“To love someone who doesn’t love you back the same way.”
Val sighed, and her sigh was so deep that it seemed to contain decades of a life inside of it. “There are lots of different kinds of love, Eliza. You must know that by now.”
43
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Rob
Zoe was just back from science camp—she’d been dropped off by Hannah Coogan’s mother—and was lying on her bed with her eyes closed.
“Zoe?” said Rob, and waited until she opened her eyes and regarded him. “Zoe, I need to see your phone.”
“Why?”
Rob had fallen back on the oldest parenting line in the book, the one he’d sworn, when five-pound Zoe first entered the world, and later, for a terrifying two days, when she had a breathing tube taped inside her nostrils, he would never use: “Because I said so.”
The family rule was that all electronics were ultimately in control of the adults. Zoe handed over her phone, and he said, “Thank you,” in a manner that was very courtly, almost bowing, and left the room. Rob stood in the hallway and stared at the phone until he realized he didn’t know any of Zoe’s passwords. So he slunk back and held it back out to her and said, “Will you please pull up your Instagram account.”
She did as she was told and handed the phone back. Zoe had two hundred and ninety-one followers on Instagram. Zoe didn’t post that often, and when she did she posted carefully curated shots: a close-up of a hydrangea, a sunset, a photo of her and Sofia Palmer with their arms around each other, dressed up and filtered into perfection. A gorgeous shot of A Family Affair taken from the launch. One of the lobster boats from her trip to Little Harbor. Wow, thought Rob, Zoe might actually have some talent here. Each shot had about ninety likes and several encouraging comments. There was nothing untoward in any of it.
Rob took a deep breath and said, “Okay, so what was Deirdre talking about?”
“Deirdre?”
“I saw her at the club. Something about a secret account? With secret photos?”
Zoe smiled, and she looked younger. “Oh. That’s not my Instagram account. That’s my Finsta account.”
“That’s it,” Rob said. “That’s what she said.”
“It’s not secret, exactly.”
“So what is it?”
“It’s fake.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Finsta. Fake Insta: Finsta.”
Rob felt an unnamed pressure behind his forehead. He said, “Can you please explain this to me in a language that I understand?” (He hadn’t expected to start saying things like that at age forty. How depressing.) “Fake Instagram. Finsta.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s see it. Show me.” He handed the phone back to her and she tapped and swiped at the screen and handed it back to him.
“Here she is,” she said. She looked a little bit embarrassed. “Finsta Zoe.”
Rob scrolled through. Finsta Zoe was totally different from Instagram Zoe. Finsta Zoe posted several times a day and had only twenty-two followers.
Finsta Zoe was carefree and silly. Finsta Zoe took photos of her grilled cheese sandwich, a hot chocolate mug loaded with whipped cream, a friend’s border collie wrestling with a tennis ball. Finsta Zoe didn’t use filters; Finsta Zoe posted selfies. Rob looked more carefully at the selfies. They were all appropriate, more goofy than anything. He stopped on one photo and turned the phone to face Zoe. “You look scared in this picture. You look scared and sort of sweet.”
She shrugged and ducked her head. “So.”
“I don’t mean that in a bad way. You look like you looked when you were six. You also look like yourself.”
“Well, duh. That’s the point of a Finsta.”
“May I sit down?” He nodded at Zoe’s bed.
“Sure.”
He sat and took another deep breath and handed the phone back to Zoe. “Let me just go through this one more time, to make sure I have it straight. Your real account is the fake you, and your fake account is the real you?”
“Sort of. Yeah. That’s how it is.”
“I think I get it.” It was weird, but he got it. “Does everyone have one of these? All of your friends?”
“Yeah.”
“Do grown-ups have these accounts?”
Zoe chortled pleasantly. “No. Of course not.”
Rob rubbed at his temples. “I really need your mother to come home,” he whispered.
“I do too,” said Zoe. “I do too.”
“Zoe?”
“Yes?”
“It’s okay to cry, you know.” Her eyes darted up to meet his. “About Grandpa being sick. It’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to cry.”
She put the phone down and cracked the knuckles of each hand. Rob tried not to wince. He had trouble with the sound of cracking knuckles. She said, “Hashtag, I know.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “Of course I know.” She blinked at him, but her eyes were clear and dry. “I just don’t want to.”
“Okay, then,” he said.
“Okay.”
The conversation could have ended there, but Rob wasn’t ready to leave the room yet. It felt precious and fleeting, this time with his oldest daughter, just the two of them, alone. His eyes scanned Zoe’s room and fell on a metallic envelope on her nightstand. He pointed at it and said, “What’s that?”
“Oh. Blood-testing kit. For science camp.” She brightened. “Want me to test you? I have one that’s not used yet. I tested Evie.”
“You tested Evie?”
“Yeah, she’s O negative. I’m B negative. I tested Mom in Little Harbor too. She’s also B negative. So you’d have to be…” She picked up her phone and tapped on it a little bit and then said, “You could be A or B or O. You have a lot of options.”
“Wow,” said Rob. He was impressed. “How’d you know that?”
She shrugged again. “It’s just formulas. If your mom is one type and your dad is one type there’s only certain types you can be. That’s just how it works. Go wash your hands, and dry them with a clean towel, and then come back.”
Rob repaired to the girls’ bathroom, then returned to Zoe’s bedroom. He wasn’t about to mess with Zoe’s instructions: he followed them to the letter, even taking a clean towel from the linen closet to be sure.
“Now rub your hands together. Make sure they’re warm.”
Rob rubbed his hands together and made sure they were warm. Zoe said, “Hang on,” and whipped her hair back into a ponytail. She looked like a miniature doctor. She opened the metallic envelope and set a card with four labeled circles on her nightstand. “This is an EldonCard,” she said. She held up a small green cylinder. “This is a lancet,” she said. “It’s just going to be a little prick.”
Zoe pressed the lancet into his middle finger and pulled it away, then squeezed his finger until a large drop of blood appeared. Rob looked away.
“You did this to Evie?”
“She didn’t mind. It was in the name of science.” Zoe glanced at him. Her lips were set in a thin straight line and her expression said, I’m all business. She said, “You okay?”
“Fine,” said Rob. “Just don’t love blood, that’s all.”
“Yours, or anyone’s?”