“I never answered your letters? I said. I waited for those letters every day. And I sent you my own too. You see.” Her mother got a vacant look in her eyes. “That was the day I began to hate my mother. I understood it then. She’d known me too well. She’d known about Rand, and she’d had to thwart him. Nothing for you today, dear. He wrote at least five times before he gave up. And G must have deliberately taken my letters out of the mailbox, as well.”

Bea tucked her feet under her hip. “There were storms that evening. Our flights were delayed. We sat there wondering if they’d be canceled. Hoping maybe. Ultimately, our flights weren’t canceled, but we decided to tell Scott and Maisy they were. We got a hotel room. It was…well…magic.”

“Magic.” Joey was going to be sick.

“But you have to know, Joey, how conflicted I was. I was so ashamed I had done it. The next day, you and Dad were all I thought about on my way home. I did love my life. I do love my life.”

“You have an interesting way of showing it. Making us both the backdrop of your affair. Making us…I don’t know…footnotes.”

Her mother sighed. “Corfu. It was never supposed to be like that.”

“Like what? The incestuous Brady Bunch?”

“It snowballed. It snowballed, and we snowballed. JoJo, have you ever had two things you loved so desperately?”

“No.” A thought floated toward her, though, that she quickly flicked away. “I haven’t.”

“No, I suppose you haven’t.”

Joey fiddled with her thin gold bangle that she never took off, that she’d bought in Bali and had stamped with the words SHE BELIEVED SHE COULD SO SHE DID. “So finish the story.”

“It was Rand’s idea. He wanted us to get away together after Monterey, but I didn’t see how that could be possible. We both had families. I loved your father. I did. I mean, I do. I really, really love your father. You know I do. Just differently from the all-consuming way I loved Rand…”

That she threw around her love for Rand so casually was a sucker punch. Joey endured another swell of nausea. Her foot nudged a piece of cracker in the couch. She dug it out from under the cushion.

“Rand said, We have kids the same age. They could play. Just this one time. We’ll spend the summer together, and when Scott’s back in Florida or Maisy is under the weather…” Her mother made air quotes. “I know how terrible that sounds.”

Joey set the cracker on a side table. “Not how terrible it sounds, Mom,” she said quietly. “How terrible it is.”