“My history teacher?” She passes over him before doing a double take, then, gawking, returns to me.“Ancient,”she whispers, but her gaze has shifted. It is now riveted on Lily, who is approaching a table with four breakfasts perfectly balanced, two per arm. “Who isthat?”
I explain the relationship to Elizabeth, as well as how Lily came to be here, and neither of us holds back the eeriness of it. Jolting Dad to talk is the point. But he remains placid, his mind either elsewhere or empty.
Then Anne whips out of the kitchen and makes a beeline for us through the mosaic of tables. She leans close to Margo. “Can we talk? Outside?”
With an almost imperceptible nod, Margo gets up. When Anne gestures me to come, too, I hold back. They haven’t seen each other in nearly nine months, and I do know what’s coming. It’s the same indignant, why-are-you-here discussion Anne had with me. I don’t imagine Anne will mention being pregnant, so she doesn’t need me to support her in that. I figure I’m better off at this table, holding the fort with Dad.
But she gestures again, insistent now.I need you with me,her eyes say. She wants a moderator. After a quick look at Dad, who is blissfully unaware, I follow her out. Truth is, I have my own agenda. If Anne is abrasive, Margo may turn and leave. But now that she’s finally here, I don’t want that.
As it happens, Margo is quiet. When Anne asks the expected question, she isn’t belligerent. She seems torn, eyes avoiding ours and wandering instead to the base of the square. The shops are open now; a sprinkling of tourists walk from one to the next. The clouds I saw near the horizon at dawn are drifting closer.
Margo says, “I should have come a while ago.”
“Yuh,” Anne scoffs, “like twenty years ago?”
“I couldn’t then. But after Mom died…” Her voice trails off.
“Like since you lost one, you should go to the other? Like since you had Mom’s money, you should go after Dad’s, too?”
I put a warning hand on Anne’s arm, but her only concession is to lower her voice. The underlying rancor remains. “For what it’s worth, he left it in trust for the sake of the house.”
Margo is visibly offended. “I’m not here for money. I wouldn’t take it from him even if he offered. I have plenty. So, forget money.” Her tone moderates with a return of doubt. “Think Mom. There were things she told me…”
We wait through beats of stillness. My anxiety rises. “What, Margo?” I coax.
She is silent—and not for effect, though she is perfectly capable of that. Her uncertainty clearly has to do with whatever it was that Mom said.
“You’re making me nervous,” I advise in a low singsong.
Finally, tentatively, she speaks. “Dan has been after me to talk with you, with you both, because it’s been eating at me. She was angry when we first moved to Chicago, and even after her life came together there, she would get heated when she talked about Dad. She did have feelings for him.”
“He had feelings for her,” Anne corrects, as though the two can’t both be true.
“Whatisit, Margo?” I’m convinced by now that it has to do with whoever fathered me, that Margo doesn’t want Anne to hear because she will latch onto Mom’s infidelity as proof of blame for the divorce.
“Did you know that Mom and Elizabeth went to school together?” Margo asks.
I’m taken aback.
Anne is puzzled, too. “School? Like high school?”
“College. They were friends before Dad met either of them.”
That’s not what I remember. “I thought they met after the houses were built here.”
“Well, that’s what we were told. But they both went to U Penn. I checked it out.”
“It’s a huge school,” Anne argues. “Are we supposed to believe that they met there, two individuals out of thousands, and then ended up enemies here?”
“They weren’t enemies back then. Mom said she and Elizabeth were together at a party in Philly when they met Dad.”
Anne laughs at that. “Party? Dad?”
Ignoring her, Margo says, “He was at the law school there those same years. Mom said he started dating her, then had an affair with Elizabeth behind her back.”
“And Mom agreed to live in a house right beside her after that?” Anne asks in disbelief. “What woman would do that? Come on, Margo. You always said Dad played around. What’s new here?”
“Mom loved Elizabeth.”
