What Louisa cannot believe is howcalmher mother is in the telling of this. “Why are you socomposed?” she asks. “Why are you talking about this somatter-of-factly?”
“It’s not new information for me, Louisa. I’ve known this for a long, long time. The girl must be twenty-nine years old by now.”
Louisa is remembering herself at age ten. She remembers her tenth year with crystal clarity—she was just thinking about this, because in the fall Abigail will enter the fifth grade. Louisa’s fifth-grade teacher was Mrs. Purcell. Mrs. Purcell had a mole on her chin out of which a coarse dark hair sometimes grew (bad) but she also gave out butterscotch candies to anyone who got all of the words right on the weekly spelling test (good). Louisa always got all of the words right on the spelling test. To this day she can’t eat a butterscotch without saying to herself,million, minor, modern, mountain.
She also remembers fifth grade because her best friend at the beginning of the year was Bridget Backler. In October of fifth grade Bridget left the friendship to become best friends with Kimberly Cossack, who had a swimming pool with a twisty slide that dumped you off in the deep end. Then Chloe Jones moved to town, and instantly Louisa had a best friend again. Fifth grade at Waynflete Lower School was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And now, sorry,what?Now it turns out that while Louisa was makingcootie catchersand learning toDutch braidher father had not only an affair but also achild?
“How’d you know she lived in Altoona?”
Annie looks out into the harbor. The water is as calm as glass;there’s no wind. The sailboat gliding by must be using a motor. “For eighteen years I sent a quarterly check to Kristie’s mother. A sizable quarterly check. That was part of the agreement I made with your father.”
Louisa bows her head and looks at her hands, clenched tight in her lap. She feels like her heart is clenching in exactly the same way. “You had an agreement? With Dad? To payhush money? For achildthat he fathered?”
“I think hush money is rather a dramatic term for it, Louisa.” Her mother keeps talking, and Louisa can’t stop listening. “Keep in mind, you don’t get rich from being a judge. A judge is a public servant. All the rest of it, all of this”—Annie indicates the water, the rocks and garden, the house behind them—“all of this is because ofmymoney, from my parents. All of this is mine. Your father and I made an agreement that if I decided to send the money, our lives could go on without interruption.”
“But—you wanted to go on? Without interruption?”
“Of course. It would have ruined your father, if this came out. He would never havemadeit to the court, if this had become public, never mind everything he accomplished while he was there. An affair, an illegitimate child. Can you imagine what that would have done?”
Leave the world better than you found it.
These questions are not black and white—Louisa gets that. She understands how two lives become so entangled that picking each knot apart would be arduous, maybe even impossible. And yet.
“But—just as you said. Everything was yours. The money, this house. You didn’t have to be tied to him after this... you could have left. Did you think about leaving? He betrayed you!”
“Would you? In my place?” Annie’s voice is still calm.
“Maybe. Yes. I think so. I would have to.”
“In my place, Louisa. Not in your place. This is easy foryouto say, right now, when you have your own career. Do you know whatmycareer was?” Now there is something in Annie’s voice Louisa has never heard before—a bitterness, maybe.
“Yes,” whispers Louisa.
“Yes, of course you do. Being a judge’s wife. Being my parents’ daughter. Being your mother. And you know who would have suffered if I’d had your father ‘take responsibility’?” She puts little air quotes up. (Louisa didn’t think her mother knew about air quotes; she’s never seen her use them.)
Louisa doesn’t answer.
“All of us. You and me along with your father. There would go his career, and his reputation. Down the drain, gone. And there too would go our stability, yours and mine. Our life, our neighbors, our friends. Perhaps your school. Maybe we’d have moved away, had to start over somewhere new. We had a happy life. Wehad a good life. I wasn’t going to throw that away and suggest your father run off with a law courier and start a new family. I wasn’t going to leave him and make my way on my own. People make sacrifices for their families, Louisa. They forgive things. Sometimes they help right the wrongs. That’s what parents do. That’s what adults do. That’s what I did.”
“But aquarterly check? That makes you complicit. You were a victim of it, and you became complicit.”
“Life is messy and imperfect, Louisa! And to say forgiveness is a virtue is a cliché, yes, but it’s also true.”
“Not to me it’s not,” says Louisa. “Not in every situation. It shouldn’t be. I can’tbelievethis went on, all this time. And I’m finding out now—this way! This is—this is—” She doesn’t know what to say, so what she comes up with is the thing she thinks will bother her mother the most. “This isbullshit,” says Louisa. (Annie detests cursing.) “He betrayed me too, you know. It wasn’t just you.”
“I know,” says Annie. “Believe me, I know.”
It’s hard to slam a sliding screen door in anger, that is true, but it’s not impossible, and Louisa does her level best. She doesn’t callto the children to tell them she’ll be back soon; she doesn’t ask around, as is customary, if anyone needs anything while she’s out. She simply snatches her car keys off the table in the hallway, and she goes.
When Louisa was a kid they’d go to the Owls Head Lighthouse at least once each year. Louisa has been less disciplined about establishing these sorts of traditions for her children. Maybe that’s because it’s unusual for them to be here for the whole summer. Or maybe it’s because it’s harder to corral three children than it would have been for her own mother to corral one. Or maybe Louisa is simply lazy.
On the way to the lighthouse she hardly notices the beauty of the town wharf, which typically makes her heart stand still, especially at this time of day, when the lobster boats are coming in, filling in the moorings. She whips by the Owls Head Lobster Company like it’s nothing special, even though it is. She doesn’t look to see which of the beautiful water-facing homes between Main Street and Lighthouse Road have undergone extensive renovations over the winter. She can’t see past her own anger.
Fueled by confusion and rage, she pulls into the parking lot at the lighthouse. Perhaps not exactly like a bat out of hell—the parking lot is lousy with tourists, and she doesn’t want to hit anyone—but maybe like a bat leaving hell quickly, under less-than-ideal circumstances. She slams the door to the minivan as hard as she can and stomps across the parking lot. She doesn’t stop to look at the picnic tables on the hill leading to the water where she happily ate many a peanut butter sandwich while her father, an esteemed lawyer, later an esteemed judge,fathered another child.She hardly notices the beauty of the water. The path to the lighthouse is pitted and uneven from a long winter of freezing and thawing, so it’s hard to stomp, but she stomps anyway. She stomp stomp stomps past a bright young couple holding hands and walking leisurely, and she weaves around a boy of about six walking beside his father. Whenshe reaches the lighthouse she runs up all fifty-two steps and arrives breathless and heaving at the top. Aside from having been lied to fortwenty-nine yearsof her life, it appears she is also extremely out of shape.
She takes her phone out and tries to call Steven, but gets only Greta. “Let me guess,” says Greta coolly. “Another emergency. You need him to call you back.”
“Yes,” snarls Louisa.
