I also had no idea how much I should tell Davis. How much would Davis want to know? She was his kid, but dads and daughters—too much detail might do more harm than good. At the same time, how many secrets could I wedge between me and my husband before they stretched us too far from each other?

“We’re almost finished,” she hollered, and I immediately thought, Finished with what? I hoped to God she meant the video. Surely they had leaped to opposite ends of the sofa the second my voice broke into their world.

“You’ve seen that video a hundred times. Can you please come up here?” I hollered back, my voice cracking with embarrassment and strain.

Thank God, thank God, not ten seconds later I heard Maddy stomping her way up.

“What?” she said. I blinked. I had nothing. “Monster?”

“Is Oliver still sleeping?” I asked at last. “Can you run him down to Lisa’s so we can hit the pool?”

“Sure,” she said. She didn’t look any different to me, except her cheeks were still pink. If I hadn’t seen what I’d seen, I wouldn’t have known that anything more than earnest scuba learning had been going on. There was a secret world, whole and intricate, inside my stepdaughter, and I was privileged to see only its edges. I didn’t realize how intently I was staring at her until she added, “You okay, Monster?”

“Of course,” I told her. And then I looked her in the eye, very serious. “Are you okay?”

“Super fab,” she said, and bounced back down to get the baby.

The mother in me knew I’d have to talk to her about her decisions and her body, try to guide her out of too-deep water into safety. But I had other pieces, awful pieces that Roux had woken up inside me, whispering.

No wonder Roux had reacted so strongly when I told her Luca had been sneaking over to see Maddy. Luca owned Roux’s real name, her point of origin, everything I needed, and kids talked. She knew it, I knew it. All teenagers were a whole and secret world unto themselves, and they revolved around each other, whispering. If Maddy and Luca were as close as they had just looked, then everything I needed to take Roux down was already locked tight inside this girl I loved.

Maddy wouldn’t tell me if I simply asked, though. She was loyal to a fault, and her feelings for this boy, though new, ran deep. She wouldn’t tell unless I made her. My dilemma was, I could. I could make her talk. I could make her tell me. If she didn’t know, I could make her ask him. I could push her, turn her, force her.

She wouldn’t want her father to know what I’d seen. I could use that. Maddy was a good person, but she was young, her character not fully formed, and kids, under pressure, turned on each other. I had learned this from that sad O. Henry story that had unfolded between Tig and me.

If I were willing to use her secrets against her, against this girl I loved, I could get ahead on points. Beat Roux. I could win. The thought was so attractive. I felt it as electricity, zinging through my body. I could see myself standing over Roux, her past in my hands, making fear rise in her just as she’d done to me. It was heady stuff.

But it would be wrong.

It scared me how far I was down the road to blackmailing Maddy before that thought came. I was already thinking tactics, exactly how to approach her, press her open, dig the information out. She loved me, and I knew her so very well. I could see exactly how to do it.

But what would be broken in the process? Maddy’s faith in me, her trust, maybe her love. I could turn her against me at a time when my lies were creating a gap between me and my husband. I might wring out a way to save my family from Roux only to find I’d wrecked it thoroughly myself in the process.

15

Oliver had finished his bedtime nurse session. He was asleep on his back in between Davis and me, limp as a sweet little rag. Davis had his big hand on Oliver’s full belly, spanning it. I needed to take the baby to his crib and get some sleep. Spending tomorrow on a tiny boat with Roux was bound to be stressful, and I’d have a brand-new diver in my care. I didn’t move him, though. Not yet.

I needed to talk to Davis about what I’d seen, and with Oliver here he would stay calmer. I had to do this. One way or another, Luca would be out of Maddy’s life come Monday, but a lot could happen in a weekend. I’d left the kids unsupervised for less than an hour. Davis needed to know how important it was that we keep eyes on them.

I touched Davis’s arm, and he looked up from his son. My steady gaze let him know this was serious.

“We have to talk about Mads and Luca. There’s been a shift. They’re more than friends now.”

Something male and primal woke up right behind his eyes, immediate and inadvertent. “They’re going together?”

“I’m not sure kids call it that these days.” I was, in fact, absolutely certain that they didn’t. He was already tense, though. I was gentle with him. “They got a little bit physical with each other down in the basement.”

“How physical?” he asked, eyes narrowing. “Do you mean he kissed her and I need to pretend I think that’s sweet or he got handsy and I’m probably going to have to go to prison?”

I smiled, mostly to reassure him. “How much detail do you want?”

I hoped not a lot. Every minute I spent with my husband, relaxed and regular, was already a silent lie. I didn’t want to say bald-faced untruths about his daughter out loud in our own bed. But I would if he pushed me. Roux had taught me that. There was no way I was going to tell him the details of what I’d seen. It would raise too many questions about Roux and Luca. He wouldn’t want them around Maddy or me, and I didn’t have a choice in that matter.

He shook his head, emphatic. “No details. Just on a scale of one to pregnant, how worried am I?”

I leaned over Oliver to kiss him.

“Everyone had their clothes on. But not everyone’s hands were in the G-rated zone.” That was close enough to truth to count.

“Okay.” Some of the tension went out of his body, and I knew that what he was imagining bore almost no relation to what I’d seen.

“They’ve started down a road, though, and we know where it ends,” I told him. “Don’t let them sneak downstairs, or anyplace, alone. Things can escalate fast at their age.”

“I remember,” Davis said ruefully.

I did, too. I’d survived my own sophomore year by stealing desperate, drinking looks at Tig. His narrow hips in low-slung jeans. The light turning the edges of his curls to burnished brass. Then he’d kissed me. His mouth on mine had cut through clouds of pot, a thousand gulps of wine, waking my body to its own possibilities.

I shouldn’t be thinking of that. Not at all, but especially not here, in bed beside my husband. The baby we’d made in this same bed was splayed out, so relaxed he was practically a liquid. But a text from “Restoration Garage” had landed in my phone while we’d been pool diving. Nothing serious. Just six words.

You still listen to the Pixies?

A silly question, and yet I felt flushed and a little trembly when I read it, as if I were fifteen again. As if it were a note scribbled on lined paper, folded three times, and passed up a row of desks to me.

I’d known better than to answer Tig, but I’d answered anyway. We’d texted back and forth the whole time I was making dinner. Nothing deep. Music and nostalgia. I told myself it didn’t mean a thing.

Now, this close to my husband, I recognized that for the hollow lie it was. It had meant something. If I were back at Tig’s right now, just the two of us, I’d be no more safe than Maddy was with Luca. The difference was, I knew better, and I had no loving father, no hovering Monster, to stop me. I had to stop myself.

Davis said, “That’s the worst part. I’ve been a sixteen-year-old male, so I know exactly what that kid is thinking. It makes me want to break his arms. A little bit.”

“Poor old Duddy,” I said, invoking one of Maddy’s pet names for him. He smiled. “She’s a good kid. Let’s not overthink this. We keep an eye on them and make sure they stay busy. They’ll be diving all day tomorrow, and no one ever got knocked up in a wet suit.”

He nodded, but his forehead was still creased.

I wished I could tell him that in three days it wouldn’t matter. Davis and I might have bigger problems then, as he tried to process all the lies I’d told him recently, not to mention all the lies I’d lived in his presence, every day, for years. Either that or I’d break and give Lolly Shipley’s rightful money to Roux. I wasn’t sure how I would live with myself if I chose that route, but at least then Luca’s wandering hands would be in the Maldives. He’d be drinking virgin daiquiris and not being extradited right beside his mother. I wasn’t sure what my face did when I thought these things, but it didn’t matter. Davis was looking down at Oliver again, talking softly to his son.