And I don’t know why I’m even playing hide-and-seek. I don’t want to steal the ATVs for a secret ride in the woods, either. One of the many other things about me that made it feel like I never really fit in with my family. They all love to drive things. Especially the adults. Cars, motorcycles, drones, boats, side-by-sides…
Lowering myself, I peer through a small hole in the ceiling.
They all love speed, and they’re all in pairs.
My brothers and their wives…
My parents…
“Can I help you?” I hear my mom through the peephole.
I watch her pick up the other end of a table, helping my brother’s mom—my dad’s first wife—clear the room. The whole family is gathered this weekend to help my brother Jax and his wife, Juliet, clear and clean the lodge and cabins for renovations that’ll happen over the fall and winter, before next summer’s campers arrive.
Madeline, my dad’s ex, tenses. “No, I’ve got it.”
“It’s okay.” My mom walks backward, leading the table out of the room.
But Madeline drops her end, snapping, “Katherine, please.”
I narrow my eyes. Madoc’s mom has always been nice to me. Why is she being mean?
My mom freezes, her expression timid. She looks like Jared, a little. And like me when I don’t know what to say. We all have the same eyes. Brown, like chocolate, is what everyone says.
My blonde hair is my dad’s, though.
I curl my fingers into a wooden beam. I don’t like Madoc’s mom talking to mine like that. Madeline didn’t yell, but she sounded like my brothers when they’re scolding their kids.
My dad appears in my view. Dust covers his khakis, and there are green paint marks on his white T-shirt. He doesn’t say anything to his first wife, cupping my mother’s face, instead, and looking at her softly. His fingers thread through the wisps of long dark hair that’ve escaped her messy bun.
I lean down more, watching carefully. I’m not supposed to know why my dad’s first wife doesn’t get along with my mom, but I do.
My mother pulls back from my father. “I’ll see what they’re doing in the kitchen,” she tells him, trembling.
My mom leaves the small room—once a little old library, I think—and my dad turns to his first wife. “It’s been years—decades,” he points out. “How long are you going to make her pay?”
“I’m not trying to hurt her,” Madeline tells him. “But we’ll never be okay.”
My mom was my dad’s mistress. For a very long time, I think.
Madoc’s mom, while kind to me, doesn’t visit much. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, and Madoc and his family go there to visit most of the time. They even took me once.
My dad lowers his voice. “It’s me you should be mad at.”
“I am.”
My father steps closer. “She was young.”
“And then she wasn’t,” Madeline replies quickly.
There’s a five- or six-year age difference between my parents. He was in his twenties and already married with a kid. My mom was a teenager with a baby of her own. It’s weird to me that someone hates them, but I love that my dad only worries about someone hating my mother. It hurts him to see.
Madeline sighs. “I’m not going to get into this with you.” She squares her shoulders. “You’re married, you’ve been married for fifteen years, and I know you’re happy. So am I,” she tells him before dropping her voice to almost a whisper. “But I can still feel it, you know?”
I tilt my ear to the peephole.
“Being forgotten,” she goes on. “The nights I was alone, knowing where you were, and wondering what the hell was wrong with me that you kept running to her.” Her tone grows harder. “And it doesn’t change the pain that your daughter is beautiful and kind and Madoc adores her, but she’s goingto get you at your best when he got you at your worst,” she growls, a sob thickening her voice.
I want to defend my dad. And my mom. They’re good parents and good grandparents and they don’t do anything wrong.
