She laughs. “From what I gather, you’re the peacekeeper of the family. Is that right?”

I swallow. “Most of the time.”

She chortles. “Classic middle child. But that can’t be easy,” she says. “With a mother like yours.”

I stare into the water, wondering what would happen if I just dove in and swam away. Surely somebody would come by and rescue Marjorie eventually. “My mother’s amazing,” I feel obligated to say.

Marjorie nods. “Yes, she is. She’s an amazing surgeon, that’s for sure. But they call her the Whirlwind for a reason. She reminds me of myself, at that age,” she muses. “I was a bit of a flurry once, too. Driven. Centered around my work. So much to prove. But you can’t keep that up for too long before your real life starts to demand your attention. Something’s got to give, eventually.”

Or something already has. I swallow.

She reaches forward to pat my shoulder. “The trick will be for you not to smooth things over for her. You’ve got to let her face her own failings. Which means you’ve got to let her fail.”

I try to decide how much she knows. Not about the affair, I think. Marjorie is only talking about Mom working too hard. “Okay,” I say softly.

She gives a short laugh, like a bark. “Listen to me, blabbering on about something that’s none of my business. Forgive me. I’m becoming a busybody in my old age. Because I am not, otherwise, busy.”

“You’re a hero,” I say.

“Oh, go on.”

“No, really.”

“Well, yes,” she says with a sparkle in her eyes. “I know. But most of the time these days I’m also tragically bored.”

She shifts to talking about the weather, and how young people are using their phones too much, which seems to me to be the only wisdom adults want to impart to us lately, and ends up telling me a story about trying to find a phone booth in the pouring rain while a man on her bus had a heart attack.

“Thank you so much, dearie,” Marjorie says finally as I help her out of the kayak after our time is up. By now it’s past noon and it’s 90 degrees out, pretty hot for Hawaii, and there’s a huge line for the paddleboards.

But I am determined. Give me a paddleboard, I think as I wipe sweat from the back of my neck, or give me death.

“How long’s the wait?” I ask the lady at the front as we return the kayak.

“About two and a half hours, I’d say.”

Fuck! I think, but happily I don’t say it out loud. I can’t tell if Marjorie would be amused or offended by my potty mouth.