Maureen gasped. It was the first time Ann had ever said that word out loud, and it felt both awful and cathartic. Noah and his friends talked about triggers, of not saying words that might upset you at school. But saying that word out loud allowed her to call it what it was. It gave her power and strength after all those years of blaming herself, for thinking she’d asked for it. She could scream it through a megaphone and it wouldn’t be loud enough.

Maureen sank to the floor and rested her head against the wall. “Oh, Tony. She was our babysitter! She was just a girl.”

“She wanted it.”

It occurred to Ann that the person they were talking about—this “she”—was someone else, someone other than who she was now. “I said no.”

“You said it too late. You want me to say I’m sorry? I am. I got carried away. I got carried away with a lot of things in those days.”

“It never stops,” Maureen said. “It never, ever stops, not ever! All these secrets you keep. I should have divorced you ages ago.” She picked up a beer bottle and threw it at his chest, and it hit him, but not hard. The beer sprayed all over the room and the bottle shattered on the floor near his feet. The abruptness of the sound changed something in Anthony; suddenly it seemed he wasn’t even in the room with them anymore.

“I’ve seen the kid, you know that? I watched you walking with him to school.”

“What?” Ann wanted to clean out her ears. “Where?”

“In Milwaukee. I saw his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpack. His blue hat. I followed you the whole way. It was all I could do not to say something. I just wanted, you know. I just wanted to see—”

“You had no right. No business.”

“I was different then.”

Ann thought about what Maureen had said, how people can become actors in their own lives.

“I felt bad, I did,” he said. “I never forgot.”

“You promised you’d leave me alone.”

“And I did. You promised the same thing, and here you are in my kitchen.”

“Stop it,” Maureen said. “For the love of God. Stop.”

“You want me to stop?” Anthony said.

Maureen nodded her head. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“How about you, Ann? You want me to stop?”

“I wanted you to stop a long time ago.”

“OK, I tell you what. I’ll make both of you happy. I’ll stop.”

He left the room and pounded up the stairs. Each thud of his feet on the steps sounded like an asteroid hitting the earth. Ann wanted to run away but she was so shocked she couldn’t move.