.”
“You’ve done it before, you can do it again.”
Celeste stares off in stormy silence. “Mm.”
Part of Vivian wants to talk about her own career plans, though she knows better than to invite criticism and unwanted advice. But…fuck it.
“I’ve actually been thinking about what to do after the house sells, and I might want to open up my own place—a wine bar.”
Well, not entirely her own place. She’ll have to work on snipping that phrase out of her vocabulary.
This startles Celeste out of her funk. “Really! You’d leave Della?”
Vivian answers carefully. “I’ve learned a lot there. Moving on wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
“You know enough to do that?”
Vivian’s stomach clenches. “I’ll figure it out.”
“There are plenty of wine bars. Aren’t you worried about standing out? Attracting business?”
“I’m going to do my best. I’m really serious about this.”
“And you’d have enough to fund this new place?”
“I mean…” Vivian chews and swallows a Brussels sprout, buying herself time. “I’m still running the numbers. But I think it’ll work. That’s kind of why I want to sell the house.”
Celeste glows. “Fabulous. What would the place be like?”
Vivian doesn’t want to stare, but she revels in her mother’s expression for an extra second. Approval—this is what it’s like, apparently. She describes her ideas and is surprised by how satisfying it is to open up to her mother. She hasn’t been able to talk about this with anybody and hadn’t realized until now how lonely that made her feel. Celeste seems genuinely enthusiastic about the concept and spits out a whirlwind of recommendations: what the design could look like, which publicist Vivian should use.
When they’ve picked over the last of the meal, Celeste signals for the bill.
“I realize that we don’t do this kind of thing enough—spending time together,” she says. “It’s my fault.”
It’s a shocking amount of tenderness for one afternoon.
“It’s not just you, I’m busy, too,” Vivian says, though her mother is right.
Pained, Celeste tries to explain herself. “No, it’s more than that. I…” She drops her eyes to her empty wineglass, rolling the base of it in a circle, and tries again. “I haven’t been the best parent. I gave too much energy to my career and not enough to you—not that it even did me any good in the end. I want to be better for you.”
An embarrassing lump rises in Vivian’s throat as she sits in stunned silence. Her mother is taking accountability? Actually?
She breathes in the moment, filing it away for posterity. “Thank you. I really appreciate you saying that.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.”
They’re both reaching for the right thing to say and only coming up with stilted, oddly formal answers, but for now, that’s enough.
“And I can be better, too,” Vivian says. “Nicer.”
Celeste raises an eyebrow. “You absolutely could.”
Vivian probably deserves that. “You’re coming back next month, right? For Dad’s ceremony?”
“If you want me to, I will.”
Vivian gets a little shy. “I do, yeah.”
“Okay, then.” Celeste smiles.
That night, trying to fall asleep, Vivian wonders: Did she really just enjoy a meal alone with her mother?
Lucy
Lucy doesn’t care where she goes. The only objective is to put distance between her and Vivian. She was once naive enough to think they could be real sisters someday. Instead, Vivian turned out to be Homewrecker Barbie, outfits and accessories included. Fury propels her down the road; familiarity steers her right and left toward Dawn’s house. She drives in apoplectic silence. There’s no need for the radio when her anger is this loud.
Lucy lets herself in. “Mom?”
She hadn’t called, only prayed Dawn’s shift was over. There are footsteps on linoleum in the kitchen, and then Dawn appears in the living room, looking worried.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
They sit in the small but comfortable living room, where there’s soft blue carpeting, a fully stocked bookcase, and framed photos of the two of them. Lucy recounts her terrible day, starting with the shadowy way Harrison’s face fell at the sight of her, hitting a snag of guilt on the way down. He’d figured out exactly who she was and still didn’t bother to clue her in about Vivian’s nefarious backdoor dealings. He knew how much she hated the idea of locals’ footing in Fox Hill being chipped away by greedy sellers capitalizing on outsiders’ interest. And yet.
“Harrison actually apologized. He texted me an hour ago.” Lucy reads from her phone. “?‘I’m so sorry for letting you down. I’m sorry for not coming clean earlier. I understand if you’d prefer space, but I hope I can make this up to you.’?”
“Longer than any apology I ever got from a man. What did you write back?”
“I didn’t,” Lucy says, surprised. “I’m not going to.”
She continues, explaining what Vivian—selfish, shortsighted, obnoxiously privileged Vivian, who sees nothing wrong with giving up access to three generations of family history in a pristine paradise just so New Yorkers can have yet another place to drink wine—let slip about her married ex-boyfriend. Lucy doesn’t even want to think about the pregnant wife. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but in this case, it’s like Vivian is replicating Hank’s entire unfaithful orchard. It’s abhorrent. Cartoonishly evil. And it’s not like Vivian is lacking in options for available men to date. (Lucy can think of at least one who’d be happy to step into the role of her boyfriend like a golden retriever, tongue and tail wagging.)
“Your dad would be so angry if he knew she was selling it. That place was everything to him. We spent so much time together there,” Dawn says wistfully.
