Arno heads to his house. I park the BSA in the garage. As with my purchase of the motorcycle, there’s been no fallout from my spontaneous ingestion of random pills in the Exleys’ bathroom the other night. I was prostrate on the living-room couch the next morning when the paterfamilias woke me for work. My skull felt filled with slowly drying mud. But I got on the BSA and managed to get to the factory without falling off. I’d never tried coffee before, but that seemed like a good day to start.

Now I let myself into the house and see Mom in the backyard on her knees with her pruning shears and trowel, weeding a flower bed. She always gardens in khaki slacks, a blue chambray shirt, and a straw hat, and uses a pair of the red knee pads we got for Alan’s failed crawling project.

I’ve come home late the past few nights. As a result, I haven’t seen much of her since we trudged laps through the house in my pharmacologically induced stupor. When she sees me approaching, she settles back on her haunches. “I think you should start seeing Dr. Hill again.”

So much for thinking there’d be no fallout from my adventure in indiscriminate pill popping. Or is her suggestion due to my lack of direction?

Or is it because of the situation with the paterfamilias? Why have we spent so many years tiptoeing around Dad and his affairs? Why haven’t we ever spoken about them before last week? Did we each think that if it remained undeclared, we were protecting the other? That we could pretend things were okay?

Well, not anymore. “Dad told me he’s thinking about a divorce.”

Mom cocks her head curiously. She switches from her haunches to her butt, sitting cross-legged on the grass. It’s an invitation for me to do the same.

I settle down. “I mean, now that I think about it, it’s kind of weird that I took it so hard. It’s not like I haven’t known forever that he was messing around.”

“You mean you assumed that because we had separate bedrooms?” Mom asks.

“No. I mean I knew. I even met some of them.”

Her eyes widen, then narrow with consternation. “Really? How?” She pulls off her gardening gloves. “Cigarette?”

We light up and I tell her what I remember about the trip to Lake Placid with Hazel. About Sharon in Aspen. About seeing Antonia with Dad in the MG a month ago. And about the other times I suspected he wasn’t working late, or was off on a trip that wasn’t exactly business.

Mom closes her eyes and presses her fingers against her temple. “I’m sorry he put you in that position. That he made you go through that. It’s . . . It’s narcissistic behavior, Lucas. He’s incapable of understanding the effect he has on others.”