“Does this mean you and Lou are friends again?” Krista asked.

“You girls meeting at the lake for the summer made me realize how much our daughters need us, and need us to be sisters again. I guess we’ll always squabble—we always have. But I’d like us to always make up, the way we used to. Our girls are slipping away from us. Literally.”

“Meg.”

“Lou rejected my comfort when Bunny died,” Jo said. “Just in the way Lou has been secretly preparing to help me through retirement I’ve been trying to think of ways to reunite us. All of us. I’m afraid we might lose Meg. Lou and Charley have been bristling at each other for years. We have to pull together.”

“Well, I hope you can if that’s what you want,” Krista said. “I don’t know why it took you this long.”

“Too much happened to us, Krista. I’m going to tell you about the week that Bunny died. About that summer before Bunny’s death—but you can’t write about it until we’re dead.”

Krista choked and turned it into a cough. “Write about it?” she croaked.

“I know what you’re doing,” Jo said. “Your questions and your hunger for detail lasted far longer than your therapy did. But you have to hold on to this last bit. We broke the law, Krista. And we’re not really sure what the end of the story is.”

Krista swallowed hard. “Go ahead, Ma. What did you do?”

Jo began with the sudden appearance of Ivan and Corky and how strange an occurrence that was. Krista remembered them, though vaguely. But she had known their visit was odd and the whole family was “off.” She was not aware that Jo and Aunt Lou were being targeted. Jo explained that it was only a matter of weeks until Lou was convinced that Ivan truly cared for her and could also make her rich.

“You mean she was falling in love with him?” Krista asked.

“Probably not love,” Jo said. “But he was seductive. And so handsome. And seemed so accomplished. He seemed sophisticated, talking about his favorite galleries in Europe, literature that moved him, famous people he knew. Lou found him captivating. And so different from Carl, who was kind and sweet and quite successful in his business, but didn’t talk much and wasn’t social. Ivan had traveled the world and Lou couldn’t get Carl to go anywhere.”

“We thought he was gross,” Krista said.

“You didn’t know the half of what was going on,” Jo said. “I was so afraid Lou was going to make a terrible mistake. And the worst of it was—I knew your father had something to do with it. He brought them, left them at the lake. Roy was in on the con, whatever it was. And Lou would never forgive us, never.”

Jo told her the rest of the story, trying to emphasize how fast everything happened—her confrontation with Ivan in the boathouse, how terrified they were, how certain they were that Corky would freak out and tell the police they were murderers. And suddenly they’d done it. “And I was the one to sink that car,” Jo said. “I saw his body float away.”

“Holy shit,” Krista said. “I almost hate to ask—what did you do with Corky?”

“Told her that Ivan had left her and put her on a bus. But that wasn’t the end of it. A few days later we saw a small article in the paper—he was found and taken to the hospital with a head injury and amnesia. Then he wandered off. There was a picture asking if anyone had any information about him to contact the police. It was him.”

“Then you didn’t kill him!”

“I guess not but we also don’t know if he survived. He might’ve wandered off and died from that head injury. Before we could even discuss if there was anything we should or could do, Bunny drowned and the whole world changed. Your father was long gone, Lou was in deep mourning and rage, Charley was pregnant. Oh, Krista, the whole family imploded.”

“But, Ma, the last you knew of him, he was alive. Know what I think? I think he tricked you and everyone. He had himself a couple of hysterical women and if he wasn’t dead you would’ve told the police everything—the scam, the con, his attack on you, everything. If they investigated him, they probably would’ve found a long trail of crimes. He tricked you, faked dead and disappeared.”

“Well, I like that story. But I’m not sure the Winslett police were up to an investigation that complex even if we spilled the beans on him. It was more likely they’d have arrested us for assaulting him and trying to drown him.” Jo looked down at her lemonade. “We got through it, somehow. And here we are, a family of women, picking up the pieces the best we can.”

Krista lay back on the grass. “What the heck—you and Aunt Lou were bonded in crime! Why did you quit speaking?”

“Lou was never sure I wasn’t in on it,” Jo said. “She thought maybe I betrayed her. She thought I went along with Roy’s scheme for money just so I could run away and be happy with Roy.”

