Arch’s words rang hollow. I didn’t want a stepdad. I wanted to remain in teenage oblivion, where none of us had to know or care what the adults in our lives were doing when we weren’t watching. I wanted to keep pretending I was special, that I belonged at Yeatman—and with the Haltoms. Above all, I wanted to feel again as I had felt ever since that first day, when Arch appeared before me and extended his hand and lifted me up, out of a drab, colorless, meaningless life and into the bright and beautiful world over which he seemed destined to preside.

eleven

A little after five, Arch delivered me to the Haltoms’ farmhouse in Leiper’s Fork. I waited until his truck was gone before I knocked. Mr. Haltom met me at the door.

“Come on in, son,” he said.

He had been calling me “son” for as long as I could remember. The term had never seemed unwelcome before. I resisted the urge to say something childish and followed him into the living room. My mother didn’t get up when she saw me, nor did I go to her.

“Sit down, Charlie,” he said.

I sank into the couch across from my mother. Mr. Haltom stood in front of the fireplace.

“Your mother and I have been discussing how to break this news to you and to the twins for quite a while,” he said. “We didn’t want you to find out the way that you did.”

My mother snatched a tissue from a box on the coffee table and dabbed at her eyes.

“I love your mother very much,” he said. “Neither of us wanted this to happen, but it did.”

My mother cast a wistful glance over her shoulder at Mr. Haltom. Or perhaps that was a performance. How was I to know? She’d fooled me for months—perhaps years.

“There’s no delicate way to tell you this,” he said. “You’re going to have a sister, Charlie.”

My mother reddened. Mr. Haltom paced in front of the fireplace, hands in his pockets.

I looked around the room. Boxes and suitcases were stacked in the corner. On the table in the adjoining dining room: stacks of books and papers and a rotary phone with a cord stretching out of the kitchen.

“Do you have anything to say, Charlie?” my mother asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Congratulations?”

My mother began to cry. I felt a twinge of shame. I had not meant to be kind, but neither did I intend for the remark to sound as ugly as it did. My stepfather-to-be took it in stride. He was not one to tolerate insolence, but he was coolheaded enough to know when venting his spleen wouldn’t serve his purpose.

“So you’re going to live out here now?” I asked.