Sage kept talking to me in the dark. “I’m not saying they’re going about it the right way. But your mom obviously likes him and wants to be with him, and she probably deserves that—you know, after your dad and all that.”

“You mean she deserves Bill because my dad is dead?”

“No, you know: before that, the way he was with your mom, the stuff you told me.”

“Please shut up now.”

“I’m not trying to upset you, Libby, but maybe she loves Bill. Don’t you want her to be happy?”

I lay in the dark on the other bed in Sage’s room. She had matching twin beds with matching green bedspreads that matched her drapes and carpet. She had what Charlotte called a vanity and an overstuffed armchair with throw cushions that also matched the bedspreads. It all suddenly seemed vile. I put on my sneakers and jacket over my nightgown and stood over her bed, where she was lying on her side.

“I’m going home,” I said. She didn’t say anything back.

Sage’s bedroom was on the ground floor, and I opened her window and crawled out. There was still snow and ice on the ground, and the moon was full. I ran home in the bright cold, angry. I would never forgive her. I ran and stopped only when I reached my own driveway. I sat there on the quartz boulder in the freezing cold in my nightgown and hated myself. I had told Sage too much. Did I not want my mom to be happy? Did I even love her? I wondered, if it had been me instead of Sage on the road that night in the snow, would they have stopped? Would my mother have left me there on that road?

Watching Abbey and Sage through the window now, a glimpse of Sage’s bright uniform disappearing through the trees, I had that same sense of my dishonor, spilling secrets nobody else in my family spoke of. Why had I ever breathed a word to Sage about my mother or father or Bill? I had told Sage almost everything. I had called her that night about Ellen. I knew Grady and Charlotte Adams didn’t like my mother, that Charlotte thought she was irresponsible. When Sage knew all this, why would she tell him about Ellen?

I didn’t realize Thomas was home. I was still staring out the window when he came into the living room.

“I heard you told Wilson we had borrowed a lawn mower to cut the grass.”

“Did Mom tell you that? Was she mad?”

“Ellen told me yesterday, after. She said you told Wilson to stay away from our grass.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know why he thought he could cut it in the first place.”

“Maybe because you and Marie let him.”