Page 70 of On Fire Island

She looked over at Ben and laughed. “Sorry. TMI.”

He looked stunned, and not on account of the Kotex.

“That’s awful, Bea, I’m sorry.”

“I know that I made all those choices myself, but I still daydream about what would have happened if Veronica hadn’t slept with him. I swear I would have kept that baby and married Logan Chase. I’m not saying we would have lived happily ever after, like I had pictured us doing at the time, but I would have my daughter.”

“And you never had kids,” he said, sadly pointing out the obvious.

“Nope. And my sister has two, who I don’t even know. I just met them at my mother’s funeral for, like, two seconds.”

I couldn’t imagine being estranged from Nora like that. Not thatmymother would ever allow it.

“Have you ever thought about finding your daughter?” Ben asked.

“More like have I ever not thought about finding her? As luck would have it, the adoption agency burned down years ago, which didn’t much matter because it was a closed adoption.”

“DNA tracing?”

“I did 23andMe—no close match. And you know, if she wanted to find me, she would have done it too—so there’s that.”

“Well, maybe. I mean, closed adoptions are pretty rare, even back then. There’s a chance she doesn’t even know that she’s adopted. I’m sorry, Bea.”

“It’s OK.” She reached over and took Ben’s hand. “I wish I could find her, but what else can I do? I’m happy in my life, I love my job, and my students feel like my children, plus I’m dating a really great guy right now, a professor too—American history.”

“I’m glad you’re happy, and don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“I think I’m done hiding it. Especially now that my mom’s gone and my dad can’t get angry with her for keeping my secret.”

She stood and stretched her legs.

“Maybe it’s time I tell the world, maybe that’s the only way I’ll find her.”

She patted Ben lovingly on the shoulder.

“I should get back, help Dad get settled in.”

“I’m gonna miss him,” Ben admitted.

“There’s still a few more days of summer.”

“I may stay here for a couple of months this fall and write.”

“That’s great!” she said, flashing her dimpled smile. “What’s the new book called?”

“I have no idea,” Ben responded, but this time his eyes lit up. It gave me hope that something was brewing.

thirty-eight

Chasing Dolphins

The next morning Ben got up early and pulled his paddleboard out of the back shed where he had left it untouched for the entire summer. In the past, when I heard him rise in the morning to board, I would ask about the conditions. He wouldn’t know what flag it was till he got up to the beach and looked toward the lifeguard stand, but he always consulted a weather app before leaving the house. If the wind was somewhere around five miles an hour, I would roll over and go back to sleep. If it were closer to twenty, I would throw on shorts and come along in order to keep a watchful eye on him from the shore. Not that I could have saved him, but I could always scream for help, or at least die trying.

Ben didn’t necessarily appreciate my vigilance. In fact, I’m pretty sure he resented it. I brought a fear along with me that was palpable, and no doubt jangled his nerves. It wasn’t good to have jangled nerves on a board in the middle of the ocean with twenty-mile-an-hour winds and God knows what swimming beneath you, just so your five-foot-nothing weak swimmer of a wife could grieve your death with less guilt.

As he pulled on his wetsuit, I thought of my first and last attempt to paddleboard on the Atlantic. I was so excited when Ben had presented me with our anniversary-of-meeting gift, an occasion we rarely marked with more than a good bottle of wine. With the proudest look-how-good-I-did-with-this-gift face, he dramatically unveiled his and hers paddleboards so that we could continue and improve what we had just begun getting the hang of in Lanai.

“It’s a perfect day to try,” Ben had preached. “Green flags and winds near five miles an hour.”

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