But I can do this, I think. I can act like I don’t know anything. Like I didn’t see anything. Like it didn’t even happen. I have to.

“Let’s go pretend we’re mermaids,” Afton’s saying as she pulls Abby toward the dolphin tanks. “Under the sea.”

Chapter 16

16

I spend the next several hours alone, thinking until I think I’ll drive myself insane.

It’s at this point that I ask myself the question: Who? Who was it? It was dark in that room, and I never saw the man’s face. I only got a glimpse of the back of his head. I struggle to call up the image. Dark hair, cut short. Wide bare shoulders narrowing to a trim waist.

I shudder with revulsion.

One thing is for certain: it wasn’t Pop, changing his mind about not coming on the trip, Popping in to surprise us all.

Pop is black. And this guy wasn’t black.

So who was it?

I make a mental list of possibilities, starting with the men in Mom’s circle:

Jerry. He has dark hair but, ugh, no. Jerry is way older, and not in the best shape. The man I saw was definitely not Jerry with his shirt off.

Max Ahmed. Max also has dark hair. But Max is so quiet, so reserved and so proper all the time. I can’t grasp the idea of a universe in which Max would cheat on his wife.

Billy Wong. But he’s so attentive to his family, which I’ve always appreciated, in contrast to Mom. Last year at the awards dinner I caught Billy mouthing the words “I love you” to his wife across the crowded room. I can’t imagine Billy doing . . . that.

Which only leaves the hundreds of other doctors at this conference, men who only my mother has met. Men I don’t know.

Tearful and frustrated, I stretch out in one of those white rope hammocks that are scattered around the resort and try to talk myself into taking a nap, so I’ll have a few hours of relief from the torturous rat maze that my mind is turning into, but I can’t make myself sleep. After I give up on that, I stand on the hillside and watch a couple get married in the outdoor chapel.

Because I am apparently a glutton for punishment.

I’m not close enough to hear what the bride and groom are saying, but I know they’re making promises to each other. Like promises to be faithful. As in, to refrain from having sex with anyone else. It must be so easy to believe those promises, I think mournfully as I watch them, when you’re young and you’re in love.