Fuck, I think.
“Oh my god, what?” Afton exclaims loudly. “What is going on? You’re going to tell me, Ada. Right now.”
I glance behind her, to see where Abby is.
Afton grabs my hand. “She’s watching cartoons in the other room. Seriously, you didn’t hear us come in?”
I was kind of busy melting down on Pop.
Afton drags me back out to the balcony, closes the door behind us, and sits down.
“Okay. What?” she insists.
I don’t have a choice now. I close my eyes. “You have to promise that you won’t do anything rash with this information,” I whisper. “That you won’t freak out.”
“I’m freaking out right now!” she says, and I shush her. We can’t risk Abby hearing. “What is it?” she whispers back urgently. “Tell me.”
“Mom’s having an affair,” I say, still whispering. There’s a sour taste in my mouth. I swallow it down.
Afton’s mouth opens in shock. “What? With who?”
“She’s sleeping with—” God, I think, how did we ever come up with the term “sleeping with” to mean sex? Sleeping is the opposite of what they were doing Monday morning. “I don’t know. I didn’t really see. But she’s hooking up with Billy Wong.”
There. I said it. Which makes it real.
There’s another long moment of silence. Then Afton whispers, “How do you know?”
I take a deep breath. “On Monday, I think it was Monday . . .” The days have all started to blur together for me. “Yeah, Monday. I had to go back to the room. I only wanted to put on my swimsuit. I saw her . . .” It all floods back. I swallow again, hard. “I saw them.”
“What?” Afton says, still keeping the volume of her voice low, but much more sharply this time. “When?”
“I told you. Monday morning. When you had Abby at hula class.”
“Where?”
“Here. In her bed.” I gesture to the adjoining room to this one. I can’t even look directly at Afton as I’m talking about this. I can’t stand to see her eyes when she understands.
Neither of us says anything else for what feels like a year. When I glance up at Afton again, her face is bright red. She’s just staring at the metal railing of the balcony.
I remember that numbness—I felt it myself just a few days ago. I shift in my chair. “Well, say something. Can you just say something? Anything?”
She shakes her head. “What should I say?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
She looks at me with the same kind of hardness in her eyes that Mom gets whenever someone does something incredibly stupid, like Afton is pissed with me, for some reason, like it’s my fault. She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth for a few seconds, then releases it. But she doesn’t speak. She’s in the shocked silence stage.
I move on to the babbling stage. “I mean, I guess it makes sense, Mom and Billy. Right? They, like, touch each other all the time, pat one another on the shoulder, that kind of thing. They hug sometimes, and Mom’s not exactly a hugger, is she? I always thought that was just because they were best friends.” I try not to think about the white robe. The noises. The bed. “I’m so stupid! I never would have guessed.” I remember last year at the awards ceremony when I saw Billy mouth the words “I love you” to his wife. And I was so naive that I thought it was sweet. “Oh, I think I hate them,” I murmur. “I really do.”
“Ada . . . ,” Afton starts.
It’s awful, reliving it, but it’s also a relief to finally tell. “Maybe they planned it this way. Maybe that’s why Pop didn’t come. Maybe this was supposed to be like Mom and Billy’s little sexfest this year, and Pop knew. I mean, he’s a pretty observant guy. He’s not stupid. I don’t know.”
“And that was Pop on the phone just now?” Afton asks, her fingers clenching into fists, unclenching, and then reclenching. “You were telling Pop that you saw Mom and Billy Wong?” Her voice rises again.
“No, I didn’t tell him,” I hiss. “I’m not totally brainless. I told him to fight for us, that’s all. I told him it was a mistake, him not coming with us.”
Afton stands up. “Oh my god, Ada.” Her face is an even darker red. Scarlet. Partly chartreuse.
“I know. I knew something wasn’t right with them, but this . . . But we have to act like we don’t know,” I say earnestly. “I’ve been thinking through it all week, and it’s the only way they don’t get divorced. We have to pretend like it didn’t happen.”
She drags a hand through her hair. Paces back and forth a few times. Stops. “No. Ada, listen to me—”
But right then we hear the door inside slam, and Mom’s voice. “Girls?”
Afton and I stare at each other, wide-eyed.
“We’ve got to keep it together,” I say quickly. I’m terrified at what Afton might do right now. What she might say. How she might unravel our entire life. “Just be calm.”
I move to the balcony door and slide it open. “Hi, Mom,” I say so cheerfully that that in itself is suspicious, but I can’t help it. “So you’re back for the day?”
“I am back for the day,” she confirms. “The group is invited to a luau tonight, though.”
I know this. I read the schedule. “That sounds great. Um, Abby and I would love to go, but Afton’s feeling a little under the weather.”
Mom’s eyebrows lift. “Sick?”
“Yes. So we better let her sit out the luau.”
Afton comes in from outside. Her eyes are stony in a way I’ve never seen, like chunks of bluish flint. My heart rate picks up.
Dear God, please don’t let my sister murder my mother in broad daylight.
“Oh, you do look flushed,” Mom says. “Maybe you have what Ada had.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “What I had.”