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Dad’s nostrils flared. “That’s no daughter-in-law of mine. And you’ll be careful to remember that. This family isn’t some greasy diner that you can stumble into with some tattooed junkie you’ve picked up. I will not have our name associated with—whatever the hell she is.”

Mom couldn’t even look me in the eye.

I shook my head, incredulous. “You’re disowning your own son because you don’t like his wife,” I said slowly. “Who you’ve never even met.”

He leaned forward. “I don’t need to meet her. Her reputation precedes her. She has a goddamn sex tape, for Christ’s sake.”

The unfairness of this made my jaw go tight. Lola Simone’s sex tape was no different than the pictures Daniel and I had just sent to each other.

“She trusted someone, and they betrayed her,” I said. “That’s not her fault.”

“I would rather go to my grave never breathing another word to your brother than acknowledge the embarrassment he’s invited into this family. He owes every single one of us an apology. Marriage should be dignified. Neil is dignified. You may not have been married to him legally, but you were married to him in practice and you better damn well start to act like it.”

The server came to the table with our food, and Dad stopped talking and sat back in his seat with a clenched jaw. We sat there, silent, as plates were placed in front of us.

When the server was gone, Dad began eating, cutting his steak angrily, like he’d given up getting through to me and just wanted to get dinner over with so he could leave.

It took everything I had in me to muscle down the urge to cry.

Mom picked up a fork and just hovered it over her plate, staring at it. I recognized that look. I’d worn it myself. It’s the look you have when you’re too tired to carry on the fight.

It’s the way you feel before you accept the quiche.

I got up and fled to the bathroom. A few moments later Mom came in behind me.

I went into a stall and ripped a piece of toilet paper off the roll. “How could you let him do this to Derek?” I wiped at my eyes. “That’s your son.”

“And what could I do about it, Alexis?” She threw up her hands. “Your father is your father. I’d have more luck moving mountains than moving that man. And your brother knew exactly what he was doing. He knew your father would never approve, that’s why he got married in secret. You can blame me all you want, but your brother is a grown man, and he made his own choices knowing very well what the consequences would be.”

Mom turned slowly and dropped onto a tufted chair in the corner of the bathroom like her body weighed a million pounds.

“I am a seventy-three-year-old woman, and I am tired. I love your father. He is brilliant and wonderful in so many ways, but he is a difficult man, and that’s never going to change. You take him as he is, or you get nothing at all. Your brother picked nothing—but he did pick.”

I sniffed and looked away from her.

“Alexis, your father has lost everything that matters to him in the last two months,” she said. “His career is done, and his vision is going. The future of the legacy is uncertain, Derek is gone, you left Neil. He’s almost eighty years old, and his entire life is out of his control.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned on the sink.

“He’s an old man. I don’t know how much more time we’ll have with him. Try and meet him somewhere in the middle,” she begged. “Please. What’s a few counseling sessions with Neil? You can’t know if it’s salvageable unless you try to salvage it. And if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.”

I opened my eyes and stared at her, incredulous. “Did you not just hear me say that he was abusive?”

She threw up her hands. “What is going to happen with a therapist sitting there watching? For heaven’s sake, maybe Neil will learn something. It’s only one hour a week. Give your father what he wants, so he can get over it and move on. Show him that you respect his opinion. He needs that right now.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. She wasn’t asking me to do this for Dad. She was asking for herself. Because Dad would be unbearable if I didn’t. He probably already was.

I couldn’t even respond. There was no point. She was right. My father was my father.

Derek…

He would never be at Thanksgiving again. He wouldn’t be at Christmas. He wouldn’t be at our parents’ birthday parties. He’d probably never even see the house he grew up in again.

I didn’t for one second doubt my dad’s ability to hold on to his hate until the bitter end. He’d had a petty falling-out with his sister fifty years ago and he’d never spoken to her again. Not even on her deathbed.

My heart broke for my brother and my mom. And it broke for me too.

I don’t think I’d truly, truly processed the impossibility of me and Daniel until just now. Not really. I knew fundamentally that it could never work. The distance alone. But now the incompatibility of our lives glared from every angle. From above, below, and beyond.