I bite my lip, and then the words start to tumble out. “Pop, come on. We’re not okay. None of us are. You should be here. This is a family vacation, and you’re part of our family, and you don’t get to decide that you’re not.”

“I told you,” he says. “I have to work.”

“That’s not going to cut it, Pop. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You’re making a choice. And this time you made the wrong choice.”

“All right,” he says after a minute. “I can see why you feel that way. And I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care,” I say.

“What?”

“I don’t care if you’re sorry. I care if you’re here. And you’re not here.”

“Ada . . .” He sounds tired. I don’t even know what time it is for him right now. He also sounds like he’s about to tell me that I don’t understand, that I can’t understand, but I won’t listen.

So I blabber on. “I know you and Mom are going through a rough patch, or whatever,” I say quickly. “You think we don’t notice these things, but we do. I don’t know much about love, but I have been there when people stopped loving each other; Afton and I both, we’ve had front row seats to that. And I just think . . .” I swallow as tears burn my eyes. “I just think that can’t happen with us this time, Pop. Not with you and Mom. It’s not fair. It’s not right. It can’t happen.”

“Ada, Ada, whoa,” he says. “Why do you think that—Your mom and me—It’s not—”

I push on. “Mom isn’t perfect. She works too much, and she . . . isn’t the amazing person everyone says she is, and I know that, but I also know that Mom isn’t the only member of this family, and you loved each other once, and you both made promises, and that means you have to fight for her. Are you doing that, Pop? Are you really fighting for her? And fighting for us? Can you do that? Can you fight?”

Then I’m out of breath. It should be Mom I’m giving this speech to, Mom I’m confronting, but this is the only way I can think of to keep them together: for Pop to try harder. For him to fix it.

Pop doesn’t say anything for a long, long time, which is okay, because now I’m sniffling.

“Yes,” he says finally. “Yes, Ada. I will do that.”

“Good.”

“But what happened with your mom? Did she say something that upset you? Why—”

“That’s all I really have to tell you, Pop. For now.”