“And that’s what has you so upset?” I asked.

“I’m angry.” She pulled her hand from mine to punch it into my sofa cushion. “I’m furious at her. She was a shitty wife to Dad and then she makes this like, totally major dinner for someone else and then actually has sex with him. She never appreciated Daddy, and it pisses me off to see her treating some other man like he’s a god or something. Ethan Chapman, Ethan Chapman. She hasn’t shut up about him since she saw that letter.”

I hurt for Shannon. I knew the divorce had been hard on her—harder, I thought now, than any of us had realized. She loved both her parents—her hardworking, worrywart of a mother and her reserved and gentle father—and as much as the end of the marriage had been a surprise to Julie, it had been a far greater shock to Shannon. She’d cried for a month when Glen moved out, and I knew she’d blamed Julie then, just as she was blaming her now. Julie took on that blame rather than say anything that might tarnish Shannon’s feelings about Glen. I was not feeling quite that noble.

“What has your father told you about why he and your mother got divorced?” I asked.

Shannon leaned back against the couch with a groan, looking at the ceiling.

“Not this again,” she said. “I’m sick of talking about it, and it doesn’t matter. He said he still loves her, but she was too wrapped up in her work. Mom never got it…that her marriage was more important than her stupid Granny Fran. If she’d figure that out, they could get back together.“

“Your dad said that?”

“Not exactly, but I think it’s obvious,” she said. “He never dates. I think he’s just waiting for Mom to get her priorities straight and put her stupid career second instead of first all the time.”

I was starting to get angry myself and had to work to keep my voice level. “Her stupid career bought you your car, your cello lessons, your summers at music camp, and is going to pay for your college,” I said. “Or at least, it was going to pay for your college.”

She rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling again. She’d figured out whose side I was on.

“Listen to me, Shannon,” I said. “I understand how much you love your parents and want them to get back together, but that’s little-girl kind of wishful thinking. It’s not going to happen. And although your mother may have spent more time working than was healthy for her marriage, that divorce was in no way her fault. Your mother loved your dad. Try to remember the things she did do for him. The surprise trip to France, because she knew how much he loves it there? How she canceled part of her book tour to nurse him through pneumonia that last year? How she stuck little love notes to him all over the house? And who did the cooking, even though she was working all day just like he was?”

Her face was turned away from me, but I saw her swallow hard.

“And she did all of that in addition to making a really beautiful home for him.Yes, she was busy with her work, but so was he.Your mother wasn’t a bad wife.” I steeled myself, knowing I was coming close to blowing her world apart. “The truth is,” I said, “your father had a typical midlife crisis.”

She turned her head to look at me then, frowning. “No, he didn’t,” she said.

“Yes, he did.” I was emphatic. I wondered how much I should tell her. “Your mother has let you blame her for everything, but your father was the one who wanted to end the marriage. He wanted to—”

“Are you saying he cheated on her?” She was obviously prepared to argue that point with me. There was a deep furrow between her eyebrows.

I hesitated. “I think that he should be the one to talk to you about that, not me.”

“I don’t believe it.” She folded her arms across her chest, on top of her ever-expanding belly.

“Yes, he had an affair,” I said. “The woman he was seeing called your mom to fill her in. Do you know what that did to your mother? Do you care? Her heart was torn out. Imagine if someone you loved…imagine if you suddenly found out that Tanner, who you obviously trust and who is your friend, if you suddenly realized he was seeing someone else behind your back. Imagine that pain. Then multiply it by a thousand, because that’s what it was like for your mother.”

Shannon stared at me, stunned. For a moment, neither of us spoke.

“Why didn’t she ever tell me that?” Her voice was quiet, a whisper.

“Why do you think?” I asked.

“So I wouldn’t turn against Dad?”

“Of course.”

She looked away from me, gnawing at her lower lip. “I can’t believe Dad could do something like that,” she said.

“He’s human, Shannon. It doesn’t make him evil.” Glen would kill me. Julie might, too. “He was going through a screwed-up time and sometimes people think an affair will solve their problems. But the bottom line is that your mother is not in love with him anymore. She was hurt too badly and that trust is gone, and I think it became clear to both of them that they weren’t right for each other any longer. The main thing they still have in common is that they love you, and they always will. Your mother’s struggled the past couple of years, trying to learn how to be a single woman again when she’d expected to be married to your father for the rest of her life. Finally she’s met someone who’s both a friend and a…romantic interest. Let her have that, Shannon. She needs that companionship. Please don’t be selfish.”

