Agnes

When she pulled out of the driveway of 436 Polpis Road, she was a different person.

Her mother’s secret revealed: Clendenin Hughes, her father.

Agnes had to tell someone. She couldn’t bear this revelation alone. When she emerged from Clendenin’s cottage, she found four voice mails from CJ on her phone. The first message was curious (“Where is my best girl?”); the second message terse (“Um…hello?” Click.) The third message, annoyed (“Jesus Christ, Agnes, answer the goddamned phone, would you, please?”). It was the fourth message that took Agnes’s breath away. CJ screamed with unbridled fury, “Where the fuck are you?”

She thought of Manny Partida: I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you…hair pulling, arm twisting, some not-so-nice stuff…just please, Agnes, be careful. She recalled CJ’s facial expression as he watched Agnes’s hair being cut. He had been smug with his power over her.

Agnes deleted all the messages except for the last one. She couldn’t talk to CJ about meeting Clendenin. She couldn’t talk to CJ about anything, she realized, except for CJ.

She figured she was expected home for dinner—she hadn’t told Dabney otherwise—but she couldn’t sit at a table with Box and Dabney and eat and make chitchat.

Clendenin had asked Agnes not to say anything. He had begged her, even while realizing that he had no place to ask and even less reason for her to agree.

He said, “This is adult stuff.”

She stiffened. “I am an adult.”

“It’s between your mom and me. And it’s between your mother and the professor. You are an adult, and so I’m asking you to give your mother the time and space to figure her situation out.”

“Do you think she will?” Agnes asked.

“I do,” he said.

She had not expected the summer to be like this. There were secrets everywhere she looked.

Agnes called Riley and got his voice mail; she felt a wave of irrational anger overtake her. She needed Riley! There was no one else she could talk to! Except, possibly, Nina Mobley. Should Agnes call Nina Mobley? As Agnes was considering this, her phone rang. It was Riley.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry, I just got done surfing.”

“Where are you?” Agnes asked.

“Antenna Beach,” he said.

“Stay there,” she said. “I’m going to grab a couple of sandwiches. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“I’m supposed to meet Celerie at the movies,” he said. “It’s Diablo Cody week at the Dreamland and they’re showing Juno tonight. Celerie said it’s her favorite movie. She’s been calling me ‘Bleek’ for the past three days.”

“Is there any way you can cancel her?” Agnes said. She felt like a big jerk for asking, but this was an emergency like none Agnes could have dreamed of. “I really need to talk.”

“I’ll cancel her,” Riley said.

Less than an hour later, Agnes and Riley were drinking beer, eating lobster rolls, and watching the sun go down. They were sitting in the open air of Riley’s Jeep on the lip of the beach. Riley was still in his wet suit, although he had peeled off the top half, so Agnes had a fine view of his shoulders, chest, and abs. She felt ashamed for even looking. There were two new voice mails from CJ on Agnes’s phone, but she hadn’t listened to them yet.

“Was Celerie upset you canceled?” Agnes asked.

“Devastated,” Riley said. “But she didn’t cry. She said she would make her roommate go. She said she hoped the friend I needed to talk to knew how lucky she was.”

“You didn’t tell her it was me, did you?”

“I did not tell her it was you,” Riley said. “But who else would it be?”

Agnes sighed. She couldn’t have Celerie getting wind of this situation. No no no.

Riley said, “So what’s up?”

Agnes said, “I followed your tip and went to 436 Polpis Road.”

Riley said, “And what did you find?”

Agnes said, “My father. My biological father, whom I’ve never met. Until today.”

Riley sipped his beer and stared out at the wild, churning ocean. “What did I tell you the first time I met you? What was my exact phrase, Agnes? Tip of the iceberg.”

“Yes,” Agnes said. “You were right about that.” And then she explained: Clendenin Hughes, whom Agnes had never met, who had led a life on the other side of the world, who had won a Pulitzer Prize, who had lost his left arm in pursuit of a story, who had returned to Nantucket three months earlier, was Dabney’s secret. He was her lover.

“So,” Riley said. “What is he like?”

What was Clendenin Hughes like? Agnes hadn’t spent enough time with him to know, really. The word that first came to mind was complex. She had looked at him and seen a funnel of swirling thoughts and emotions. Clendenin had not come back to the United States and lived a life as Dabney’s husband and Agnes’s father. Your mother didn’t want that, he said. She wanted to go it alone. But he knew that, deep down, Dabney had wanted him. A stronger man, a better man, would have done the right thing and come home. Clendenin could claim no honor. He had been consumed with shame and regret, he’d told her, and for days and months and years, that shame had been the most powerful thing in his life. He’d made it clear that he was not in a position to ask for Agnes’s forgiveness. But Clendenin also said that the only reason he had come back to Nantucket was because Dabney was there.