It’s hard to picture somehow. Lucy’s heard about how they met before, years ago, but she wants to hear it fresh. Other kids grew up with photo albums of their parents looking impossibly young in acid-washed jeans and mullets, living whole lives before their children arrived. They had wedding videos on VHS and old tales worn into a routine from repetition. Lucy had a few vague bits of a story that Dawn never bothered to linger over. She’d always wave Lucy off with, “There’s not much to tell.”
“Remind me how you met?”
“Oh, you know.”
“Indulge me. Please.”
She’s been through the wringer today; maybe that’s what convinces Dawn to open up.
“Okay. It was the summer of 1989. I was seventeen. I was lying out with Cindy on her dock, sunbathing.”
“And you saw the boat,” Lucy fills in.
“We saw this boat go by with two young guys on it,” she confirms. “Cute guys. And then a minute later, it passed by in the other direction, a little bit closer this time. Cindy, who probably started flirting the day she was born, called them over to us. We were chatting for a bit—us on the dock, them a few feet out—and your dad invited us on board.”
Lucy sits quietly, trying to memorize every syllable. She’s never gotten this level of detail before. She’s transfixed.
“And then what happened?”
“The four of us started hanging out all the time. Cindy and your dad’s friend Eric liked each other a bit, but your dad and I were inseparable. We were together all that summer, and the three after that. I cried every time he went back to college. He used to come visit me at Miss Pancakes and order endless cups of coffee just so he had a legitimate reason to be there. Roy used to tell him this wasn’t like a twenty-four-hour New York diner—he couldn’t chitchat with me all shift.
“I learned the hard way that he’s all talk, but back then…your dad was charming. When he was in New York, he used to call me long-distance. The phone bills got outrageous, so we’d write each other letters. The mailman was probably sick of me waiting by the mailbox. We were in love.” Her voice catches on the last word like she’s pulling it, musty and mothballed, out of the attic for the first time in decades.
Lucy has a million questions but can’t find the right words to ask them. All these years, Dawn made it sound like she and Hank were just a flimsy little summer fling, something to throw away at the end of the season like a pair of cheap flip-flops. It’s disorienting to learn it was far more than that.
Dawn sighs. “But sometimes, love isn’t enough. I knew there was a girl at Columbia with him. She pursued him, not the other way around. He was honest with me about her, at least in the beginning.”
“Were you worried about him getting serious with her?”
Dawn scoffs. “Ha, no , I wasn’t worried about some sociology major who followed him around the library and made eyes at him at parties. I remember asking him, ‘What kind of job can you get with a sociology degree?’ It’s the study of people, right? That girl paid fifteen grand a year in tuition, but I was earning $3.75 an hour getting the same kind of education with every customer who came in that door. I mean, come on.”
Lucy’s always admired her mom’s spunk. She wishes she inherited more of it.
“Maybe this sounds silly and naive to you, a small-town, teenaged waitress thinking she belonged with an Ivy League guy like him,” Dawn says, like she’s argued this same uphill battle before and knows exactly where the grooves in the road are.
“No,” Lucy protests.
“She might have been the better fit for his life, but back then, he loved me more.”
“Then how did he wind up with Celeste?”
“His parents liked the sound of her. He went out with her a few times to appease all three of them. He never planned to marry her,” she says, like the thought is absurd. “Celeste wanted him to stay in New York with her that summer before they graduated, but he decided to be here with me. I felt like we’d passed a real test together. It was the happiest I’d ever been.”
A quiet radiance emanates from Dawn, like she’s gotten used to tamping down those memories.
“That next year, 1992, he finished college and started working in May. By August, he wanted to quit. He hated being away from the lake—and me—all summer, and he wasn’t enjoying his job the way he thought he would.”
Lucy slots the new information into the timeline she already knows. “That’s when his parents died.”
Dawn nods sadly. “Hank and I decided we’d had enough of long-distance. He was going to quit his job at the bank in New York and move up here full-time.” A tinge of happiness flickers across her face, warming her features before they sink into sadness again. “He was visiting me one weekend when he called his parents to tell them the news. Your grandparents tried to race up here and talk him out of quitting his job, but there was a storm. Their car flipped over on the highway. The guilt…he was never the same after that.”
A sickening shiver creeps down Lucy’s spine. “Dad told me about the car crash, but I didn’t know why they were on the road.”
Uncomfortable silence settles between them. Dawn rakes her bangs back. Lucy is overwhelmed by how much destruction this relationship has caused. Maybe her grandparents would still be alive. Maybe her mom could’ve moved on and been happier with someone else. Maybe she’d have grown up with a sister. It’s impossible to grapple with what’s been lost.
“So, that was the end of us,” Dawn continues, resigned. “He said he couldn’t pursue a path they died to prevent him from taking. He stayed at his job. I couldn’t make it to the funeral. I wasn’t able to get time off work to travel, not during our busy season. And guess who was around to pick up the pieces?”
“That’s so awful,” Lucy croaks out.
Dawn sighs. “I wanted to be there for him, but he pulled away. He had no family left and Celeste sailed right in.”
Her mom must have been crushed. “I’m so sorry.”
With a pinched expression, Dawn says, “Don’t be. He—I…In the long run, I don’t think we would’ve worked out anyway.”
