Since the green station wagon was hit by the heavy limb in the summer storm of 1985, the limb that Ru had tried to keep aloft with the sheer force of her will, Augusta had replaced it with a second and then a third green station wagon. The six of them—Nick and Augusta, their three daughters and granddaughter—were standing around it, all of them unsure how the seating should play out.

“It’s gotten weird with the green station wagons,” Liv whispered to her sisters.

“It’s like she can’t get rid of the past,” Esme whispered.

“I thought you’d have given up trying to psychoanalyze our mother,” Liv said. “What with the sex-with-strangers and intimacy-issues theories going so very wrong.”

“Who had sex with strangers?” Atty asked. They hadn’t known she’d really been listening, but she was kind of always listening.

“What are you all talking about?” Nick asked.

“The alternative theory of our mother’s life,” Ru said.

“And what was that?” Nick asked.

“Nothing,” Esme and Augusta said in unison.

“Maybe we should take a few cars,” Liv said.

“We’re a family,” Esme said, and Ru and Liv had to believe that she was working from some grand plan—a vision.

“I’m driving,” Augusta said, with preemptive defiance. “I’m the only one insured as a driver on the vehicle except for Jessamine.”

Jessamine was inside, reassembling the smoke detector; Liv had had an adverse reaction to the high-pitched bleating and instead of airing it with a tea towel, as Augusta had suggested, she beat it with a broom handle.

“But do you actually drive?” Ru asked.

“I have a license.”

“You know, it’s okay if someone else drives your car once in a while,” Nick said. “Insurance still kicks in.”

“Don’t explain the workings of the world to me,” Augusta said. Ru wasn’t sure if she preferred to be ignorant or she felt he was being condescending. Her parents together as a couple was foreign terrain.

“If the woman says she can drive, she can drive,” Liv said. “But I call front seat because the backseat makes me carsick.”

“Oh, this bullshit again,” Esme said. “She threw up one time. One time! And has gotten to ride in the front forever after.”

“She threw up on Santa, though,” Augusta said. “It was scarring.”

“For her or that poor fat Philly Santa?” Esme said.

“Both, probably,” Augusta said.

“I wasn’t sure I’d get presents,” Liv said. “I’m not like you two. I need presents.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Esme said to Ru. “Do you?”

“I associate the smell of barf and the holidays,” Ru said, quietly.

“Atty,” Esme said. “You get sick in the backseat. Don’t you?”

“Only if I read.”

“So don’t read.” Liv got in the front seat and slid to the middle.

Nick moved to sit next to her. “I have long legs,” he said.

“Not really,” Ru said.

“You’re actually pretty short. What are you, five foot eight?” Esme asked.

“I’m five foot ten,” Nick said.

“What? In lifts?” Liv said.

“Oh, just let him have the front seat,” Ru said.

—

Atty, holding on to a copy of Nancy Drew’s The Clue of the Broken Locket and wearing her fanny pack over one hip, sat in the middle of the backseat between Esme and Ru.

“I wish I’d lost ten pounds before seeing Darwin,” Esme said. “I bought a juicer but I don’t like juice, turns out.”

“Help Mom keep an eye on the road, okay?” Ru said to Liv.

“I’m fine,” Augusta said. She drove two-footed—one on the gas, one on the brake.

“Tell a badass spy story like Jason Bourne,” Atty said to her grandfather.

“Those movies are deeply flawed,” Nick said.

“Then tell a love story,” Liv said. “How did you two meet?”

Augusta shot Nick a look and then changed lanes. She was driving so slowly that traffic poured around them.

“We met on a bus in a snowstorm,” he said.

“And when did you fall in love?” Ru asked, thinking of Teddy and wondering if the way he made her feel could turn into something real.

“On that bus,” Augusta said.

“During the snowstorm,” Nick added.

“Right then? Immediately like that?” Ru said.

“Yes,” Nick said. “Right then. Immediately like that.”

“Huh,” Ru said.

“Why do you say that like you don’t believe us?” Augusta said.

“The generations following yours have been led to believe that falling in love is something that only happens in movies,” Atty said. “It’s like each generation is more super-jaded than the one before it.”

“You’re wise,” Liv said to Atty. “Very wise.”

“Thank you,” Atty said, and then feeling emboldened she asked her grandparents, “Why did you have kids?”

“We had kids for the same reason most people do. We fell in love,” Nick said.

“That’s naïve. I mean, I don’t think people have kids because they’re in love,” Liv said.

“Sometimes they just want kids and aren’t in love with anyone,” Ru said, thinking of the baby born in the longhouse. She’d been there for the birth—a wondrous slick head emerging then a tumble of body, her little face going taut with squalling.

