Page 136 of Let's Kiss and Tell

I look at her but am met with the back of her head. I’m starting to notice that whenever Lucy reveals something personal, she keeps herself physically guarded.

“Do you miss being close to them?” I ask.

“Not really.” She shrugs. “They’re still in my life and it’sokayto have your parents just be your parents, right?”

“Of course,” I say. “My mom and I have a much different relationship than her and Oliver. There’s no right way to do anything.”

“Yeah.” She continues to stare out the window.

She doesn’t know where we’re going. This is allmyplan to show her a nice date night and hopefully she can write something about it on Monday. I continue to tell myself that’s therealreason, instead of the fact that I want to treat her the way she deserves to be treated.

“What’s your relationship like with your dad?” I ask her.

“Complicated,” she says, and nothing else. I don’t ask any further questions because if Lucy wanted to tell me she would. Just when I think it’s best if I change the subject, she takes a breath like she’s about to say something that she doesn’t say often. “When I was sixteen, I went to the woman’s house…”

I briefly break my gaze from the road and look at Lucy. “The woman your dad had an affair with?”

“Yeah,” she says. Her eyes are still looking out the window. “I found her name, address, took the car, and drove all the way to Riverside to confront her. I didn’t care. I was just so mad. Not even at my dad, but ather.Because what kind of woman breaks up a family? Or at leasttriesto? So, I went over there, knocked on her door, and she didn’t answer.”

“She wasn’t home?” I ask.

“A child answered,” she says softly, almost like she’s beentransported back to that moment. “The kid was, I don’t know, five or six…He looked exactly like my dad.”

“Fuck,” I breathe out.

“It knocked the wind out of me, but I didn’t forget what I came there to do. So, I asked to seeNatalie.” She says her name like she’s not used to hearing it out loud. “When she came down the stairs, I remember thinking she wasn’t anything special. She was a middle-aged woman who was clearly worn down by having kids. She wasn’t someone who looked like she worked out or wore makeup, and I felt sick, Marsh.” She finally looks at me. “I was sick to my stomach because my dad cheated on my mom for someone like that…someone who was justnormal.”

While she’s telling a story that she’s maybe ever told only once or twice in her life, there’s a taste of disdain to Lucy’s words. Like she’s battled with these thoughts for years, and while she knows exactly how she felt about Natalie at sixteen, she’s still trying to gauge how she feels about her at twenty-nine.

“What did she say?”

“She knew my name,” Lucy says. “The minute she saw me she knew who I was. She told me that my dad would come to visit a few times a year to celebrate the kid’s birthday or drop off a Christmas gift. Apparently, he would always show her photos of me. He would show her videos from my dance recitals and let her read my short stories I wrote,” Lucy tells me, her voice cracking. “Isn’t that messed up?”

I think of the man I met this morning and find it hard to believe that someone so stoic and calm was capable of what Lucy is sharing.

“I think he’s proud of you, Lucy,” I say, hopingthat’swhat she takes from her memory.

“Yeah, well, I ripped her a new asshole, that’s for sure. I calledher things I would never say to anyone now…I told her she was a homewrecker, a slut, a whore, every name in the book that I could think of at sixteen. All she did was let me yell at her. She didn’t say a thing, and I remember thinking she was such a coward. Letting a teenager say all of this to her and not even fighting back.”

“Does your dad know?”

“By the time I came back home, my dad was waiting in our driveway. She called him and told him everything. He didn’t know that I knew about her, and he was defensive and furious…We both were,” Lucy says. “I was crying, asking him how he could do this to my mom. That’s when he told me she already knew.”

“What part?” My eyes snap to hers.

“All of it,” Lucy says incredulously. “She knew about the affair, that he was supporting a whole other fucking family…and it didn’t matter to her! All that mattered was thatInever found out.”

I grip the wheel tighter, trying to put myself in Lucy’s shoes. As each little detail comes to the surface, I understand more and more why Lucy is the way she is. “Lucy, I’m so sorry,” I say. “What happened to your brother?”

Lucy looks at me, a disdainful look all over her face.

“That kid is not mybrother,” she spits out.

“I know but—”

“That kid is as much my brother as that woman is my mother.”

I ease up, knowing that the thought is upsetting Lucy. “So, you never saw them again?”