“All right,” Kit said, working his way back to the place where he’d found his best footing. “But I still can’t believe what you’ve told me—that my father is some kind of monster—without hearing his side of the story. Surely you realize that he has the right to defend himself. But if he can’t … if it turns out that you’re telling the truth, I’ll help you. And if you’re not, we’ll both help you.”
“You’ll both help me?” And then, understanding, “You think I’m crazy,” she whispered. “You’re going to go to Dad and he’s going to tell you some fairy tale, and once again I’m the one who’s going to pay for something someone else has done.”
Kit didn’t like what was happening. He hadn’t set out to say anything of the sort. Lying she might be, but crazy, no. And yet, why would a sane person make up such a terrible story? Again, he felt himself go cold inside. No matter what he believed, no matter which choice he made, he would be facing something awful.
“You can’t tell him,” she said again, with great urgency. “You can’t do that to me.”
“Then convince me,” he said, not really thinking about what he was asking of her or bringing on his own head. “Convince me you’re telling the truth. Convince me he’s a liar.”
He did not think that she could, but he was wrong.
Holly stood abruptly and began to pace in circles around the gazebo. As she walked she snatched at the vines that draped down to claim the pillars, wrapping them in blossoms and bees. At one point she stopped to bury her face in their leaves, to breathe in their scent, not caring if she was stung. She seemed strengthened by them. And when she turned to face Kit, she seemed to have reached some sort of decision.
Holly sat down. She shook out her hands, crossed her arms, and looked at Kit’s face for a long minute. She loved his face, despite how he had turned it away from her over the years. He looked much as he had as a young child, his eyes the same evening blue, his hair still the color of thumbed gold, his face sharper now, and stronger, but not so that it had lost the sweet shape of his boyhood.
Seen from one side, they looked alike. But not from the other.
“This is the hardest part,” she finally said. “This is the part I swore I’d never tell you.” At the look in his eyes, she said, “Not because it’s so terrible. It isn’t. In fact, it’s one of the kindest things Dad has ever done. And it’s something that doesn’t matter. Not in the least. When I found out, I was startled by it, and it made me think about a lot of things in a different way, but it never bothered me, and it shouldn’t bother you.”
Kit made a gesture with his hands to hurry her. He had already heard more than he had bargained for, and he had no desire to open any more doors, but he wanted more than anything else to get it all over with.
“Just after Christmas,” Holly continued, “my freshman year at Bryn Mawr, I went skating. I fell. I hit my jaw.” She touched the damaged side of her face. “The next day I woke up with a horrible toothache. It was the first time I’d ever needed to see a dentist while I was away from home. Dad always insisted that I see Dr. Bennett during my vacations. But I was in a lot of pain, and I wasn’t about to come all the way home. So I went to a good dentist near campus. When he looked at my teeth, he asked me what had happened to my face. I told him that Mom had fallen down the stairs during her pregnancy and that my face had been damaged before you and I were born. I told him about you and me, how you were conceived first. He looked at me in this really peculiar way. I thought he was crazy. Then he took an X ray and examined it for a long time. Then he looked at my face again, and at my teeth, and then at the X ray again. Then he asked me to tell him more about Mom’s accident and about you. How many weeks older you were. How much bigger you were at birth. Whether you’d been hurt when Mom fell. He was acting the way people do when they know the answer to a question but they want to see how much you know. I told him what I could, which wasn’t much.
“That’s when he showed me the X ray and explained what must really have happened. He didn’t get it completely right, but he was close. Later, when I confronted Dad, he tried to bluster his way out of it. But he eventually told me. In fact, he seemed to enjoy telling me.”
Kit began to feel sick. He began to think of ways to leave, now, before she said another word, for he believed that he could not bear anything more and he dreaded to his soul what she might say next.
“It’s strange,” she said, tears trembling in her eyes, “how we don’t question things we’re told in childhood, even when we’re old enough and smart enough to know better. Mom used to tell me that eating bread crusts would make my hair curly.” She almost smiled then. “I was eighteen before I gave that one a second thought. It was the same with my face. I never stopped to think that it might have happened any other way. And even if I had, why would I have ever thought they’d lie to us about it?”
Kit put his head into his hands so that all he could see through his fingers were small, manageable bits of the world. “What happened, Holly? Please just tell
