On the line for father, it said: unknown.
Dabney had decided to confess on Agnes’s sixteenth birthday because of the birth certificate. Agnes needed a copy to apply to a summer study program abroad, and whereas Dabney had been able to handle the birth certificate up until that point-for school registration, Little League, etc.-now it was impossible to keep it out of Agnes’s hands. Agnes could have taken five dollars to the registrar at any moment and gotten a copy herself.
The screaming. You lied to me. You lied about my very being. How can I trust anything you say ever again? How do I know you’re even my mother? I wish you weren’t. I wish you weren’t my mother.
Dabney was prepared for all this. Dr. Donegal had told her to expect it. Of course, it was one thing to know it was coming and another to actually experience it. Dabney was glad she had chosen to break the news while she was still in the driver’s seat of the Mustang. Agnes might have floored it-straight over the sand and into the ocean.
I wish you weren’t my mother.
Other girls Agnes’s age threw out lines like that all the time, Dabney knew, but Agnes never had. Dabney wouldn’t lie: it hurt, and it hurt worse because Agnes had every right to be angry. Dabney had withheld pertinent information, perhaps the most pertinent. Dabney had lied to her about her very being. Dabney had misjudged the timing. She had wholeheartedly disagreed with Box about telling Agnes at ten. What ten-year-old was mature enough to understand paternity? Agnes had only just learned what sex was. And at thirteen, Agnes had been going through puberty-she got her period, she started shaving her legs, her face broke out-no, Dabney wasn’t going to add to her worries by telling her about Clen.
At sixteen, Agnes was mature, responsible, intelligent, and calm. Dabney had thought she would take the news in stride. It explained why there were no pictures of Box with Agnes as a baby, and why they shared no physical characteristics.
But Agnes was hysterical. She was beyond angry, beyond upset. Dabney had driven from the Surfside Beach parking lot to their house on Charter Street while Agnes wailed. The windows of the Mustang were rolled up, but Dabney was still convinced that everyone on the island could hear.
When they reached the house, Agnes called Box in Cambridge. Dabney had thought that Agnes would be equally upset at Box for keeping the secret-but no. Agnes merely wanted Box’s confirmation that what Dabney had said was true (as if Dabney would lie about something like that?), and finding it so, she cried and cried, allowing Box, and only Box, to console her.
To Agnes, Dabney was the liar, the slut, the enemy. Agnes didn’t speak to Dabney for three weeks, and even after that, things were strained.
A mother first, a mother forever. Dabney had lived by these words, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t made mistakes. She had made a mistake in not telling Agnes sooner. I’m sorry, darling!
Box wasn’t happy with Dabney, either. She had suffered through a great big dose of I told you so.
Dabney wondered if she should have waited until Agnes was eighteen, or twenty-one. Maybe her mistake wasn’t in waiting too long but in not waiting long enough. Maybe she should have waited until Agnes had enough experience to realize that life was a complicated mess and you could count on being hurt the worst by the person you loved the most.
However, in the weeks following the revelation, she noticed that Agnes expressed curiosity about Clendenin Hughes. Dabney’s yearbooks ended up on the floor of Agnes’s bedroom. Agnes googled Clen on the family computer; she brought up a list of his articles and may even have read a few. And then Dabney found a letter addressed to Clen, care of the New York Times. It was lying on top of Agnes’s math textbook, in plain sight, as if Agnes had wanted Dabney to see it. More likely, it had been left there as a form of torture.
Dabney had wanted few things in life as much as she had wanted to read that letter.
Then, as it always did, summer arrived and Agnes attended her program in France, and she came home weeks later with a penchant for silk scarves at the neck, and for calling Dabney “Maman,” and a ferocious new love of macarons. She brought Dabney the foolproof baguette recipe, and mother and daughter baked bread together and ate it with sweet butter and sea salt-and once, magically, the addition of an ounce of dark chocolate-and everything pretty much went back to normal. Dabney was Mom, Box was Dad, and Clen’s name wasn’t mentioned again. Life went on.
But Dabney wasn’t naive. She knew she had done some real damage and inflicted some real hurt, just as her own mother had when she disappeared for good, leaving Dabney in the care of May, the Irish chambermaid. Dabney feared that perhaps her mothering was flawed and doomed because she had received such poor mothering herself.
But no-no excuses. Dabney had never felt sorry for herself; she was her own person. She had made a decision, right or wrong. We all make choices.
But to tell Agnes that Dabney was now in love with Clendenin Hughes, her biological father, and having an affair with him?
We all make choices?
No.
Dabney woke up in the morning unable to get out of bed. She couldn’t describe it. There was pain…everywhere.
Agnes said, “Do you want me to call Dr. Field?”
“No,” Dabney said. It was not stress, or guilt. She was lovesick. “Just call Nina, please, and draw the shades.” The sun was giving Dabney a headache; she wanted the bedroom dark. It was such a sin, Dabney wanted to cry, but there was no option. Her body felt invaded by pain, colonized by pain.
Agnes brought a glass of ice water and two pieces of buttered toast. The toast would never be eaten.
“I called Nina and told her you were sick,” Agnes said. “Can I bring you anything else?”
“Just please don’t tell Daddy,” Dabney said. “I don’t want him to worry.”
The following day, Dabney woke up feeling fine. A little flannel-mouthed, maybe, but otherwise fine. So maybe not lovesick, maybe a twenty-four-hour bug.
“We’re going to dinner tonight at the Boarding House,” Dabney said. “Put on something pretty.”
Agnes said, “You just feel sorry for me because CJ canceled. I’m going to stay home and mope. Eat Oreos from the bag, watch bad TV.”
“Reservation at seven o’clock,” Dabney said. “I’ll meet you at the restaurant, though, because I have to run some errands.”
“What errands?” Agnes said.
“Wear something pretty!” Dabney said.
Agnes
When she got to dinner at the Boarding House, Dabney was already waiting at the usual table on the patio, but there was a third chair added, and Riley Alsopp was sitting in it.
Dabney beamed as Agnes approached. “There she is!” she said.
Riley Alsopp stood up. He was wearing a shirt and tie, khaki pants, and flip-flops. He grinned when he saw her. “Hey, Agnes!”
Agnes thought, My mother is so obvious.
Dabney excused herself before dessert. “You two stay and enjoy,” she said. “I’m going back to the house. I’m still not feeling a hundred percent.” She dropped her napkin onto her empty plate. She had devoured her dinner. “The bill is all paid, Riley. My husband insists on a house account. He would eat here breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week if he could. Anyway, stay and have an after-dinner drink, please, or another beer, whatever you want.” Dabney was busy gathering up her Bermuda bag and her cardigan, trying to beat a quick yet organic-seeming retreat so that Agnes and Riley could be alone. Agnes had seen her mother do it again and again and again.