“Who?”

“You.”

“Who said?”

He was giggling, thinking I was playing that game but I was not. He saw I wasn’t joking and sobered up. “Hugh said,” he said softly. “Uncle Hugh said.”

I speed-read through the life of a green sea turtle. I agreed to let them nap together in Stevie’s bed. I shut the door and ran to my room, as if I could prevent what had already happened.

I’d left my notebook on the window seat, closed, beneath my paperback of Jane Eyre. But now it was open, turned to a drawing of Hugh’s long, thin figure alone in the field where he was married. I flipped through my notebook with his eyes, trying to gauge just how incriminating it all was. A drawing of his car from my window, a poem about him touching my leg on the stairway, which hadn’t happened. And if there were any doubt at all, my most recent entries to my letter to Gina spelled it out with great drama, as if from the moors of England: You cannot know these blistering feelings—you have not yet met your Rochester. But believe me, they are so powerful that now every novel, every line of poetry, makes perfect and vivid sense. And: Like everyone else in the family I am swept up in the tide of him, but he is good and kind and funny and that tide is where I want to hang suspended always. And: At the pool he lies on his back on the concrete with his arms spread like Christ on the cross and I want to ravish him. I did not know exactly what ravish meant. I didn’t think it could mean anything as boring as sex.

Nearly two hours later, Stevie called out for me. I hadn’t moved from the window seat. My legs were stiff and barely held my weight as I crossed the room. I’d have to quit. I had another five days left, but I would have to leave. Hugh had probably already told his sister and mother. I couldn’t bear the humiliation.

The kids were flushed from heavy sleep, their hair damp at the temples. I kept them entertained in their rooms for as long as I could, but eventually they wanted to go see Thomas and Margaret in the kitchen and eat the cubes of cheese she served them and play out on the grass. I imagined that everyone in the house knew by now, that Hugh had already had a good laugh with each of them, quoting from the notebook as my father would have if he’d ever found such a document. I expected him to give me a pleased, knowing glance that would harden if I didn’t see the humor.

But he did not. He barely looked at me when I followed Stevie out onto the patio, Elsie on my hip.

The three Pikes were out there with their drinks, sitting on matching wrought iron chairs painted white to make them look more comfortable.