“Let me guess,” I say. “It was my father’s DNA.”
“It was,” she says, and I can tell she’s weighing what to say next.
“If there’s more to it, tell me. I’m done with secrets.”
Seton bites her lip. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”
Her fingers tighten on my hand, and I suddenly don’t know whether she’s talking about the DNA test or something much more important—the two of us. In my mind I flash forward fifty years. We sit in this same spot on another summer day like this one, our hair white, our joints creaky. I wonder how many tattoos Seton will have by then, or what we’ll be planning to accomplish in our own third acts. It’s a life I want, and one that’s anything but a mistake.
“Tell me whatever you need to,” I say.
Hadley’s head bobs among the daisies in the perennial garden beside the bungalow. As I approach, she glances up from under her sun hat. “Good thing you’re here,” she says to me. “I need some muscle.”
I flex my arm. “You’ll have to look elsewhere.”
“Fill that wheelbarrow with mulch. I’m heading out to Port-au-Prince later this week. You can help me get these beds ready before I leave.”
I roll up the sleeves on my shirt and shovel mulch into a wheelbarrow.
“I’ll be gone for most of the summer,” Hadley says. “But you can call, no matter what it’s about. You know that, right? I’ll always be here for you.” She crouches in a second bed and yanks at a patch of clover. “Weeds are insidious. And hard work helps keep your mind off things, things that maybe you don’t want to think about otherwise. It does for me.”
Behind us, the kitchen door opens, and someone with a thick Australian accent says Hadley’s name. She pops her head over the daisies to where Lee, the helicopter pilot, stands in the doorway, shirtless. “Charlie and I are talking,” she says to him. “We’ll be done in a bit.”
Lee gives me a wave, calls memate, and retreats into the house.
“Looks like you have an ample supply of muscle,” I say.
To her credit, Hadley blushes. “Lee and I, we’ve run into each other around the world. Now we’re running into each other here.”
I dump the load of mulch onto the bed. “That morning I shouted your name, when I called 9-1-1—” I begin.
“I was on my way back from Lee’s place,” Hadley says. “That’s why I wasn’t home.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask,” Hadley says. “And a girl’s gotta have a few secrets.”
“Secrets,” I say, spreading the mulch with a rake. “There are secrets everywhere. I was talking to my father this morning—”
“I haven’t seen him yet,” Hadley says, cutting me off. “And I’m not sure what I’ll say when I do. But your mother didn’t tell me he was alive, if that’s what you’re asking. Jane knew secrets had to be controlled. If they get out into the world, they aren’t yours anymore. She also knew I had feelings for your father, that I’d had them for a long time, and that I might do something stupid if I knew too much.”
I kneel beside her, still processing what Seton told me out on the dock, weighing how much I want to share with Hadley, how much I want her to know that I know.
“I had the pint glass tested against your DNA,”Seton said to me,“but I also had your DNA tested against your mother’s. The results weren’t what I expected.”
I touch Hadley’s hand. “You and my father,” I start to say. “The two of you—”
Hadley cuts me off. “Your mother was your mother, and I’m your aunt. Your favorite aunt.”
“My only aunt,” I say.
“Your favorite. And nothing will change any of that, ever. Jane loved you in a way I couldn’t have, in a way I didn’t want to. She was right about a lot of things, and one is that I’m selfish. I mean, look, I’m flying to Port-au-Prince when I should be staying here and offering support, but I like things my way, and I don’t compromise, no matter who’s asking.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I ask.
Hadley sits cross-legged on the pile of mulch. “My father cut me out of his will, and I was angry, much angrier than I’ve ever admitted. I took that anger out on your mother. Your father and I ... we had feelings for each other, even after years apart. And one night, we got drunk, and it went too far, and you showed up nine months later. That indiscretion is what led Jane into having an affair with Isaac. It was the catalyst to all of this, and I’ve spent a lifetime wondering what would have happened if I’d left well enough alone.”
She grips a tiny maple sapling in her fist. “See this. It’s got to go because we don’t want a maple tree growing in the middle of the cutting garden. Those are the choices you make, right? And you don’t look back, no matter what. The only thing you need to know is that your mother loved you more than life itself, and more than anyone else ever could have. She felt that way from the moment I handed you to her. And she never, ever stopped.”
