“Yes. He sure will be.” My father showed his love by teaching important life skills, which meant that there was little Dylan and I could not fix or figure out.
“How was your dinner?”
“Ah . . . good. Yeah. Crap. I forgot your cake, honey.”
“No worries! I’ll get some before I leave home. Well, I’m whipped and should go to bed.”
“Okay. Sleep tight.”
“You too, Mom.”
I stood up and hugged him, and he patted my back in an obligatory way. Then he went upstairs, his big feet thumping, and closed his bedroom door.
CHAPTER 2
Lillie
Less than twenty-four hours after my husband told me he was leaving me to pursue joy, our son graduated from high school. Brad and I sat next to each other, my body stiff and hard. “This doesn’t mean we’re not a family,” he whispered. “We still have our wonderful son, and of course I’ll always care about you.”
I didn’t respond, too busy having an out-of-body experience. He’s leaving me. They’re both leaving me. My husband cheated. My baby is an adult. Oh, God, my husband doesn’t love me anymore. I have to cancel the trip to Europe. Should I go alone? I can’t afford it if I’m divorced! Dylan, why Montana? Why, you little ingrate? Who cares how beautiful it is out there? God, I love you so much! Shit, I’m going to be a laughingstock, a cliché, the abandoned wife. Oh, doesn’t Rami look so nice, he was always such a cute child. Brad is in love with someone else, and I didn’t even notice.
Was this real, or just a really long, detailed dream? This was Nauset High’s gym. Why couldn’t graduation be outside? It was gorgeous out. Dad is looking at you. Snap out of it. Whose cologne is that? Jesus, it’s my husband’s.
“Here we go,” Dad said. “They’re on the E’s. Finally.”
“James . . . Gabriel . . . Edwards,” the vice-principal recited in that slow, portentous way, each syllable thudding against the hearts of the parents. “Portia . . . Grace . . . Effinger.” A beautiful girl, Portia. “Gabriella . . . Maria . . . Calderón . . . Espinosa.”
He was next. My boy. My only child. My whole world.
“Dylan . . . Gustavo . . . Fairchild.”
Time stopped. My dad gave a piercing whistle; my sister, Hannah, yelled, “Yeah, Dylan!” and the Moms （as I called my mother and her wife） clapped. Dylan grinned in our direction, then walked across the stage and shook hands with the principal. He turned and smiled for the photo that would soon hang on the living room wall. My beautiful, beautiful boy. The lump in my throat had turned to a shard of glass.
“Milo . . . Jude . . . Feinstein.”
A sob came out of me, and my dad put his arm around me and squeezed.
Yesterday I had been happy. Today, I barely remembered what that word meant.
“Snap of out it,” hissed Brad.
I turned my head slowly to look at him. “Shall I tell your parents at dinner?” I whispered back.
His face went white. “We agreed to wait.” Yes, he’d sent me a text from the guest room this morning, saying it would be for the best if we didn’t tell our son today and ruin graduation. Too bad I hadn’t been given the same consideration. “But fix your face before someone says something.”
“Shut your mouth, Brad,” I hissed.
My dad gave me a weird look, but he was deaf in the ear closest to me and had missed it. Probably.
After the ceremony, someone—Diana, maybe, whose daughter, Jamie, had been Dylan’s friend since third grade—took a picture of the three of us; the three of us with the Fairchilds （our last picture together? Ever?）; the three of us with the Moms; the three of us with Dad, who’d refused to have a photo with Mom for the past thirty years. The three of us with Hannah. The three of us. The three of us. The three of us.
That was dead now.
Did I smile? Did I cry? Could anyone hear me screaming, or was that just inside my head?
Thank God Diana asked me to return the favor of taking photos, so I smiled and said, “Okay, everyone, one, two, three!” seven or eight times.
“This is a big day for you, too, sweetheart,” Vanessa said, putting her arm around me. “What a wonderful mother you are.”
“Absolutely,” Brad’s father, Charles, added. “Now, don’t be sad. He’ll always be your son.” Brad, like Dylan, was an only child.
What would my in-laws say if they knew? Would they think less of me? Had they sensed this was coming? Would my sister roll her eyes? Would Beatrice tell me it was because I wasn’t thin enough and I should eat more like a Frenchwoman? Would my mother say she’d always assumed we’d get a divorce?