Chapter 3

"When did you two find out?"

No one in the living room spoke first. Percy set the cake knife on the table, and after a long while he said, "Five years ago."

I looked at him.

Five years ago, Tammy was ten. That year he went back to Lakeport and stayed for half a month. When he came home, he told me his mother's back was bad and something had come up at Tammy's school, so he'd been held up a few extra days.

Back then I even felt sorry for him, thinking how hard he was working, watching over this home I couldn't bring myself to return to.

"What happened?"

Percy frowned, as if he didn't want to bring it up again. "During a swimming lesson at school, she suddenly fell apart in the water, crying and crying, saying the life vest she had on wasn't hers."

My hands went cold.

"Then what?"

"I went and asked Loretta. At first she denied it, but later she admitted it."

He said Tammy was shaking the whole way out of school that day, and the moment she saw him she threw herself into his arms and called him Dad.

The teacher assumed he really was the child's father and even gave him the counselor's contact information as well.

Percy didn't correct her; he just took her to the hospital.

Mom cut in quickly, "But by then it had already been five years. Loretta had served her time, and the compensation that was owed had been paid. Vera, back then you were only just starting to sleep through the night—how could Percy dare tell you any of this?"

I ignored her and only asked Percy, "So even after you found out, you kept going to Tammy's parent-teacher conferences, kept driving her to school, kept letting her call you Dad?"

Percy's face turned grim. "Those two things have nothing to do with each other. Loretta did something wrong. That doesn't make Tammy wrong."

"I'm asking about you."

He was silent for a long time before he said quietly, "She started thinking of me as her father when she was ten. I couldn't just find out about some old thing one day and tell her the next morning to stop calling me that."

"And Scarlett?"

Percy's throat worked.

I pointed at the rows of height marks on the wall. "She was five when she died too. Once you knew she didn't lose her life vest by accident, did you ever, even once, think about how terrified she was in that water?"

"Vera, don't do this."

"Don't do what?"

His voice grew heavy too. "I know you can't accept it, but I didn't hide it for Loretta's sake—I did it for you. For those years you'd jolt awake at the sound of water, and the first thing I did every day when I got home was check whether something had happened to you. Telling you the truth—besides making you sick all over again, what would it change?"

Mom nodded at once. "Percy really was just afraid you couldn't handle it."

And suddenly I understood: the phrase they'd leaned on most all these years was for my own good.

What I wasn't allowed to know, what couldn't be said, who could come into this house, who could call whom Dad—they'd decided all of it for me.

I looked at Percy. "Come back to Harbor City with me. From now on, whatever happens between that woman and her daughter has nothing to do with us."

He didn't agree right away.

It was a long time before he said, "Tammy takes the SATs next year."

I gave a small laugh.

I'd asked about our marriage, and he was still thinking about Tammy.