“What about you, huh?” I shrieked, jabbing my finger at him. “The minute I became a real person, that’s when you gave up. When I stopped being some fucking perfectly manicured fantasy, made up of lipstick and high heels that you could tie up and fuck whenever you wanted. The minute I had needs, the minute things got hard, that’s when you changed your mind.”

“Needs, Grace? Seriously?” He threw his hands in the air as he paced in small circles. “As if it was so easy living with you. You are the neediest goddamn person in the entire world. I couldn’t even go out with my friends without you losing your mind.”

“Fuck you. You have no right to tell me the way I feel is wrong. That the things I need are wrong.” The words were flying out of me as if they had been imprisoned in me for decades. I allowed the volume to rise without any restraint. “Oh, and by the way, that’s because you were out fucking someone else. You think I didn’t know? All this time, you really think I didn’t know? Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

Jack sighed. “No, Grace. I know you’re a lot brighter than you pretend to be. All the stuff you keep in, all the things you don’t say. I know you can’t ignore it anymore.” He dropped into the chair and lowered his face into his hands. “So please, can we just admit that it’s over? Why are we prolonging this? ”

“You’re right.” I turned and laid my cup in the sink. “It’s over, Jack.”

Chapter 74

When I was seven years old, I was strolling through the woods behind my house with Hannah. We had been learning about different kinds of trees in science class, and I was pointing out the various species as we walked, the light seeping through in uneven, rectangular patches.

“That’s a black spruce,” I announced proudly. “And that’s a speckled alder.”

Hannah wasn’t nearly as bright as me. She struggled in school, particularly with math and science, so I often helped her with her homework. We’d sit at my kitchen table almost every day after class, studying together. I never had any difficulty learning, and I felt instinctively protective of Hannah, as if it were my responsibility to make sure she did well.

“Hannah, are you paying attention?” I asked.

Suddenly, she crumpled, falling to the forest floor.

Lying on her back, her long, golden-blond hair sprawled across the bramble, she raised her forearm and placed it over her eyes like a blindfold. Her faded blue T-shirt rode up, revealing a small section of her pale stomach, just below the belly button. Her voice came softly. “Does your Daddy love you?”

I plopped down next to her, gazing up at the canopy of trees. “I think so.”

Hannah removed her arm from her eyes, turning to look at me. I examined her face. The peppering of freckles along her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were particularly pronounced from their exposure to the sun. Her bottom lip trembled as fat tears began streaming down her cheeks, blurring the collection of freckles and landing on the grass beneath us.