A pause while Alice considered whether or not she should tell her sister about Tommy. It wasn’t that she felt she’d done anything wrong or had anything to hide. It’s just that she didn’t know exactly what was going on between the two of them, where they stood. Also, Charlie, she knew, tended to get easily sidetracked, couldn’t really process more than one thing at a time. If she introduced the topic of Tommy, the topic of Richard and Maggie would go out the window, so she decided to leave Tommy for another day. “Nothing. I couldn’t sleep. I heard voices,” she said, which was more or less the truth. And then when Charlie continued to stay quiet, stare moodily at nothing, she prompted her with a “So?”

“So?” Charlie repeated. “So what?”

“You’re kidding, right? You need me to explain the significance of their dialogue? Okay, fine. It proves mom and Richard were having an affair. This isn’t like the slip-up mom made at that dinner with the Pollards a couple days ago, the thing about the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago. This isn’t a maybe-they-did-maybe-they-didn’t, open-to-interpretation, easily-explained-away-type deal. This is cut and dried, incontrovertible, undeniable evidence. Mom and Richard haven’t taken a trip to Nantucket since we’ve known they’ve been together. Nor has a Christmas occurred since we’ve known they’ve been together. Ergo, they were together before we knew they were together. Ergo, mom was unfaithful to dad.”

Alice looked to Charlie for her reaction. There wasn’t much of one.

“Yeah,” said Charlie, “but it’s not like what you overheard changes anything. What we pretty much knew for sure, we now definitely know for sure.”

“Pretty much knew for sure? You didn’t act too sure when I pointed out the Chicago discrepancy thing to you at the time. In fact, you acted like I was being crazy, grasping at straws. Told me I was too obsessed with details, if I remember correctly.”

Charlie shrugged.

Alice was shocked at her sister’s blasé attitude. It was like the calmer and cooler Charlie appeared, the more out-of-control upset Alice could feel herself getting. “Well,” she said, “it changes things for me. I’m going to call dad.”

Charlie tossed off the covers, stepped out of the bed, not in any particular hurry. She must’ve gotten up, changed after Alice tucked her in last night. She was wearing a black T-shirt that ended above her navel, a pair of bikini underpants that dipped almost to her pubic bone. The Band-Aid covering her tattoo was peeling off her back, and Alice saw that she had a tan line in the shape of it.