I want to say I am resolved to act, but all I can think of as I walk back to the house is that confronting my father won’t be fun. I remind myself that I’m an adult now, a mother, and a professional. When it comes to this man, though, I’m still a child. And suddenly into that childhood moment comes a memory. It’s a recurring dream that I put behind me when I left Bay Bluff and haven’t allowed in for years. In it, my mother goes off somewhere, leaving us three alone with Dad, who keeps doubling his normal size. Margo and Anne don’t seem to see it, despite my yelling and pointing and jumping up and down. They’re not afraid. But I am. I don’t want my father to see me and attack. So I make myself invisible by becoming a butterfly—no, an ant—no, an owl, emerging only at night when everyone else is asleep.

Coming so soon after thinking myself an owl, I’m wide-awake when I reach the house. Anne’s car is back, but since she isn’t downstairs, I assume she’s in bed. I’m sorry for that. I would have liked to ease the awkwardness between us. We used to talk after dates. Not that I’ve been on a date. But she had. A date? A party? A sleeping-with sans sleep? Whatever, I want to know more about Billy Houseman.

Resigned for now to failure in that, I take my laptop from the kitchen and turn on a small lamp in the living room. After moving just enough books aside so that I can curl into a corner of the sofa, I pull up Margo’s latest column. She typically writes about family issues in response to correspondence from readers. Too often to be coincidental, I see our family in her words.