A hand gripped his shoulder. He turned and realized he hadn’t taken another step—waiting for the revelation. There was a certain dull-edged fear in the approaching subject of why he didn’t want to go to the lake. The air was full of some magnolia-like smell not found in nature, and it was making him nauseous: some arrangement sprayed with fragrance in the foyer. “Those flowers stink.” Nick pointed to the silk flowers. Please change the subject. Please.

“Please tell me this is not the Amy. No.”

He closed his eyes.

“You would’ve told me—that day, right? You wouldn’t have waited until I figured it out for myself. There is no way my daughter is dating her son. God, no.”

He nodded.

Eliza dropped her face into her hands. “This is like having a recurring bad dream that you think has stopped and then—bam—there it is again.” She turned away from him, her shoulders dropped—her precursor to crying.

“Eliza, don’t start.”

When he reached out to touch her back, she looked at him. Her face changed immediately from brittle with threatening tears to stone-hard determination. “Okay—here’s the deal. We’ll go to the lake, have a good time, show her that we’re fine and leave. We will not discuss Costa Rica, or what happened, or where we’ve been and why. The end.”

Eliza, God bless her soul, had written the end of the story before he’d even found the beginning.

“Did you hear me?” She punctuated her question with her hands thrust forward.

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going.”

“Oh, yes, you are. You’re showing her that we are fine. If you don’t go—she’ll think she still has some . . . power over you.”

“I’m not going.”

He walked toward the bedroom. She grabbed his arm. “Yes, we are.”

“Stop this.”

Now the tears came, and the guilt surrounding his inadequacy to stop them—and his responsibility for them—passed over him.

“You have to go. And you should’ve told me, Nick. You should’ve told me it was her. I would have never invited her to the lake.”

He walked through the French doors to the bedroom, then sat on the edge of the bed. “Listen, I didn’t say anything because there was no need to dredge it all up. And I figured this guy would go by the wayside like all Lizzie’s boyfriends. I didn’t know you’d invite them to the lake.”

“God, and I really liked them.”

“Of course you did. They seem like nice people. But I see no reason to spend an entire weekend with them.”

“You’re not going because you still care . . . that she never . . .” She swiped at the betraying tears.