“Oh! I didn’t know you were having company…”
Marin didn’t say a word to her, instead telling the new arrival that she could just drop her bag in the living room.
The woman smiled—apologetically?—at Blythe and gave her a small wave. Marin, uncharacteristically rude, made no move to introduce them. Blythe scurried out from behind the kitchen counter. What was going on?
“I’m Blythe Bishop, Marin’s mother,” she said, holding out her hand. The girl smiled brightly, seeming genuinely happy to meet her.
“Rachel Moscowitz,” she said.
“You two know each other from…”
“Mother, can I speak to you a minute? In my room,” Marin said.
“So you’re sure I should cancel the rental car?” Rachel said.
“Yes. We’ll take mine.”
Blythe refrained from asking the obvious: Where were they going?
Marin led her mother into her bedroom, closed the door, and scoured the room with her eyes as if she were mentally packing.
“Where are you going?” Blythe asked, because how could she not?
“Cape Cod. Provincetown.”
Blythe swayed on her feet, a deep, primal alarm sweeping through her.
“Oh?” she managed.
“Yes. Rachel is going there to meet her father’s family, and I’m going with her.”
“Going with her? Why?”
“Well, Mother, because my life is falling apart and I need to get away and this opportunity to do so just fell in my lap and I’m taking it.”
“Marin, you’re upset—with good reason. But this isn’t the time to run away from things. You should be with family.”
“Funny you should say that. Rachel is under the impression that we are family—close family. Half sisters, in fact.”
Blythe’s heart began to pound. Had she really thought Marin’s question from last week would go away? That she could give Marin a cursory denial and no one would ever speak of it again?
“Is there anything you want to tell me, Mother?”
She hated the way she was calling her Mother, as if it were a title like colonel or president. Not a term of endearment, not what you called the closest person in the world to you.
She swallowed hard. “Where is all of this coming from?”
“I tried talking to you about this at the house. The DNA-testing company. Rachel found me through them. We were matched up by the closeness of our genes.”
“And she…never knew her father?”
“Her father was a sperm donor.”
“A sperm donor?” Blythe said, confused.
“Yes. Mom, just tell me the truth—did you have a difficult time getting pregnant? Did you have to use a sperm donor?”
Blythe didn’t know what to say.
“Mom, you might as well tell me. I’m going to find out. Is Dad my biological father?”
There were no words, and so Blythe said nothing. Seconds ticked by. She watched Marin’s face flood with color.
“Answer me. You owe me the truth. Is he my father?”
Blythe pressed her hand to her chest as if forcing out the word. “No.”
Marin sank to the floor and sat at Blythe’s feet like she was a toddler again.
“But does that matter? Marin, this is all a technicality. You’re more like your father than like me!”
Marin put her head in her hands. “Does Dad know?”
“No.”
“What?” Marin looked up at her. “How could you lie about something like this? What were you thinking?”
“Please, please just let this go. I don’t want this to disrupt your life.”
“My life? Or your life?”
Blythe couldn’t bear the way Marin was looking at her, like she was the enemy.
“Either of our lives. Or your father’s.”
Marin nodded slowly, wiping away tears and reaching for her bed to pull herself up again. “Well, maybe you should have thought about that when you went behind his back thirty years ago.”
With a sob, Marin stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Blythe stood unmoving except for the tremble in her legs. As much as she wanted to hide in there forever, she knew she couldn’t—the sooner she went into the living room to salvage the situation, the better.
She found Marin and Rachel in the kitchen with shot glasses and a bottle of Tito’s vodka. They turned to look at her with identical brown eyes. How had she not noticed before?
“Marin, please don’t drink. Let’s finish talking.”
“Just go, Mother. I’m leaving first thing in the morning.”
“Don’t run away. I’m sorry—I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. But don’t punish me. Don’t shut me out and deal with this by turning to people you barely know.” She glanced at Rachel, who bit her lower lip in a way that mirrored Marin’s habitual nervous gesture. “Rachel, maybe you can go without Marin? Give us some time to—”
“No!” Marin said angrily. “Rachel is my…sister. And the woman in Provincetown might be a stranger, but she’s also my grandmother. And she wants to meet us.”
Blythe felt herself start to sway. “What woman?”
“I found my father’s mother,” Rachel said. “She runs a bed-and-breakfast. She invited me to stay for the week and I told her I was trying to convince Marin and she said the more the merrier. She sounds very cool. So nice.”
“So you’re not trying to find your…father?”
“I tried,” Rachel said. “But he’s dead.”
Blythe reached for the wall, pressed her palm against it. Breathe, she told herself. How could he be dead? How could she not know? But then, how would she?
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she managed. “Do you know what happened to him?”
Rachel shook her head. “I’m hoping my grandmother can tell me more. Tell me a lot of things.”
Blythe felt a terror like she’d never known. She would lose Marin over this—she knew it. She couldn’t let it happen. The past had caught up with her, and she couldn’t hide anymore. And she certainly couldn’t leave her daughter to meet it alone.
“I want to go with you,” Blythe said.
Marin angrily slammed down her shot glass. “Absolutely not.”
At the same time, Rachel smiled and said, “Awesome.”
Chapter Ten
Provincetown
Amelia watched Kelly fix the final piece of sea glass along the outermost edge of the heavy panel. It was a large piece, commissioned by a client who wanted something “authentic” and “beachy” to display as a centerpiece of her newly acquired, multimillion-dollar home on the East End.