Abby felt her eyes get wide. “Wait, what?”
“They swap,” Eileen said, with a smug-looking smile. “On the bike trips. They told us all at brunch, before we went back. They say it keeps things fresh and exciting.”
“Oh my God,” said Abby. “So they’re swingers? A foursome?”
“A polycule,” said Eileen, pronouncing a word she most likely hadn’t known before the trip. “They have an arrangement. They’re all friends, and they’ve been doing…” She waved her free hand. “… that… for thirty years. They say nobody gets jealous, and that nobody gets hurt. And, as far as I can tell, they seem happy.”
“Happy,” Abby said, her voice muted. “That’s good.”
“Andy told me all about it,” Eileen was saying. “Evidently, the lifestyle is very big on TikTok. That’s what they call it, you know. The lifestyle.”
“You don’t say.” Abby tried to sound cheerful. “Lily wrote to me. It sounds like she and Morgan are fine.”
“I’m glad to hear it. That’s what all mothers want, you know.” Eileen’s voice had a touch of asperity, but she sounded a little mournful. “They want to be included. They want their daughters to let them in.”
Not going near that one, Abby decided. She set her hands on the white marble countertop, which matched the white tiled backsplash and the white painted cabinets. “Mom, I want to apologize. I shouldn’t have snapped at you the way I did the last day of the trip.” Abby clenched her abdominal muscles and curled her toes against the soles of her shoes. “I also want to tell you that Mark and I broke up.” Which wasn’t completely honest—completely honest would have been I broke up with Mark—but it was the best she could do. She suspected that Eileen might have figured it out already. Still, she braced herself, in case Eileen decided to hurl the onion at her. Or the knife. She got ready for shrieking, for weeping, for the rending of garments and the pulling of hair. Maybe Eileen would disown her. I have no daughter, her mother would wail. She imagined her mother sitting shiva. Eileen would probably welcome the excuse to buy a few new little black dresses.
But, instead of screaming or crying or asking Abby what she’d been thinking, or declaring that Abby was dead to her, instead of any of that, Eileen simply nodded. She went to the sink, washed off her knife, and calmly began rinsing a colander full of heirloom tomatoes. “Are you okay?”
Abby stared at her mother, momentarily speechless. “Yes. I mean, I’m sad. I hate that I hurt him. And I’m a little lonely these days.” As much as she knew that she and Mark were not right for each other, it had still been a comfort to have someone in her life, in her bed; someone who knew her. Someone who was familiar with her history and would listen to her stories.
Eileen sniffed, before picking up a tomato and slicing it in half. She stared down at the cutting board, then looked up.
“I owe you an apology, too.”
“For what?”
“I need to show you something.” When her mother reached for her phone, Abby wondered if it was going to be something about Sebastian—something new, something even worse than everything she’d already seen. A way to warn Abby off; a way to make her feel more terrible about breaking up with Mark.
Eileen scrolled for a moment, then passed her phone across the counter. Abby looked at the screen. It was a photograph. Abby thought, at first, that she was looking at a picture of herself: a little girl with curly hair standing in front of a swimming pool, squinting in the glaring light of a summer afternoon. The girl wore a sleeveless sundress, and Abby could see familiar contours: solid arms and thighs, a softly rounded belly. Thick wrists and ankles, big hands and chubby fingers, the proportions that had so dismayed her mother for as long as Abby could remember. The expression, too, was familiar. The little girl was smiling, but her expression was tense and guarded, and her shoulders were hunched. Abby recognized the body, and the expression… but Abby didn’t recognize the sundress or the setting, and the girl’s hair was a few shades darker than she remembered hers being at that age.
“Where is this?” Abby asked. “When was it taken?”
“Wrong questions,” said Eileen. “Look again.”
Abby looked again. And, when she did, she could also see subtle differences in the shape of the girl’s face and features. The lips were a little too thin, the brows a little too dark. The question, she realized, wasn’t when, but who.