Today—Wednesday—it’s Ella. She is still pregnant and still claiming to be a virgin. She’s in her living room with her parents and her brother, and she’s holding her tummy, stroking a bump you can just about make out. I guess it’s her version of product placement.

Ella is watching something—not herself—and her parents are laughing while her brother pushes his feet into Ella’s face from the other end of the sofa. She swats them away, but they come again.

Sibling rivalry is a game I’ll never play. The rules don’t make sense to me. Maybe if Mom hadn’t died, I would have a brother or sister. Maybe I was all she wanted.

Ella doesn’t seem to be trying very hard.

Most of us are in this to promote something—justice or a miracle or our own brand.

Lucas, the former child actor, is on tomorrow, and I bet he won’t waste time playing happy families. He wants to get his career back, and Ryan wants to say sorry for his brother, and Sonia…who knows what she wants?

Watching Ella and her family makes me go downstairs to be with Dad. He’s at the table, fiddling with computer parts, and he shows me the smallest smile when I sit across from him. For a while, I watch him work.

He used to work in IT. Now he spends hours fixing things that anyone else would throw out.

“Did you watch me on Monday?”

Dad sighs but doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, “I should have told you from the start that your mother was never coming back.”

It catches me by surprise, and I don’t know how to reply.

I know Dad was protecting me. He didn’t mean to create a monster when he named the Magpie Man. But he did, and he lives with that every day.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

I see the effort it took for him to say that rise and fall behind his eyes. Then I kiss his cheek, and for a moment, I see my old dad.

He is still in there, buried deep but breaking through.

Chapter 30

“My name is Lucas Newman,” Lucas says. “You probably remember me from The Wordsmiths.”

I don’t.

“You’re probably wondering what I’ve been up to since the show ended.”

I’m not.

This is how Lucas introduces himself to his audience. He’s expecting ready-made fans, guaranteed subscribers: women who were girls when they watched him when he was a kid in a comedy about a family of writers. I think he’s playing this wrong.

I get bored and turn it off, checking the comments for anything that might mean something.