“But as long as you’re happy…” She began to cry.
“Oh, Izz…”
“Please keep driving. Please don’t stop here. Please don’t stop until we get home.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Okay.”
It wasn’t until we got on the 10 that she added: “And remember that guy Avi, the one I think is really cute? Well, he finally spoke to me today…”
I nodded, my mind elsewhere.
“He came up to me in the hall just as I was going into Life Skills, and said, ‘Tell your mom I turn eighteen next month.’ So yeah, that’s how my day was.”
“Izz…” I could barely find my voice. “I’m so sorry…”
She was shaking, the tears streaming down her face. Everything she had held back for so long, released.
“We can talk to the head of school.”
“And say what? What are you going to say? What is she going to do? Send out a school-wide email warning against teasing Isabelle Ford about her mother’s indiscretions? What is she going to do, Mom?”
I had the sensation that I might vomit. There, in the car. The bile rising, my knuckles white against the wheel. I’d begun to sweat. There was no place to pull over.
“How long has this been going on, Izz? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Since January. Since those stupid pictures from Anguilla. But I know you’re happy and I know you love him. And he’s really nice, and you deserve to be happy. Because Daddy’s happy. And I don’t want you to be alone.”
“Oh, Isabelle.” My heart was wrenching. These were the thoughts that had consumed my daughter. “We can change schools,” I said. “You don’t have to go back there.”
“But Ilikemy school,” she cried. “I like my school. Andwherewould I go? Where would I go to school with other thirteen-year-old girls whodon’tknow Hayes Campbell? Zimbabwe?”
Traffic had come to a standstill on the PCH. Construction. Thesun was setting over the Pacific, purple and perfect. And once again I cursed California for having weather that did not mirror my mood.
I leaned over the divider to hug her, my own tears falling. “I’m sorry, Izz. I’m so sorry.”
“I know you told me to just ignore it, and I’ve been trying, I have. But I can’t. I can’t, Mommy. I can’t.”
I held her, and sobbed with her, and breathed in her hair until the traffic started to move. And I knew.
I knew.
And all the other things, they did not matter.
That night, after I made Isabelle a bowl of hot chocolate and she calmed down enough to fall asleep, I called Hayes in Australia. It was three in the afternoon and they’d just arrived in Adelaide. And the second I heard his familiar gravelly voice I began to cry.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I can’t do this. I can’t do this to her.”
“What happened?”
I told him. About Cecilia first, and then Isabelle. And for a long time he did not say anything.
“Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
