“This is not how this goes,” he said, pushing away from the table. “We worked so hard. You know, I lied to my wife. I lied to my sponsor. Where’s Max? Let’s—” He started going through Marlin’s pockets, looking for her keys.

“Stop it.” She grabbed both of his hands and stood up. “Jack, you have to stop. There’s nothing we can do.” Jack ripped himself away from her and began to pace back and forth.

“We knew this would happen,” Tyler told him calmly. “We’ve talked about this. A or B.”

“I don’t want A or B,” Jack shouted. Anger—ugly, a slur—transformed his face. He no longer resembled the man I’d met that summer. He didn’t look like a man at all. He looked like a scared, suburban teenage boy.

“There’s nothing else to do, Jack,” Marlin said soothingly. “We’ll all figure it out.”

“This is going to ruin my life,” he snarled at her. “You don’t understand.”

“I’m on your side, Jack. I have always been on your side. You and Bell and Audre.”

“You remind me every single day. But my children are not your problem.” He spat the words at her with surprising venom. Yet—Marlin didn’t flinch.

“That’s—you know what—that’s cruel,” she admonished him. “You know why they’re not mine, Jack? Because I was so stressed out, over all of this, that I didn’t have my period for most of my thirties. You wouldn’t lift the pressure. And then—you found somebody else.”

“You did this for yourself as much as anybody else.”

“No,” Marlin said. “I did it for you.”

“We all did it, okay?” Jes shrieked, pounding the table. The three of them looked at her, stunned. “Pick A or pick B. I don’t care anymore.”

Silence descended over the room. Marlin swallowed her wine glass full of bourbon in a series of long gulps, refusing to look at Jack. Tyler put his head in his hands. Jes stared at Jack. Jack stared out the window. They seemed to have completely forgotten that I was there.

“What did you do?” I asked them.

When nobody responded, I turned to Tyler. “What did you do?” I asked again. He didn’t look up.

“This is it, Ty,” Marlin said. “You’ve been voting A for three years. Pay up.”

“No,” he said. “We have to agree.”

“You’re kidding,” I asked. “Right? After all of this? You won’t tell me?”

Tyler raised his head, those green eyes looking right through me. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No. I won’t.”

I’d never heard a no that held such clarity. It broke me right down the middle.