“Were you and Maeve friends?” Serena asked that more for Liza, Maggie, and Tricia than herself.

“Friendly, but not friends. I was curious about her, of course, and, I admit, not kind to her behind her back. I was jealous. She was a decent person but very naive. I think Bill must have had two different lives: one on Willow Lane and one when he was out in the rest of the world. I did understand more than most what he was like when he was working on something. I was there through Never Not Nothing. One day, he was on top of the world; the next, wanting to burn the entire manuscript. He threw money away. I wished I could have explained that to Maeve, that we had that in common, but she was vulnerable. And then sick for so long. When she died, I brought over a cheese platter and that youngest daughter wouldn’t even let me in the door.”

“Tricia. Her name is Tricia. I look exactly like her, except with your coloring. How could you not notice that?”

“Everyone always said that you looked like me.”

There was silence for a bit. Her mother had filled in the missing pieces, most anyway. The story had such a bittersweet veneer that Serena didn’t

end up thinking less of her mother, but more. She understood the affair.

Serena couldn’t judge her mother for that. She thought about Dean, the guy from the airport. She’d slept with a married man, too. She hadn’t known it at the time, but if she’d gotten pregnant after finding out he was married, would she have told Dean about that baby? Serena couldn’t honestly say that she would have. It seemed like the most complicated solution, to involve a whole other person, a whole other family. Birdie simplified the situation with her choices, or so she must have thought. At the very least, Serena could understand that instinct.

Over the course of Serena’s lifetime, it seemed like families were allowed to be more complicated, less cookie-cutter versions of the one mom, one dad, loving siblings version of previous generations. There were endless combinations and formations of families now, sending out holiday photos like everyone else. Serena had seen that in the NPE social media groups where she lurked. These DNA kit discoveries had led to some pretty complicated family trees. Certainly Birdie Tucker, with her family tree of straight and blue blood branches, could never have come clean about Serena’s true parentage without social repercussions. Her mother chose a path that many women had before her, the path of least resistance. Serena saw her more as a coward than a liar.

Birdie poured the seltzer into the glass and found a coaster so she could set it on the side table next to the couch. She was tired of disclosing. She didn’t know how the younger generation did it, dumping so much personal information onto the world at large. She took a sip of the seltzer and waited for Serena’s next question.

“Do you regret not telling him?”

Birdie didn’t hesitate. “Not for one second. Bill Sweeney was a not a reliable person. He drank too much, he was narcissistic. Don’t idolize the father he might have been. Just ask his daughters.”

“Do you regret not telling me?”

“I do today,” Birdie said and the two women shared a laugh. “Now, can I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“If you had found out that your father was some sperm donor or the tennis pro, would you have cared this much? Would you want to pursue a relationship with a sperm donor’s children? Or is it because your DNA matches William Sweeney’s that you care?”

“Oh my God, did you sleep with the tennis pro?” Because Serena had and that was something she didn’t want to share with her mother. One night in college after a few too many shots at the Shoe, she and John Wilton had consummated her high school crush in the back of his Saab. It was a disappointment.

“Of course not. His mother and I played bridge together,” Birdie said, her outrage real. “But I feel like I’m being punished because your biological father was famous, not because I didn’t tell you, so which is it?”

“Both.” It wasn’t like Serena hadn’t asked herself this question many times over the last six months, and she was ready with the answer. “I’m angry that you thought you could keep this huge piece of information to yourself, and that would be true if the test had revealed a donor, a tennis pro, or a literary genius. But it especially hurts because my real father was a writer. Like I am. Didn’t it occur to you when I pursued English and journalism in college that maybe that interest came from him? I have been working away in a field that has lost resources and prestige over the last decade. I could have really used one parent who understood what it’s like to face a blank page and think, ‘Well, this is all I know how to do, so I have to keep doing it.’ You’ve acted like my career has been a hobby, something to do while I waited to get married. But writing is more than what I do, it’s who I am. So, yes, it matters more to me that my real father was a great writer. I never got the chance to talk to him about that. And you must have known and you didn’t care.”

“For the record, your father and I are both very proud of your work.”

The conversation had taken a lot out of Serena. Birdie, too. They both needed a break, some fresh air. Still, Serena continued with one more question, pursuing the theory that she’d been formulating.

“Mom, are you Elspeth? From Never Not Nothing?”

“‘She moved with the confidence of privilege . . .’” Birdie quoted from the book. “Yes, I believe I am.”

Chapter 21

“Holy shit. Birdie Tucker is Elspeth. He doesn’t name her. Her calls her Rebecca in Snap like he did in real life according to Serena, but it’s Birdie Tucker, for sure.”

“Wait, how’d you get ahead of me?”

Tricia and Raj were holed up in the boathouse reading Snap, each taking up a corner of the ancient couch, a light blanket over their feet despite the fact that it was a warm summer day. Of all the things that convinced Tricia that Raj was predestined, his tendency to have cold feet was the one that hit home. She had cold feet, too. And there was nowhere that Tricia would rather be than in the boathouse reading with Raj.

“You’re a slow reader.”

“I’m a careful reader. Don’t say any more. Let me get to the end of the chapter.”

Tricia valued his opinion. It was worth getting his impression of the book as a piece of writing and for its value to scholarship, an evaluation William Sweeney’s daughters and his best friend wouldn’t be able to make. The two of them were reading the book together chapter by chapter with a discussion in the breaks.

Bill Sweeney had organized the book in ten sections, each inspired by a snapshot from his life. A childhood photo. A shot from his Yale days. A picture of his writing pals at the 21 Club in New York. The chapter titles were one word: Home, Wine, Women, Money, Time, Work, Love, Play, Death. Except the last chapter, which was called What I Got Wrong.

The device surprised Tricia. “I don’t think of my father as being visual at all. I don’t remember him ever going to a museum or commenting on a

piece of art. Isn’t this weird?”

“It’s a bit of a gimmick, but it’s working. The chapter on his childhood was new material, not recycled from his essays or from My Maeve. I liked the update on his sister Frannie and the bit about visiting the cemetery where their parents are buried. Some very powerful passages on the abuse he endured as a child. New information is good for scholarship and for sales. The Yale chapter, too. I thought I’d heard every Yale story, but there are some new ones. And he’s very honest about his teaching there, suffering from jealousy over his talented students and bias against certain stories.”

“Yeah, like stories from women, people of color, and the entire LGBTQ

community. I feel like we should definitely push to have the Yale ceremony in his honor before this book comes out.”

“Your father was no different from other professors there. They all have biases; they’re just different biases. Plus, despite his shortcomings, he managed to get a lot of his students published. Ultimately, that matters more than anything that might have been in his heart.”

“That lapsed Catholic guilt is good for something.”