“Why in the world would she think that?”

“Because when your dad was at his absolute worst and I was ready to chuck it all, he’d find a way to convince me to give him one more chance. And one more and one more and I always did.”

“You loved him so much,” Krista said.

“I wish that were true. He was my addiction. And I was his enabler.”

Krista was quiet for a long time, looking up at the sky. Finally, she said, “Do you suppose he’s dead?”

Jo sighed. “God takes care of drunks and children, they say. He’s probably out there somewhere.”

“He hasn’t been in touch?”

“He wouldn’t dare, Krista. While Lou always accused me of being a sap for love and giving in to Roy, your father always accused me of being more loyal to my sister than to my own husband. Both of them were wrong.” She smiled wanly. “See, you’re not the only one who took the wrong path.”

* * *

Charley wanted a fountain pen but she was going to make do with a black fine felt-tip. She wanted some of her personalized stationery but that would have felt phony. When was the last time she wrote a letter, in her own hand? Thank-you notes—she’d penned lots of those. But she usually composed email at her computer or tablet or even dictated into her phone.

She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to write but she knew what she wanted him to feel. That she was earnest, that she was vulnerable, that their relationship mattered to her, mattered more than anything. She treasured him. She wasn’t saying no again; she was just going to ask him to give her time.

Darling Michael,

You can’t possibly imagine how much I love you or how desperately I miss you. I reach for you in the night. Sometimes I catch a scent and think you’re in the room. You’re not just part of my heart but part of everything that is my being. I ache because we’re in conflict, because we haven’t been able to compromise. The one thing we’ve always been good at—talking a problem through—we’ve utterly botched.

This is undoubtedly my fault. I’m not my best self right now. Hell, I’m not even half myself. My job loss affected me so poorly and I realize I must have identified too much with that person, that talk show person. I wish I’d known there was a danger of that; I wish I’d been prepared for what it might do to us.

I write this to beg your forgiveness—I answered your loving proposal with a kind of flippant dismissal when that wasn’t what I was feeling. I was feeling shock. Not by the proposal but more by the fact there was something, no matter how big or small, that could come between us. I didn’t think it was possible. I thought our commitment was for life. Mine was. No, mine is. I love you and I want to be with you forever. I’ll do anything you ask. If marriage makes you feel safer and more comfortable, so be it. Anything you want. I love you and the thought of not having you in my life is torture. I’ve been in love with you for twenty-two wonderful years and I want more.

If you still want me.

Yours always,

Charley

* * *

A couple of days after Jo’s visit Jake walked Krista home after work. It had become their habit to stop for a little while on that lot with the swing. Jake’s lot.

“I love this space,” she said.

He sat down on the soft grass and pulled her down beside him.

“You’ve been very quiet,” she said. “You usually talk all the time, but the last couple of days...”

He gave a huff of laughter. “Have been very eventful. But you’ve been quiet, too. Did Charley’s revelation shake you up?”

“No,” she said. “I admit, it surprised me. But it all makes stupid sense—if she hadn’t moved to California and made a life there, if she’d been around Minnesota, she might’ve found you. Do you wish you’d known sooner?”

“Of course. I don’t know how I would have handled it as a younger man. I wasn’t that great with my own kids but I love them and they love me. If I could have known her as a little girl, as a troublesome teenager, as a college coed... She called me,” he said. “I talked to her last night. She has Charley’s quick laugh and wit—she’s hilarious. Telling me about her adoptive parents, her husband and kids—she had me laughing. I told my kids right away—I called Andy and Shanna. Shanna found it all completely romantic and asked if there was any possibility her real father might come forward and turn out to be a prince or movie star or something. I told her she was stuck with me.”

“And what did Andy say?” she asked.

“He said he’d want to kill himself. He’s twenty-three. I guess a twenty-three-year-old guy suddenly finding out he’s a father would seem like the end of the world.”

“You were pretty young when you started your family,” she said. “I mean, the ones you had on purpose.”

“Always in a hurry,” he said. “Careless and eager, that was the younger me. It’s such a relief to have grown up a little.”