“Because I remember,” Marlow said.
“Remember?” I turned to her, and it was then I saw the cloudiness of a forgotten past churning in her eyes.
“I’ve known for some time now. But I never told you. I never told anyone. But I remember exactly what happened the day you found me. My life before this family.”
“Enough, Marlow,” Dad said, still breathing heavily as he stood up. “You’re making up lies. You’re using again. Everyone knows it.”
His expression went flat, dejected at how weak his own words had become.
She glared at him with piercing venom. “Me? The liar?” She looked back at me slowly and my heart stopped.
I wasn’t ready. Whatever she had to say next . . . I would never be ready.
“My mother came up here . . . our mother.”
Her words scorched my ears and tingled up the back of my neck.
Our mother.
My hands pressed down on the dock, pushing me away from her as though I could escape it all. “What do you mean?”
“I remember exactly what she looked like,” she said, leaning closer to sit next to me.
My whole body trembled. From the cold or the shock, it didn’t matter.
“Looked like?” I whispered.
“You look just like her . . . our mother.”
There it was again. Our mother.
“Stop it, Marlow! I’m warning you . . . stop with your stories,” snapped Dad, his hands clenching into fists, flashing anger reemerging. “Do you think she’s really going to believe you, of all people? Does anyone?”
She remained steady, unflinching, and put her hand on my shoulder, claiming me—all the while staring at him.
“Or what? You’ll try to drown me?” She half grinned.
I thought for one second he was going to push her. But his hands opened, releasing the last of whatever energy that remained. He sat down in a heap, overcome by it all.
Exhausted.
She slid her hand down my arm gently, her eyes glowing. “It took me a while to figure it out. But you could have been her twin. My memories of her face—sometimes I thought it was you I was remembering.”
A face . . . my face that made her remember.
Dad clutched his head as if in pain. “Please don’t do this. Not now.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?” she shot at him.
“Right?” He flung his hands down. “What’s there to be right about?”
“And you think what you and Stella did was right?” She spoke with such force, her lips moved harshly.
He bowed his head, placing it down between his knees. “All we ever wanted was a family,” he barely uttered.
“Dad?”
I said his name like it was a question. Full of all the disappointments and horror he would never be able to answer. His paternal status had been altered, his title forever stripped away with one word.
“Tell us. Tell us how,” Marlow demanded.
How . . . how we became a family. How we had turned into this.
His wrists crossed over his lap, as if they were chained together.
“We couldn’t have children,” he said, staring out into the lake. “We tried and it never happened. That was difficult enough. But Stella? She took it further. She became obsessed with it—it consumed our lives.”
He snapped back to us, making sure he had our attention.
“I wanted to do anything to make her happy again—anything. And then one day she came to me with this insane request. As if all our problems had been solved because she had figured it out once and for all. I wonder now if she knew what was real then, if—you see, nothing else mattered to her. Nothing.”
We watched him go silent. As though it was impossible to go on. As though he couldn’t say it.
Her request.
He looked away from us both.
“She said if our child couldn’t come from her, at least part of it could come from me. That we could do it on our own . . . it was all in our hands, she kept telling me . . .”
