Bea sat slumped on the living room couch. It was rare to find Bea just sitting like a normal person. Usually she arranged herself in a very conscious way. Cleavage aimed. Stomach sucked. Lips pursed. Face on. Face always on.

“I can’t believe you know,” Bea said softly, more to herself than to Joey.

“You can’t be so stupid to have thought you’d keep your secrets forever,” said Joey, and she almost gasped at her vicious tone.

“I deserve your anger, Joey. I deserve it. I can take it.”

Joey sat beside her mother on the couch. She slid left so she hugged the armrest, putting more space between them. She balled her fists and her nails dug into her palms. “I need to understand. I need the whole story.”

“Yes.” Her mother fixed her eyes on a family picture framed on a side table. Her father holding a smirking Lily. Her father looking like he might explode with love for his girls.

Joey felt her heart constrict.

“I met Rand even before I started dating your father.”

“On Corfu.”

“How did you know?”

“Leo told me, Mom.” The word that was Joey’s first, her most familiar, felt sour on her tongue.

“Right. I can’t…so Leo’s actually here? In Florida?” Joey didn’t reply. “Okay. Well, when I was going into my last year of college, I went to Corfu with your grandfather. You know, my parents grew up there, and despite the tragedy of their lives, I always held rather romantic notions of Corfu.”

“I see. Romantic.”

“Yes. Your grandfather didn’t despise it like G. Even though his whole family was murdered, somehow he could separate it from the happy times of his childhood. G can’t. She had, and still has, no desire to ever go back to Corfu.

“So after years of begging, Grandfather said he would take me. We planned to go for three weeks, and I was so excited. It was my first time out of the US other than Jamaica. And you know G. She hovers. My dad was different…”

Bea lit up in that way she used to around Grandfather. He would kiss her forehead, and she would look soft and lovely. That’s what Joey had always thought—her mother had looked her loveliest around Grandfather.

Fuck her mother looking lovely! Her mother was a horrible person.