“I’ve never been able to really picture you together,” Lucy admits.
There aren’t any photos of them as a couple, but she can almost imagine them sitting by the bonfire, maybe with her in his lap. She’d have a teased perm, he’d have his old mustache. They’d be sun-kissed and young, vibrant, in love, alive. Lucy wishes she could’ve seen them together like that even once. Maybe she’ll always yearn for it, even if it hurts.
It takes Dawn a moment to speak. “Coming from two different worlds feels romantic when you’re young. It’s exciting, a challenge. But that gets old once you’re dealing with real life.”
Lucy was born almost two years after her grandparents died. There has to be more to the story.
“The next summer, your dad came up here for his bachelor party. I was down at the pub that night with some friends when he walked in.”
“And you hadn’t talked in all that time?”
“No. I missed him like hell. I didn’t even know he was engaged until that night.”
“So, what did you do?” Lucy asks, nearly breathless.
Her mom hesitates. “I don’t know if you want to hear this part.”
“I do,” she insists, although she isn’t sure how much more she can handle.
“Well,” Dawn says heavily.
Lucy blinks. “Well?”
“The night of his bachelor party, we had sex,” she says, barreling through the word with pink cheeks. They rarely talk about that kind of stuff. “He said he was going to leave Celeste.”
Lucy’s shocked. “What?”
“Then the next morning, he changed his mind.”
“How did you not kill him?”
She throws up her hands. “I was young. But I wasn’t a total pushover—I only wanted him if he really wanted me back. So, I sent a letter to tell him how I felt. This was before email, and I didn’t want to put him on the spot on the phone.”
Maybe Lucy’s read too many romance novels, because the image that comes to mind is of Dawn in an old-fashioned dressing gown with loose tendrils of hair curling around her face, writing with a quill and ink on yellowed parchment by candlelight. In reality, Dawn probably used a Bic.
“I told him that I loved him, and that if he wanted to be with me, nothing would make me happier. And I said that if I didn’t hear back from him, I’d take that to mean we were really over.”
“Wow.”
“He never wrote back. Not long after that I found out I was pregnant with you.”
“You told him, right?”
Dawn gives a hopeless shrug. “I’d promised I’d let him go.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It is. And then, the summer after you were born, I ran into him at the market. You were just this tiny little thing strapped to my chest. I remember we were in the canned foods aisle. I wanted tuna fish.”
In Lucy’s memories, Hank rarely lost his cool. She can only imagine his utter panic: eyes like saucers, color draining from his cheeks.
“What did he say when he saw you? What did he do?”
Dawn swallows and blinks up at the ceiling. “He looked at you and said, ‘My wife is coming. You have to go.’ I hadn’t ever heard him sound so cold. It was like he was a different person.”
Something deep in Lucy’s chest chips a little. She knew not to expect too much from her dad, but she didn’t think he had that kind of cruelty in him. He’d never let on that he had any real feelings for her mom—or, really, feelings about anything at all.
“I got out of their way—she never saw me—but I didn’t leave right then. I wanted to get a glimpse of Celeste. I had never seen her before, not even in pictures.”
Lucy hates that she can guess where this is going.
“I saw them one last time, turning the corner of an aisle. She was pregnant.”
It’s an awful story, but Dawn isn’t blameless. Like it or not, this is part of Lucy’s history, as much as her great-grandparents coming over from Dublin and the tale of her own birth, and it was hidden from her. It never occurred to her that her mom would keep a secret like this from her.
“Why weren’t you honest with me?”
“I didn’t want you to grow up hating him. That wouldn’t be fair.”
“And this is?”
“I’m so sorry. I screwed up.” Dawn sounds pained. “I just…You deserved to have your own relationship with him. He thought he should have a fresh slate to be a good dad.”
Lucy narrows her eyes. “He wasn’t.”
Vivian had said Hank wasn’t a good person, as if she’s the arbiter of morality, as if she knows anything about integrity. But Lucy can’t deny that he cheated on Celeste, left Dawn to raise their daughter nearly alone, and let Lucy take on student debt while paying for Vivian’s top-notch education in full. He had done the bare minimum a guy can do while still calling himself a father, and he played favorites with his kids. Nobody is all good or all bad; there are always shades of gray. She just doesn’t want to believe that Hank is even darker than she thought.
Dawn looks so broken, Lucy doesn’t have it in her to stay too mad.
“I guess…what’s done is done,” Lucy says.
Her mom squeezes her hand. “I’m sorry. I love you.”
Lucy barely squeezes back.
Vivian
Vivian stays over at Celeste’s hotel, then takes a disgustingly expensive Uber back to Fox Hill Lake the next afternoon. For most of the drizzly ride, Vivian tries hammering out what to say to Lucy, but her brain feels like soup. She can’t figure out how to apologize for going back on her word and sounding like a privileged brat, and then tack on, “But I’m still leaving you out of the sale, sorry.” She feels like a weasel with a throbbing headache.
When she gets back, though, the house is empty. She half-heartedly distracts herself with a reality show. Halfway through the first episode, as a red-faced chef tosses off cruel comments about his competitor’s duck confit, she’s startled by a knock on the front door.