Lily shifted in her chair. "Ava, Mom really doesn't know about Ryan. I swear. If she did, she would've called you immediately." That was probably true.
Diane's loyalty could be complicated, but secrecy had never been her strength when she believed one daughter was being hurt by the other. Ava pictured her mother's face if she heard the truth and almost wished Diane were there, then immediately recoiled from the thought of having another witness to her humiliation. "Maybe it's better she isn't here," Ava said. Lily looked at the empty place setting Ava had left for Diane at the end of the table. Ava had not cleared it when her mother canceled.
A white plate remained beneath a folded napkin, wineglass waiting beside it, as if the room itself still expected a fourth person. "I wanted her here," Lily admitted. Ava stared at her. "For support?" "Not against you.
Just... I was scared." "You were scared of me." "Of losing you." Ava's voice softened in a way that made the words more painful.
"You should have been scared of that before you did it." Lily looked down. For several minutes the conversation slowed. Shock could not maintain the same volume forever.
It shifted into exhaustion, and exhaustion made room for details none of them wanted but all of them seemed compelled to expose. Ava asked where the second time happened. Ryan answered: Lily's apartment, a week after the first. She asked whether either of them had attempted to stop seeing the other between encounters. Lily admitted they had promised not to be alone together and then broken the promise within days.
She asked whether they exchanged photographs. Ryan said no. Lily said no too, and for once their simultaneous answer sounded truthful. Ava asked whether they had ever been together while she was in the same house. Both said no.
She believed that too, though the relief it gave her was so small it barely registered. "Did you ever kiss her here when I was downstairs?" Ava asked. Ryan's face went pale. Ava understood before he answered.
"Once," he said. Lily whispered, "In the garage." Ava closed her eyes. "When?" "June," Ryan said.
"You were taking a call in the kitchen." Ava remembered a Sunday cookout. Lily had arrived early to help, Ryan had gone outside to bring in extra chairs, and Ava spent twenty minutes on the phone with a client whose floral order had been delivered to the wrong venue. When she finished the call, Ryan and Lily came in separately. Ava had handed Lily a bowl of salad.
She had kissed Ryan on the cheek. The memory was so vivid that Ava could smell charcoal from the grill. "I hate both of you," she said. The statement came out quietly, without performance. Lily began crying again.
Ryan looked as if he had stopped breathing. Ava stared at them and realized she meant it in that moment. Love still existed somewhere beneath the devastation, but hatred had arrived beside it, and the coexistence was almost unbearable. "I don't know who you are," she told Ryan. "I'm still me."
"That's the problem." He looked confused. "If you had turned into a monster overnight, this would be easier. But you were still the man who made me coffee. Still the man who called my grandmother every Sunday.
Still the man who held my hand in the doctor's office. And while you were being all of those people, you were also lying to me." Ryan's eyes filled. Ava continued. "So when you say you're still you, that doesn't comfort me.
It means I don't know what you means anymore." He looked down, tears finally slipping onto his cheeks. Ava felt no satisfaction seeing him cry. She had once believed his pain would always activate her instinct to help. Instead, she simply watched.