Laura looked at her hands. For a while she didn't say anything. When she spoke, it was in a voice he had never heard her use, small and flat and very far away.
"When I was eleven," she said, "my family went to Myrtle Beach. My mom and my dad and Rachel. For two weeks. It was the summer after my dad got his promotion, and they rented a big place on the water, and Rachel got a new swimsuit, and they had their pictures taken on the pier. There's a framed one of the three of them on the piano at my mom's house. You've seen it."
Mark frowned. "I thought you were at camp that summer."
"That's what we always said. That's what my mom told people." Laura pressed her palms together. "I wasn't at camp. I was at my Aunt Bea's in Zanesville. Because at Christmas that year I'd thrown a fit at the table. I don't even remember what about. I was a loud kid, Mark. I talked too much and I cried too easily and I couldn't sit still, and nobody had words for that back then, they just called it being difficult. My mom said she couldn't take another family holiday ruined. She said maybe I'd learn something. They told me the night before. They'd packed Rachel's suitcase a week earlier. I watched them pull out of the driveway from Aunt Bea's car."
The bulb buzzed. Mark didn't move.
"And you know what I learned?" Laura said. "I learned to be quiet. I learned to be so quiet that nobody would ever have a reason to leave me anywhere again. I learned to watch my mother's face at every meal for the rest of my life. And I thought I'd gotten away from it. I married you and moved to Dayton and I thought, I'm never going to be her. I'm never going to do that to a child." She laughed, a broken little sound. "And then she stood in her kitchen at Easter and looked at me and said, for everyone's sake, and I was eleven again. I was eleven, and she was telling me I'd ruined it, and the only thing I could think was, I'll fix it. I'll be good. I'll make sure it doesn't happen again. And the way to make sure was to not bring him." She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "I didn't even see it until right now. Saying it out loud. I was doing to him exactly what she did to me, and I was calling it a kindness."
Mark was quiet for a long time.
"Does Eli know?" he said finally. "About any of this?"
"No."
"He needs to."
"I know."
"Not the Myrtle Beach part. That's yours to tell when you want. But the rest." Mark stood up, slowly, like his knees hurt. "Laur, I'm not gonna tell him for you. And I'm not gonna help you lie to him. Whatever happens next, you're the one who walks up those stairs. Dolores was right."
She looked up sharply. "How do you know what Dolores said?"