Marnie stiffened. “Youghostedher?”
“No, not exactly, and — and how do you even know that phrase?”
“I read the internet,” Marnie replied.
“What, all of it?”
Marnie held her head up high. “The bits that count. And don’t change the subject. Did you ghost this woman, Tom?”
“In a way,” Tom replied, “but I didn’t mean to.”
“Well, so long as you didn’t mean to, that makes it okay,” Marnie huffed, sarcasm dripping from her lips.
“Mom—”
“Why did you ghost her?”
Tom took a deep breath, shame suddenly filling him. “Because I lied to her,” Tom said, looking down. “I lied to her about everything.”
For a moment, Tom could feel his mother’s eyes boring into the back of his neck. Finally, she sat beside him, drilling her fingertips against the tabletop.
“Define everything.”
“She never knew who I really was. She thought I was Tom Miller—”
“Well, youcalledyourself Tom Miller, back then,” Marnie interrupted. “It was just a name,myname in fact. You know my family were the Millets. What does any of it matter though? It was still you, no matter what you were calling yourself.”
Tom shook his head. “No. It was more than that. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t real. Deep down, I was always Tom Somerset. But I never told her. I never told her at all. She knew nothing about you. Nothing about all this,” he gestured around them. “Nothing about Dad. Nothing about Corentin. I didn’t tell her that I went to Cornell, that I was meant to take over the Somerset empire until I absconded to Europe. I didn’t tell Ari anything about the real me.”
“Okay. So, what did you tell her?”
“I may have implied,” Tom cleared his throat, “that I was like her... in that, um, well...”
“Tom,” his mother uttered warningly.
“Her parents basically kicked her out when she was sixteen. I, um, gave her the impression that I was likewise, uh...”
Beside him, Tom saw his mother grow pale.
“You implied that I... that Ikicked you out?” Marnie asked, aghast. “Tom, tell me you weren’t so callous... so damnedmeanas that.”
Tom felt another torrent of shame flood through him. “I just... I just loved her so much,” he replied pitifully. “I wanted her to love me too.”
Marnie shook her head at him. “Oh, Tom,” she said with a sigh. “That’s not how love works. You know that.”
“I know. And it didn’t work. She moved on. Even with my—” Tom swallowed down another painful lump in his throat “—baby in her arms, she moved on. She didn’t wait for me.”
“What are you talking about?” Marnie asked, confusion written into the lines of her face.
“Ari got married,” Tom said bitterly, “when I went to London for her... when I finally got my act together and went back for her... she was married to this guy.”
“No, that’s not right—”
“Mom, I saw him with my ownfuckingeyes. I found her address in London — I went to her apartment. This guy answered the door, a baby in his arms. He was wearing a ring. He didn’t look like a babysitter, and there were pictures of him on the wall with the baby and with Ari and—” Tom broke off, struggling for breath. “Anyway, I didn’t hang around to speak with her. She’d moved on, and I knew I needed to as well.”
“But the baby—”
“If I’d thought for a minute the baby was mine . . . if I’d known . . .”
