Clouds moved in that afternoon, bringing an air so thick that their clothes felt wet as they hung on their bodies.
Mary-Beth made a spinach lasagna that would sit on the counter uneaten. JJ carried the canoes, kayaks and paddleboards that had been strewn across their beach into the garage, one by one. Ian and Spencer walked along the lake until the sun was almost down. After that, they drank cold beers on the deck together. Charlie and Chelsea returned from their long drive and then disappeared to their room with takeout. The teenage boys took a break from their phones. Lucas actually sat in a beach chair and read one of the books he’d been assigned for the upcoming school year. Cameron did solo soccer drills in the grass while the puppy tried to bite his heels. Everyone seemed aware of the ripples their bodies made in the world.
And Farah was working to achieve total invisibility, as the cameras rolled.
Patty and John Bright skulked around the lake house, staying out of the way of the others and saying very little. They unplugged all the phones and double-checked that the gate was locked. The couple didn’t appear angry with each other. Rather, they seemed closer somehow, bonded together in their avoidance of their children.
On two occasions, Patty walked out to the oak tree and tried to speak with Philip. She looked like she was pleading the first time, down on her knees, begging for her son’s forgiveness. The second time, she kept her arms folded at her chest as Farah watched from afar. Patty didn’t go back out there again.
All the while, Philip stayed alone under his tree. He drank from a water bottle that Mary-Beth refilled for him throughout the day. He shifted his position every now and then and wiped sweat from his brow before it fell in heavy drops to the dirt. The sun set around him and the mosquitos multiplied in the soupy darkness.
The previous days had been flying by at record speed. But now it seemed that time was barely moving.
That night, Farah watched Philip from her bedroom above the garage. The glow of a porch light illuminated his form in the cloudy black. He looked so vulnerable out there, his hand flicking at a mosquito, his legs folding and unfolding in a restless fever. Farah had the terrible feeling that Philip was offering himself up as a sacrifice under that tree. It was the hopeless, wilted form of his gangly body that made her fret. He was an overgrown weed returning to the earth, losing its will to fight.
But Philip did live through the morning. At the first crack of dawn, Farah went to the window to find him sitting cross-legged, looking out at the lake.
She couldn’t wait any longer to see him, so she slipped her bare feet into sneakers and walked quietly down the steps of the garage and around the house to his tree. She ran her hands through her hair along the way, wishing she’d taken a moment to pull herself together. She left her cameras behind.
He looked up as she approached and smiled sadly. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” A streak of dewy dirt went across his cheek. “Did you sleep?”
“Not much. A little, I guess.”
Thirty feet away, water lapped at the shoreline.
“Philip... Are you okay?”
He looked toward the water. “I don’t know. I came out here to clear my mind, but it doesn’t feel any clearer. I feel angry. I really don’t like feeling angry. I just thought that maybe if I stayed out here long enough, God would reveal himself to me and I’d understand something about all this.”
“Did he?”
Philip shook his head. “No.”
Farah sat down beside him and rested her back against the trunk of the tree. It seemed a terribly uncomfortable place to spend any amount of time.
Philip scratched a bug bite on his thigh, and she could feel his upper arm moving against her own.
“What’s going on with everyone else?” he asked. “Is the campaign over?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard anyone mention it. Seems like it must be, but I don’t know for sure.”
“This must blow things up for my father.”
“I would think so.”
To describe the campaign as blown-up would be an understatement. Farah had watched TV and read online news for hours after the rest of the family had gone to sleep the night before. News of their drama was everywhere. Patty’s statement confirming the affair, and the identity of Philip’s biological father, had inspired a new round of public moralizing. People who’d never met the family were on cable shows talking about them; late-night comedians had a new batch of jokes; and other candidates were already weaponizing the news for their purposes. John Bright’s political friends and former supporters were calling for him to drop out, while a small group of loyalists maintained that this storm could be weathered. If he wasn’t political toast, he seemed to be cultural toast.
But Philip didn’t know any of this—or any of the other things that had occurred on planet Earth in the preceding twenty-four hours—because it was possible to shut everything else out at the Bright lake house, if that’s what you cared to do.
“Are you going to reach out to your father...this, other man?”
Philip looked at Farah. “I don’t know. Not yet. Probably eventually, but not now.”
She nodded.
Philip swallowed and kept his eyes fixed on Farah.
She felt all the muscles in her stomach clench into a fist and her breath stop.
“What do you think I should do?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know, Philip. I’m sorry.”
And then he leaned down toward her, so their foreheads were touching.
Her heart was racing as she held her body completely still. She could feel their humid skin sticking together. Philip blinked. His long lashes came up like curtains, green eyes still on her. He seemed as surprised as she was, to be so close and looking at her in such a way.
Then Philip tilted his head, and with utter astonishment, he kissed her.
Something surged from their hot mouths down into Farah’s stomach and through every extremity. She thought she might faint, but instead she reached out and held on to the hard flesh of his upper arm. He tasted sour and hungry to her. She wanted all of it.
It was not a long kiss, but neither was it short. Farah couldn’t perceive its length. There was nothing more to it—just a tender, long-enough kiss while they leaned against the trunk of the oak tree. Soft lips and hot breath. They felt alone with the lapping lake water, though anyone could have woken and seen them then.
When it was over, Philip pulled his head back and smiled at Farah. His expression was inscrutable. She looked away and let herself sit with the expansive joy of the moment. She wanted never to stop feeling that way.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said finally.
“I don’t know, either.”
They sat for another few minutes in silence as the sun rose and the lake house woke up. Through the windows, they could see lights come on and bodies move about. The faint breeze that had been pushing the water against the shoreline in predictable heaves ceased. The surface of the lake turned back to glass. That day would be as wet and heavy as the previous one, maybe more so.
Eventually, Farah stood up and brushed off her shorts. She looked down at Philip. Would he come in? Would they, and could they, kiss again? Philip smiled up at her, but he did not move. She understood his paralysis to be about more than simply her.
So Farah walked inside and went about the usual business of watching them all through her cameras. She did her very best to divorce her body from her thoughts, to ignore the churning of her insides and the sour taste still on her tongue.
She didn’t feel right watching them anymore, if she ever had. Now that it was real—with this vindication of her feelings for Philip—she couldn’t will herself to go on filming the Brights, exploiting this vulnerable moment. But she also couldn’t see a way out for herself. This assignment was her job, which was her paycheck, which was her survival, her career, her identity.
Farah kept working.