“Well, you can figure out the rest. I took the letter back to my room. It was just temporary, I told myself. I’d read it and see what was so great about this Harry Berry guy. What he had that I didn’t. Then I’d put it back. But I couldn’t bring myself to read the letter—”

“Well, isn’t that saintly?” Bea almost laughed.

“Takes one to know one,” snapped her father. “I didn’t mean that. Love, I didn’t mean that. It’s just…” He ran a fistful of grass through his fingers.

“But my mom took those letters,” said Bea. “She denied it and said there were no letters, but I knew it could only have been her.”

Scott grimaced. “No. It wasn’t her.”

“But my mom must have taken those letters,” said Bea. “She must have because all this time I’ve hated her for taking those letters.”

Scott hung his head. “I’m so sorry, my love.”

“It was you,” said Bea. “Oh my God, it was you who—wait, so you took my letters too? The ones I wrote to Rand?”

Scott grimaced. “Yes.”

“How could you? How could you do—”

“I just thought if you got to know me, if you just got to know me, you would love me. If you just gave me a chance!”

“I did give you a chance! I gave you a chance because I was heartbroken. I gave you a chance because I needed something to hold on to.”

“And you loved me. Once you loved me—and I knew it was genuine love, just as I always suspected we would have—I put Harry Berry out of my mind. You chose me.”

“But I didn’t choose you! I only chose you because you deceived me!”

“And then you deceived me. And then you took me to Corfu.”

“Oh boy,” said Grant.

“So you knew the whole time, Scott?” asked Leo. “But…why would you spend every summer with the man your wife was having an affair with? That sounds like some insane mode of torture.”

“Did you know when we first met?” asked Bea. “In the stairwell?”

“We met in the stairwell,” said Joey, to Grant and Lily as much as to herself.

Scott said, “I didn’t know exactly. There was something that felt funny to me. I’d wondered why you were so keen on renting a place in Corfu that summer when you’d never expressed an interest in going back there. All of a sudden, it was We have to do this, I found a place, all of it. But no, I didn’t know in the stairwell.”

“You masterminded a meeting with your lover in the stairwell?” asked Lily.

“So when?” asked Bea, ignoring her.

“I figured it out that night, in the shower. I thought about the letters.”

“I thought you didn’t read them.”

“I didn’t at first. But then I did.”