Augusta doled out the news. She hadn’t planned to and she wasn’t ready, but she never really would be.

“The box of letters from your father to Herc Huckley over the course of many decades shows that he was actually present for many events in your lives—a combination of graduations, plays, choral concerts, athletic events, even a wedding or two.” She glanced at Esme and Liv.

“Which weddings?” Liv asked.

“Esme’s first and your second, at least.”

“Holy crap!” Atty said. “What about me?”

Augusta nodded. “He was at that multicultural pageant where you danced like a Japanese person with an umbrella.”

“I was a wisteria maiden,” Atty said.

“He was there?” Esme’s eyes teared up.

“I don’t know why he chose to come to that event in particular,” Augusta said, obviously disappointed.

“That one girl, Sadie Worthaus, was always spinning her umbrella the wrong way,” Atty said. “I was actually pretty good.”

Ingmar was still roaming anxiously. “Sit!” Esme shouted at the dog. “Sit!”

For a moment Ru thought her sister was yelling at her and she almost shouted back, I am sitting! but then stopped herself, realizing her sister was ordering around her dog.

“There’s a larger point here,” Liv said flatly to Atty. “I want to know what my mother means by the phrase our lives aren’t our own.”

“And the words very involved in our lives,” Esme said.

They all looked at Augusta, even Ru, whose reconnaissance didn’t reach this far. “It seems he respected your request,” Augusta said to Ru.

“It wasn’t a request as much as it was an ultimatum,” Ru said. “All-in, full transparency. Or out. For good.”

Augusta was stunned by this confession. Her daughter had put this to Nick at age sixteen? It had taken Augusta nearly two decades to get there.

“What about me?” Esme said. “And Liv?”

Augusta turned to Liv. Hers was easier news to deliver. “He gave you gifts,” she said.

“Gifts?”

“Well, scholarships and contest winnings and that little windfall from the woman in your building who died and you didn’t even remember her.”

“Like in the game of Life, bank error in your favor,” Atty said. She wanted to tweet this very badly—and a bunch of other one-liners—but she was too afraid she’d miss something genius in the process.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Liv said. “Do you mean to say that I’m not lucky? I’ve been just…coddled?”

“You’re lucky to have been coddled,” Atty said. “That’s true of white privilege everywhere.”

“Don’t give me your boarding school regurgitation right now, Atty, okay?” Liv said. “I’m the only one here who’s also been educated in one of those elitist prisons, and I know what’s what.”

“God. Fine!” Atty said. “I was just trying to help.”

Liv stood up. “I’m going to go smoke three cigarettes,” she said, and she walked toward the back door that led to the small stone patio. Ingmar got up and followed her as if he wanted to smoke too.

“Don’t you want to know what he did to me?” Esme asked her sister.

“Not really,” Liv said.

“Liv,” Ru said. “Just stay.”

Liv stopped by the back door and fumbled through her pocketbook for her pack of cigarettes and lighter. “Okay. Go ahead.”

Augusta put her elbows on the kitchen table and then let her fists drop, not with anger, only a kind of exhaustion. “Well, it turns out you might have gotten into some Ivies,” she said to Esme, “if not for your father’s interference.”

“What?” Esme said.

“Your father doesn’t like Ivy League educations. He thinks they breed overbreeding and an overly inflated sense of self.”

“I knew it!” Esme said. “I knew I was good enough for those schools!” She felt vindicated, almost gleeful. “See, Atty! I always told you that it didn’t make sense!” She wanted to call Doug and Big-Head Todd and a number of teachers at the boarding school, including Little-Head Todd, who’d gone to Princeton and wore its gear relentlessly. It took a few seconds for her to realize that she’d missed the Ivy League education itself. That it was gone, forever. Her face went a little slack as the realization washed over her.

“And he might not have liked all of your choices in boyfriends,” Augusta said.

“Excuse me?” Esme said.

“He liked Doug,” Augusta said. “He ran checks on him and his family. And he approved. Wholeheartedly, it seems. But…”

“Who didn’t he like?” Esme asked, but she knew.

Darwin Webber.

The way he’d disappeared not only from Esme’s life but also his own. Just, one day, gone. Esme had been wrecked by the news. She’d come home and missed classes for two weeks. Her mother told the school that Esme had a form of mono.

Liv looked at Ru and shook her head, trying to telegraph to Ru to stop Augusta. Ru was closer. She could reach out and cover their mother’s mouth.

But Ru was stricken too. She muttered, “No. Don’t.”

It was too late. Esme stood up so fast that the kitchen chair kicked out behind her and fell backward, slapping the floor.

“Who was it?” Atty asked.

Esme’s sisters were eyeing her with such pity and fear that they confirmed it. “Was it because he was black?”

“Was he black?” Augusta said. “I thought he was German.”

“He was of African descent, somewhere in the mix, I think,” Ru said. “But also German.”

“He wore really brightly colored polo shirts,” Liv said, apropos of nothing.

“What boyfriend? Who are we talking about?” Atty said.

“No one you know,” Esme said and walked to the doorjamb leading to the dining room. She steadied herself and then pushed off, away from them, reeling.