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“You did not finish it,” he says.
“I did.”
“I got you twelve seasons ofMurder, She Wrote. You cannot have watched them in one week.”
“There are no more episodes on the TV.”
He stands with a sigh. “I’m going to switch the DVD. Be right back.”
I open my mouth the second he disappears, ready to fill the silence with some comment about the weather, but Millicent is already giving me one of her piercing looks. “You’re not a librarian, are you?”
I clear my throat. “No. I’m sorry I lied. It’s a long story, but—”
“I’m ninety—no time for long stories. What is it that you do, then?”
I fidget with the tea tag. “I’m a physicist.”
“Like Jack.”
“Sort of. Not really.” I keep my eyes on the mug. The state of my career is a sore point. “He’s a world-renowned professor. I’m just an adjunct. And he’s an experimental physicist, while I’m—”
“A theorist.” She nods. “Like his mom, then.”
I look up and blink at her. “His mom?” Is Millicent getting confused? Like Grandma Hannaway before passing, when she’d mix me up with her least favorite sister and yell at me for stealing her apron? “You don’t mean the one who...”
“Died. Well, of course. He only ever had the one.” She scoffs. “It’s not as if Caroline was eager to take over. Heartbreaking, watching those two boys grow up so close. Same house, same family. One with a mother, the other without.”
“Oh.” I shouldn’t ask any of the questions buzzing in my head. Millicent is clearly under the impression that Jack and I are something we’re not, or she wouldn’t disclose this. But... “How old was Jack?”
“When Grethe died?”Grethe.“About one. My son remarried just a few months later. They had Greg soon after. You see, for the first few years, it was me who insisted that we tell Jack nothing about Grethe. I thought he could have a normal life, believing that Caroline was his mother and he had lost nothing. But Caroline was never fond of him, and... well, it was her right to refuse. I shouldn’t have interfered. Because I made it worse: a few years later he got into some trouble like children often do, and Caroline screamed at him, ‘Don’t call me Mom—I’m not your mother.’ It was a moment ofweakness. And Caroline did feel guilty afterwards. But by then, Jack knew.” She sighs. “Hard to explain to a nine-year-old that everything he believes is a lie. That he shouldn’t call Mom the woman hisbrothercalls Mom.” Millicent massages her temple. “Jack seemed to take it in stride. Except that he stopped calling his father Dad, too. I became Millicent. And ever since, he’s been very distrustful of lies. Very preoccupied with... boundaries. More than is healthy, I believe.” She busies herself stacking mugs on top of the empty cookie plate. For the first time since I met her, she looks her age. Frail, old, tired. Her mouth is downturned, bracketed by deep lines. “And yet Jack and Greg grew up thick as thieves, despite all that. The one saving grace.”
I remember Jack taking care of Greg after the dentist, and my heart squeezes. I try to picture them as kids, picture Jack being anything but his tall, assured, authoritative self, and fail miserably.
“Are you sure she... Grethe.” I want to ask if Turner was her last name. The reason Jack’s a Smith but notreallya Smith. “Are you sure she was a theorist?” Physics runs in Jack’s family, when the only thing that runs in mine is eczema.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just... Jack doesn’t seem to like theorists very much.”
Millicent gives me a look. “He likesyou, doesn’t he?”
She speaks like I’m the least sharp cookie in the jar, and I flush. “But he once wrote an article that—”
“Oh,that.” She chuckles, like it’s a fond family memory. First day of kindergarten, meeting Goofy at Disneyland, and that time her grandson sent an entire field of study into a tailspin. “That had nothing to do with theoretical physics. He was just a teenager acting out, angry because of what he’d found out about Grethe. Buthe’s a man now. A good one. Too bad I can’t leave him my money, or he’ll just divide it up between the rest of my ungrateful family.”
“What had he found out about Grethe?” Was the entire Smith-Turner Hoax about his mom? Did he... hate her? Was it some sort of revenge on her for... for what? Dying? It’s too ridiculous. “Did he write the article because of her?”
I must be asking too many questions. Millicent’s expression shifts, first to guarded, then to vacuous. “I forget,” she says with a ditzy shrug, even though she doesn’t. Millicent, I’m certain, hasn’t forgotten a single thing in her life—not Greg’s name, and certainly not what led Jack to be who he is today. “Jack will tell you. When you’ve been together long enough.”
“No, we... Really, Jack and I arenot—we’re notdoingit,” I say. My brain cringes so hard, it folds in on itself.
“Oh, I know. This is something else altogether, isn’t it?”
“It’s nothing at all. We’re not even friends.”
“Right.” Her tone is almost... pitying? “Well, you’ll figure it out in your own time.”
“Figure out what?”
