More and more imperfect as the years went on, apparently: my dad still full of indiscretion, and my mom increasingly full of resentment—at him and, I suspected, at me. I was their adhesive, but in the worst possible way.

They’d been stuck together for years.

“Meg,” Reid whispers at a certain point, all sympathy, and that gives me the strength to finish it cleanly, no more tears.

“It was a relief for them, in the end. Sort of a . . . ‘the truth will set you free’ situation, I guess. They told me that night they’d be divorcing. I’d never seen them get along better, when they told me. Like peas and carrots.”

It had been, ultimately, what had hurt the most. That I’d been some kind of excuse for them, for staying together in a household that was poisoned by their fighting. That they’d used me, in a way, to keep themselves from having to make a decision about their marriage.

I had screamed at them. The worst night of my life. I left for New York the next week. Six months later, overwhelmed with curiosity, I’d contacted Darcy Hollowell and had gotten a very short, very polite reply that ended with a wish for me to “reconcile” with my parents and to “have a happy, healthy life.”

It hadn’t been difficult to see the hidden message there, and we’ve never been in touch again.

When I finally sag back against him, my cheek resting on his broad chest, I notice that there’s no more swirling, rising steam from the teacup. I feel guilty for not drinking it, Reid’s heart-in-hand offering, but his body has been the best kind of comfort, even though it feels stiffer now. Even though he hasn’t said anything in a long time.

Too soon to tell him, probably.

But finally, he speaks again, his voice soft. “Did you ever forgive them?”

I close my eyes, thinking. It’s taken years between us, to get back to a decent place, a place where I call each of them regularly. Longer with my dad, and it’s still only the weather and the Buckeyes when we talk, and of course the occasional slip when I’m sending him a hand-drawn message of congratulations. With my mom, it’s the weather, too, but also garage sales and trips she goes on and a man named David she calls her “companion,” which is somehow both slightly gross and not-so-slightly adorable. I go home for Christmas, and I bounce awkwardly between their new houses: my dad and Jennifer and Jennifer’s three bichon terriers in a house so similar to the one I grew up in that I hate sleeping there. My mom and her tidy, tiny-gardened townhouse, a few things of David’s tucked away discreetly in her closet, happier than she ever was when I was still at home.