A child sees what we are, through all the fictions of what we would be. He had not thought of the quote in many years. They were the words of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, a mostly forgotten Swiss philosopher whose writings on God, art, and science had been thrust upon Hudson and his peers as part of an undergraduate seminar and whom they had all found exceedingly tiresome. But a handful of Amiel’s pronouncements had found their way into Hudson’s mental filing cabinet, and he sometimes recalled them and gave grudging credit to the philosopher–poet.

He thought of his own childhood, when he’d observed his parents and recognized instantly their unhappiness and loathing for one another. It had not occurred to him until much later that they were unaware of it—were, in fact, pretending that everything was fine. This had surprised him, as he’d assumed that adults had passed beyond the days of dress-up and make-believe that children found so necessary to their existence. With that realization, the scales had fallen from his eyes, and he had never seen the world in the same way again.

Had Caddie seen through him? Was that the real problem? Her accusation had been directed at her father, but Hudson had been included in it. He had been blind to what was happening between himself and Ben, and she had torn away the veil and forced him to see it for what it was.

No, he realized, it wasn’t Caddie he hated; it was himself.

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 37

In the tank, the two Flabellina iodinea were mating, joined at their head ends. Their reproductive organs, pale extensions of their deep purple bodies, exchanged eggs and sperm as each fertilized the other. Their oral tentacles, sinuous as eels, explored the surrounding rock, feeding and copulation occurring simultaneously.

It was unusual for nudibranchs to breed in captivity, and Ben was pleased that the tricky mechanics of recreating a cold-water ocean environment had succeeded in encouraging the Spanish shawls to engage in the behavior. Tropical fish were much easier to keep, and he occasionally envied his colleagues whose interests centered around the brightly colored and far less particular residents of warmer waters.

Watching the nudibranchs had temporarily distracted him from the troubles of the afternoon. But their activities were so closely related to his thoughts that, inevitably, he could not stave off the unpleasant business any longer. Still watching the Spanish shawls, whose coupling would last several hours at least, he faced the unpleasant task of recalling his visit with Hudson.

He’d had time, since then, to distill what Hudson had told him to its essential meaning, which was that his daughter, apparently, thought that he was in love with Hudson. Extrapolating from this, the larger assumption was that he was homosexual, or, he supposed, bisexual. At the very least, he was allegedly guilty of not knowing his own wants.