“Remember how you and I would lie there together and listen to the gulls and the waves?”
“Of course.”
“Remember—” she starts, but something on the side catches her eye. She waves a hand to shoo it away. Bill. That’s all he gets, a wave, and I have to say that I’m glad. This is between Anne and me. “Remember the game we played,” she continues sotto voce, “like we were hiding there and no one knew?”
“Ido.” We heard things we weren’t supposed to hear, like what early Christmas gifts Mom had bought or what Margo’s stomachcramps were about or… a memory returns, why Roberto Aiello was no longer around.
Distrust.The word pops into my mind. But who said it? When?Why?
I’m searching, when Anne says, “Remember when Mom was talking with Shelly Markham?”
“Shelly Markham,” I echo, testing the name after so many years. I conjure a reedy woman in jeans and a barn jacket. “She was here a lot. She was Mom’s best friend. Is she still around?”
“Gone to Florida, but do you remember when she and Mom were working in the garden? And they were talking about marriage?”
I don’t, but Anne clearly does. I’m starting to feel as frightened as she looks. “What were they saying?”
“That it was hard. That you married someone and then learned the bad things, but you were stuck? Maybe those weren’t their exact words, but that’s the gist of it.”
“You remember this? How old were we?”
“Nine or ten, maybe eleven. I haven’t thought about it in years, but I remember being upset about something else Shelly said.” Her eyes sharpen, like she is readying for my reaction. “She said that at least Mom had you. You were her special gift.”
“Shesaidthat?” I ask. I don’t remember it at all.
“I was angry. I mean, we were always competing—”
“You were. Not me.”
“Okay, I was competing, and to hear someone say you were Mom’s special gift? I ran off and didn’t talk to you for a week.”
“I do not remember that,” I say.
“Maybe it was only for the rest of the day,” she concedes, “and I seriously haven’t thought about this in years, not until you said what you just did.”
About Tom Aldiss not being my father. But I’m hung up on what Anne claims to have overheard. “Special gift?” I repeat. “What did she mean?”
“I don’t know. ButIwas supposed to have been her special gift,the one who came last and was another girl, which Dad did not want. He should have treatedmedifferent, but he didn’t.”
I glance around the parking lot. There’s no sign of my father or Joy. Or Bill. The sky is a deeper blue than it was earlier. And Anne has mentioned different treatment.
“Then, I wasn’t imagining it?” I ask in a tentative voice. “The way he treated me?”
Very slowly, she shakes her head. “He wanted Margo to achieve like he had, and he just babied me, like he’d given up on the boy thing and thought I was cute. You, you were in between.” She stares at me, puzzled, then looks away.
I wait. A family crosses the parking lot. We watch them enter an SUV, four doors opening and closing in rapid succession. After the engine starts, I step closer. “What, Anne?”
She looks back at me fast. “I knew there was a reason. I knew Mom wasn’t all into the marriage. She cheated on him.”
“We don’t know—”
“Look at thefacts,” she cries. “If you have a different father, she cheated.”
“Margo sayshecheated—and, by the way, I’ve never, ever said anything to Margo about this.”
“If he cheated, it’s because she did.”
“Anne—” I start, then stop, remembering what he said to me yesterday.We had an agreement. Neither of us would tell.