The tears were back in her eyes again, but they were soft tears this time, just lying along the base of her thick lower lashes. “Do you think I’m selfish?” she asked.

I hesitated. “I think it’s normal for someone your age to be wrapped up in herself,” I said. “Which is why it’s usually hard for a teenager to be good mother material. You’re really going to have to work at it if you keep this baby.”

She blinked, and one of the tears trailed slowly down her cheek.

“I told her I didn’t want her to meet Tanner,” she said.

“Well,” I said as I brushed the tear away with my hand, “why don’t you fix that?”

CHAPTER 33

Julie

Last night, two amazing things happened. While talking with Ethan on the phone, I complained about my writer’s block and how Granny Fran’s latest adventure was eluding me. He asked me to tell him about the story, and I found that as I described the problem I was having with Chapter Four, I began to get excited about writing the scene. It was a relief to talk about something unrelated to Isabel’s death or Shannon’s pregnancy for a change, and I was grateful to him for the inspiration. I knew I had to be cautious, though. Writing had always been my refuge, and I didn’t want to use it as my escape any longer. I wanted to find a balance between my life and that of my characters. It was time for me to let reality in.

The second amazing thing was a phone call from Shannon in which she’d apologized for her reaction to discovering that I was seeing—and sleeping with—Ethan.

“It’s okay with me if you want to date,” she said. “I’m sorry I made a scene.”

I wondered where her change of heart had come from but decided to enjoy it rather than analyze it.

“Thank you, hon,” I said. “That means a lot to me.”

“And I want you to meet Tanner when he gets here,” she added.

“And I want to meet him,” I managed to say.

We decided to have a barbecue at my house once Tanner arrived so that he could meet my mother and Lucy and me all at once.

“Would that make him uncomfortable, though?” I asked. “I mean, would he be overwhelmed having to meet so many people at one time?”

“No, Mom.” A little of her usual testiness was back in her voice and I knew our truce was fragile. “He’s very cool about social situations and stuff.”

“Okay,” I said, and then I ended the conversation, afraid that if I dragged it out too long, we could move into dangerous territory—such as her proposed move to Colorado—and lose the ground we were gaining.

So I felt good as I drove to Bay Head Shores to visit Ethan this morning. Since it was the middle of the day in the middle of the week, the Parkway was not clogged with traffic, but I wouldn’t have cared one way or another. I would have made that drive to spend twenty minutes with him, if that’s all the time either of us could spare.

Ethan had told me that his father would be visiting him, so I picked up sandwiches at the deli for the three of us, wondering what it would be like to see Mr. Chapman again after all these years and what safe topics we might find to talk about. The day was lovely, if too hot, and the smell of the sandwiches in the bag on the passenger seat was enticing. The only twinge of anxiety I felt was when I turned onto Shore Boulevard and spotted the canal between two of the houses on my right. It was an involuntary reaction, a little twisting of something in my gut, but it had nearly disappeared by the time I reached Ethan’s house.

I saw a car behind Ethan’s truck in his driveway and assumed it was his father’s, so I parked in front of the house on the street. As I got out of my car, I noticed that a plump, dark-haired woman was sweeping sand from the stoop in front of my old bungalow. How many hundreds of times had I performed that same task on that same front step?

“Hi!” I called, waving with a bit too much enthusiasm.

She looked up and returned my wave, an uncertain smile on her face as she resumed her sweeping. She probably thought I was strange.

I started to knock on Ethan’s front screen door, but I could see straight through the house to his backyard and spotted him and his father sitting near the fence, facing the canal. I went into the house, dropped the sandwiches on the tiger-maple counter in the kitchen and walked outside. They didn’t see me as I approached and my eyes were drawn to the yard next door, where two little boys played noisily in the circular, above-ground pool under the shade of the oak tree. It bothered me that the mother was sweeping out front instead of in the yard watching them. Something could happen to them in a heartbeat.