“Are they the reason why you two couldn’t hack it?” Atty asked, swooping her finger at her mother and two aunts. Again, Esme wished her daughter would talk about the pending divorce. Did she blame herself for it in some way?

“They’re the reason why we tried so hard to hack it,” Nick said.

“Did you try, though? Did you really try?” Esme asked.

Nick looked at Augusta. “Should I…”

“Tell her about Maine,” Augusta said.

“After Esme and Liv were born, I had to go on leave for a while.”

“He was dying,” Augusta said.

“I had some ulcers. I didn’t die so I wasn’t dying.”

“In Maine? You mean you went on leave with us?” Esme asked.

“Liv was still tiny and you were a few years old,” Nick told Esme.

“It could never work,” Augusta said.

“I was already in too deep.”

“In Maine?” Esme said again. “Like on a lake in Maine? With a fishing dock?”

“There was a dock,” Augusta said.

“Sure,” Nick said. “Canoes and life jackets hung on pegs under this little wooden lean-to. And there was an island full of blueberry bushes.”

“And fishing…” Esme said, her voice sounding distant and hollow.

“Esme?” Augusta asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Shit,” Esme whispered and then she rolled down the window and shoved her head out of the car.

“Esme!” Liv said. “You’re letting hot air in!”

“Mom?” Atty said. “Mom, are you okay?”

Esme pulled herself back into the car. Her hair was blown back from her face, which was blank and pale.

“Esme?” Ru said. “Say something.”

“Uncle Vic,” Esme said and then she grabbed her father’s headrest and pulled herself forward. “You’re Uncle Vic!” Then she reached up and slapped the back of his head.

“Jesus!” her father said. “Who’s Uncle Vic?”

Augusta sighed. “She’d started calling you Daddy. Remember? She couldn’t go around talking about her daddy to people. That was the whole point of keeping us safe. There was no Daddy.”

“And so you made up another man?” Nick asked.

“Yes. Yes, I did,” Augusta said.

“You lied to me,” Esme said. “You denied me the only childhood memory that I had of my father!”

“I don’t have a memory of him at all,” Liv said. She didn’t want to share that her father had saved her life. He’d given her so many gifts that a lifesaving Heimlich would seem like piling on, especially in light of what he’d done to Esme’s life; but at the same time, she didn’t want to admit what she knew was the truth—he watched over her more closely because she needed him in a way her sisters hadn’t and in a way they’d never understand. “I was just a baby in Maine,” she said, knowing that her father understood that they now had a secret.

“I wasn’t even born yet,” Ru said and for the first time in a long time she was desperate for a Jolly-Lolly.

“He forced me to control the truth. I told you about him later. And you didn’t believe me so what was I supposed to do?”

“Maybe we’re all liars,” Ru said. “None of us can be trusted.”

“I just manipulate people. That’s different,” Liv said.

“You made all those men think you loved them, but you were using them,” Esme said. “That’s a terrible kind of lying.”

“You didn’t know your marriage was in trouble?” Liv said. “You didn’t know your daughter was on the verge of some weird musket-stealing thing? Why? Because you lie to yourself. That’s the worst kind of lying!”

“You went around telling us that your loves were these grand epics,” Esme shouted, “so romantic we could never understand. But you’re a gold digger. See?” She flipped out her palms. “That is what telling the truth looks like!”

Liv’s face tightened.

“We can’t turn on each other,” Ru said, cautiously. “This is about us now. Together.”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell us, once again, that all is fine with Cliff the mysterious fiancé,” Liv said, turning the anger onto Ru.

“I’m going to throw up,” Atty said.

“There’s a difference between being private and lying,” Ru said. “Am I allowed a private life? Is that okay with you?”

“Seriously,” Atty said. “I’m going to throw up!”

“But you weren’t reading,” Liv said.

Atty clamped her hand over her mouth.

“Pull over!” Ru said, rearing away from Atty.

Augusta put on the blinker and looked in her rearview mirror.

“Just pull over,” Nick said.

“Don’t tell me how to drive!”

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” Esme said, rubbing her daughter’s back.

“We were just giving each other a hard time. It’s what family does,” Liv said. “We still love each other. Don’t we?”

“Just hold on,” Augusta said, very slowly edging onto the shoulder.

“If you don’t hit the gas with the brakes at the same time,” Nick said, “I think you’ll find that the car goes faster.”

“Being yelled at only makes me slow down!” Augusta shouted.

“Don’t throw up,” Liv told Atty. “Just keep telling yourself that. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.”

“I thought you said lying to yourself is the worst kind of lying,” Esme said to Liv.

“Okay, just throw up, Atty,” Liv said, “if that’s your inner truth.”

Then Atty threw up.