I shake my head no.

“Where does it hurt?”

I point to my throat and my chest.

“Are you having a panic attack?”

I shrug.

Adam appears, slipping his arms around Aimee like he can’t stand to be away from her for a minute.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“Adam, go inside and get her a paper bag to breathe into,” Farah says.

“Paper, in this weather? Not plastic?”

“If you want to suffocate her, sure.”

“Shouldn’t we just get her inside?” Aimee asks.

I shake my head violently. I already feel like the whole world is closing in on me. I couldn’t possibly go inside four walls again.

“Adam, get a whole bunch of paper bags and bring them to her. One will have to hold up,” Farah says.

Farah kneels down next to me. She pulls my knees up to ninety degrees and pushes my head between them. “If it feels okay, close your eyes,” she says.

As soon as my neck releases and I tune out the world around me, I feel better.

“Aimee,” I say, the word coming out as a whisper.

“Aimee, Margot is calling you,” Farah says.

Aimee sits down cross-legged next to me and leans her face close.

“Are you sure you want this?” I ask.

“This?” she repeats.

I nod toward the house, the ridiculous scene that unfolded before us.

“Your brother? Of course. Why wouldn’t I?” she asks.

“What if he’s a cheater?”

“I forgave him for what he did ten years ago.”

“But what if it’s not about what he did ten years ago? What if that’s who he is? Someone who needs a woman. Our mother is his God-shaped hole. I’ve tried to fill it, but my unconditional love is not enough. Just like my father is mine. It’s why I chose Ted, who would literally do anything to protect me.”

“We all have our shadow sides,” Aimee says.

“But, Aimee, what if Adam is a man who wilts if for a split second he doesn’t feel adored? And when he doesn’t feel adored, he doesn’t sit down and say, ‘Can we make a plan to connect?’ He instead acts out like a child having a tantrum to get the attention he wants.”

“Oh, I’m very good at ignoring tantrums,” Aimee responds.

We’re talking past each other.

“I know, I’ve seen it with the girls. But that might be why he will always fall into the arms of someone else.”

“Always? Are you saying this has happened before?”

I am already betraying my brother more than I can stomach. I cannot answer her question.

“It’s happening now,” Rini says. I didn’t hear her arrive, but I should have known she wasn’t going to give up on whatever she had to say. “I saw him and Eden having sex on this very lawn after the first night.”

Aimee cannot process any more conflicting information. It’s too much to handle, and her protective rage takes over. She shields her eyes from the rain and looks up at Rini.

“Who invited you out here? You’re a liar and a manipulator,” Aimee says. Her timid voice stands in opposition to her harsh words.

“A first-class fake,” Adam adds, his fist full of brown paper bags. They turned to black mush between the house and the dock.

“Get away from us,” he says, throwing the paper slop at Rini. The bags hit Rini and cling to her chest in wet clumps.

Rini wipes away the mess while she runs back to the house. I can hear her muttering under her breath, crying or cursing him.

“Farah, can you see if Ted has passed out again? I need him,” I say.

When it’s only the three of us left on the back lawn, Aimee and I stand.

“Adam,” I beseech. He stays silent, refusing to accept he’s been caught. I can understand trying to avoid it, but the moment to come clean is here. Instead, he’s leaning in the other direction. How can he be so cruel to Rini? And why won’t he admit what he’s done to Aimee? I briefly wonder. But I already know the answers: because he can and because he doesn’t have to. He does what he wants and never has to take responsibility. It’s always been that way.

I remember watching the very first episode of Friends, “The One Where It All Began.”

Monica gets raked over the coals by her parents, about her middling job, her lack of a husband, her general failure to live up to their standards. Monica, in turn, encourages her older brother, Ross, to share his news, knowing it will take some of their parents’ judgmental heat off her.

Finally Ross spills his guts. He is getting divorced. His wife left him for a woman, but she’s also pregnant with his child, whom he wants to raise with the new lesbian couple. And what happens? Their parents look at Monica with disappointment and say, “And you knew about this?”

My mother had warned me, If you clean up their messes, they start to think you’re the one who made them.

She said it when I was five years old and putting away the crayons Adam had left out. She said it when I was eight years old and picking up the Cheerios dust that Adam and I had stomped into the floor tiles. It wasn’t just that I’d help, but that I let him pretend he needed my help, encouraged his helplessness. I did it because it made me feel powerful.

If you clean up their messes, they start to think you’re the one who made them.

Like when Adam told me Eden was on this trip because of me.

Technically you brought her. She’s your husband’s best friend’s wife.

Or when he shattered my memory of Dad.