I smiled sadly, watching my feet skim along the surface of the water. I looked up at her, and she seemed genuinely calm. “Am I being stupid?”

“You could never be stupid.”

“She’s dead, Mom. It doesn’t matter if he still loves her. I don’t know why I’m so hung up on it.”

“Oh, honey, of course it matters. I understand completely. No one wants to feel like they’re second best, and, as much as I want you and Parker together, he will always have been married to her first.” She put her hand on mine. “I think if you’re going to figure out where to go from here you might have to find a way to complete the circle.”

I looked at her skeptically.

“You know,” she continued. “Build a bridge. Find a way to connect a past you can’t change with the future you want.”

It sounded so easy, the way she said it. Build a bridge. Connect the past and the future. The answer was obvious. The clearest way to build a bridge between Parker and Greer and me was to have their baby. In fact, maybe it was the only way. Creating a new life out of the past while making way for the future, connecting the three of us tangibly, couldn’t possibly be more perfect. So what was holding me back?

I couldn’t look at her when I said, “Mom, if I tell you something, do you promise you won’t judge me?”

She shrugged. “You’re my daughter. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

Sometimes I wanted to kill her, and then, sometimes, in moments like these, I didn’t know how I would ever, ever live without her.

I looked directly at the moon as I whispered, “I’m afraid I won’t love it.”

She cocked her head to the side, studying me as she said, “Love what?” and then, a moment later, “Ohhhhh.”

Now we were both looking at the moon, and I was pretty sure she was judging me.

“Amelia, I don’t know how to say this exactly. But there’s something I’ve been thinking about telling you for a while now, something pretty risky for me.”

I felt my heart begin to race. What else could possibly happen tonight? I turned to her.

“I don’t know how to say this, exactly…”

From the look on her face, I was pretty sure that I didn’t want her to figure out how.

“It’s Robby.”

“Oh my God! Is he sick?”

She looked at me for a long moment. “He’s your cousin.” She paused and backtracked. “Well, I mean, he’s your brother, of course. He will always be your brother. But he’s not technically, biologically, my child—or Daddy’s.”

She paused, and I sat stock-still, like if I didn’t move, I could pretend she’d never said anything. My breath felt short, and my heart like it would burst inside my chest.

She got a second wind, saying, “Aunt Tilley was pregnant when Robert died—I never could understand why the hell she couldn’t just marry him and be done with it—and she just lost her mind, Amelia. Completely lost her mind. Mama and Daddy just hid her away. I hid away with her, and once he was born it was really clear that she couldn’t take care of him, and it all just sort of…”