Chapter 1
The laughter began near the deep end of my aunt Celia’s pool.
It was the loose, careless laughter of people who believed they were safe among family—cousins stretched beneath striped umbrellas, children chasing one another over hot flagstones, glasses sweating in the North Carolina heat.
I was laughing before I even understood why.
My daughter, Ariel, stood in front of Clara’s lounge chair with one arm extended and her small index finger aimed directly at Clara’s bare stomach.
“Daddy’s in there,” she announced.
Someone choked on a drink.
My brother Daniel slapped Glen on the shoulder and said, “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
Even Glen smiled.
For one stupid second, I did too.
Then embarrassment arrived like a slap.
“Ariel.” I hurried across the pool deck and caught her hand. “We don’t point at people’s bodies. That isn’t polite.”
She frowned at me.
Her yellow swimsuit was still dripping from the pool, and wet strands of brown hair clung to her cheeks.
“But Daddy’s in there,” she repeated.
Behind me, the laughter thinned.
Clara adjusted her sunglasses without sitting up. She was my cousin, though we had been raised closely enough to call each other sisters when it suited us. At thirty-two, she was five years younger than I was and had always possessed the kind of beauty that seemed accidental—soft blond hair, pale skin that browned without burning, and a body she pretended not to know people noticed.
Glen stood beside the outdoor bar holding a bottle of beer.
He shrugged.
I pointed toward him.
“Sweetheart, Daddy is right there. See?”
Ariel turned.
She looked at Glen.
Then her face crumpled.
Not the exaggerated cry children sometimes used when they wanted attention. This was sudden, frightened grief. Her chest hitched. Tears flooded her eyes.
“No!” she screamed. “That Daddy is there, but Daddy’s baby is in Clara!”
The pool deck went quiet.
Clara removed her sunglasses.
Her expression changed for less than a second.
That was all.
A tightening at the corners of her mouth. A flick of her eyes toward Glen. Then she rolled onto her back with an irritated sigh.
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “She probably heard something on television.”
“We don’t watch anything like that,” I replied.
Glen set his beer down.
“Mara, she’s six. She’s confused.”
I knelt in front of Ariel, but she twisted away and grabbed my wrist with both hands.
“Come look.”
“Ariel—”
“Look!”
She pulled me toward Clara with surprising force.
Clara sat up sharply.
“Can you control her?”
The words struck me harder than they should have. Clara had been at Ariel’s birth. She had slept on our couch for two weeks after my emergency surgery and sung to Ariel when I was too weak to stand.
I almost apologized.
Then Ariel pointed again.
Not at the center of Clara’s stomach.
Lower.
Near the edge of her dark blue bikini bottom, where a thin silver chain rested against her hip.
At first I saw nothing except a patch of pink skin.
Then Clara shifted.
A design appeared beneath the bikini string.
A black compass.
It was no larger than a quarter, but I knew every line.
The narrow arrow pointing northeast.
The tiny break in the outer circle.
The three dots beneath the needle.
Glen had the same compass tattooed over his heart.
He had told me it represented his father, who died when Glen was nineteen.
No one else in our family had it.
But Clara’s tattoo had been changed.
A delicate heartbeat line passed through the compass. Beneath it were two intertwined initials.
G and C.
Below them was a date.
May 29.
Seven weeks earlier.
My skin went cold despite the heat.
“No,” I whispered.
Clara reached for a towel.
I caught her wrist before she could cover herself.
“What does this mean?”
“Mara, let go.”
“What does it mean?”
She tried to pull away.
I turned toward the bar.
“Glen.”
He did not move.
“Come here.”
Daniel looked between us, no longer smiling.
Glen walked over slowly. His eyes remained on my face until he reached the lounge chair.
Then he looked down.
The moment he saw the tattoo, he turned as pale as the concrete beneath our feet.
Clara covered it with the towel.
“It means nothing,” she said.
Glen swallowed.
I watched his throat move.
Ariel pressed herself against my side.
“Daddy told her it was their secret compass,” she whispered.
The sentence landed in the silence with the force of breaking glass.
Glen looked at our daughter.
Not with confusion.
With warning.
I saw it.
So did Ariel.
She hid behind me.
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
“Mara, not here.”
Clara stood so quickly the lounge chair scraped backward.
“You’re frightening the child.”
“No,” I said. “You are.”
Aunt Celia approached from the house, asking what was wrong, but the voices around me had become muffled. All I could hear was the pulse in my ears.
Glen reached for my elbow.
I stepped away.
“Did you sleep with her?”
Clara inhaled sharply.
Glen looked around at the family.
His humiliation seemed to offend him more than my question.
“Of course not.”
“Then explain the tattoo.”
“I can’t explain something I’ve never seen.”
Clara stared at him.
There it was again—that tiny rupture in her control.
He was abandoning her.
She understood it at the same moment I did.
Ariel tugged my dress.
“Mommy,” she said, “I don’t want to go back to the baby doctor.”
Every person near the pool heard her.
Glen’s hand tightened around the neck of his beer bottle.
“What baby doctor?” I asked.
Ariel pointed toward Clara.
“The place where they put Daddy inside her.”
May you like
Clara stopped breathing.
And Glen dropped the bottle.
