“Ronnie was a nice guy,” her father said. He looked at Caddie. “Don’t hate him, or your mother. Or me,” he added. “People can’t help who they are.”

“I feel like I don’t really know who she is now,” said Caddie.

“She’s your mother,” her father replied. “And I’m your father. That’s really all that matters, isn’t it?”

She wasn’t sure that it was, but she said nothing. All of those years! All of those times she’d cursed her father to her mother, blaming him for not being in their lives. Why hadn’t she said something, anything, so that Caddie wouldn’t hate him so much? She didn’t even have to tell me everything, she thought. Just that I didn’t have to blame him.

“Caddie.”

Her father’s voice drew her back. She looked at him, waiting.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” he said. “I still wouldn’t have known how to give you what you needed.”

“What makes you think you do now, then?” she said.

He smiled. “Maybe I don’t,” he said. “But at least now I think I can try. Can you live with that?”

She started to sniffle. “I think so,” she said, wiping her eyes. She laughed, half choking on her tears. “I still wish you’d gone gay a long time ago,” she told him.

Her father reddened. He picked up the paper and looked at it, although she didn’t think he was really reading it. “Yes,” he said vaguely, “well ...”

“Are you going to tell Mom?” she asked.

He set the paper down again. “I don’t know that there’s anything to tell her,” he said. “Yet.”

“But when there is?” Caddie pushed.

He shook his head. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “How about we just agree to wait and see?”

“Just don’t wait nine years,” said Caddie. “That’s a long time for someone not to know something important.”

Her father looked at her. “Try forty-two years,” he said.

Caddie drank some of her orange juice. It was tart and pulpy, and she liked the way the taste remained on her tongue after she swallowed. “This is weird,” she said.

“The juice?” her father said. He picked up the carton and sniffed it. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Not the juice,” Caddie explained. “Us. Talking like this. It’s weird.”

“I guess it is,” her father admitted. “Would you rather go back to not talking?”

“It might be easier,” Caddie said. “It’s safer, anyway.”

“Trust me,” her father said, “it isn’t in the long run.”

“I know,” said Caddie, waving her hand. “I’m just fucking with you.”

Her father winced. “Do you have to use that word?” he asked.

“Fuck?” said Caddie, grinning evilly. “Don’t you like it?”

“Call me old-fashioned,” said her father.