Page 134 of The Circle

“So, Christine was pregnant before…?” she says.

Prior, as we’ve walked and talked, and sat and talked, she’s gone from amusement to amazement to wonder to disbelief as I’ve recounted the tale of Alec, Christine, and Danny, the people she knows as her parents.

She has always known that her mother passed away and that I am her biological father and not Lizzy’s and that Lizzy is the progeny of Danny and Christine and I am her parent only by virtue of association, and she has never questioned it or found it odd. She nor Lizzy. Why should they? It is their truth. Their reality.

But on this, Andra’s sixteenth birthday, it is the first time she has been given the whole story. (And, to be sure, not the whole whole story. Many of the details need not be shared and many other of the details are surely lost to the mists of forgotten time anyway, but she is receiving as complete a picture as the three of us deemed appropriate.)

Today, she has heard about the childhood Christine and Danny had and how they found each other and escaped, and she looked sad but hopeful.

She has heard about how I met Danny in the boxing gym and the three of us formed (what we now know for sure is) an inseparable, unbreakable bond, and she was enraptured.

She has heard about the particulars of how we met her mother and her uncles and the grand plan to steal the Crown Jewels and she giggled with delight.

But now, hearing about the period of time Christine and I were alone, without Danny, and how she came to be conceived, she looks horribly worried.

“Yes,” I tell her in answer to the question, “she was.”

Her brow furrows deeper and she bites her lip. “And then… you and my mother…”

“Yes,” I answer, not wanting to make her finish the question.

She stares out at the ocean for a protracted beat before turning back to me and saying, “Sounds like you were a real twat back then.”

The bark of my laugh startles even me.

“Yes,” I say, pulling myself together, “that would be an accurate assessment.”

“And Christine just… she was okay with what happened?”

“Um. No. Not exactly.”

I open up my backpack and withdraw the little picnic I have prepared, spreading it out on the bluff as I ready myself to share the next part.

I do not want to lie to her, but I also want to be as delicate as possible, for, as sophisticated and dead clever as Andra is, she is also still a child. And the very point of the three of us having moved to this place and chosen to raise our family here has been to preserve and dignify that childhood for our girls. Because this was the last place Christine, Danny and I maybe felt something like innocence ourselves. It was its own fragmented type of innocence, to be certain, but it was there.

So, as I delve into this most painful chapter, I want to honor her and protect her all at once. Because at the end of the story, she will have a choice to make.

… SUNSET.

The day has gone quickly. Much quicker than I anticipated. The story is far more of an epic than even I remembered it to be. And as we are now nearing the end, I find that I am having to work harder and harder to maintain my composure as the details find their way out of my mouth and into the real world.

Andra has maintained hers, admirably. She never ceases to amaze.

“… and so, after a long talk with your uncles, we all decided that the best way to honor what your mother wanted was this. And thus… here we are.”

There’s a chill in the air now. Or maybe it isn’t the air that feels chilly.

Andra sits stock still for a long, long time. Finally she says, “So that’s why Uncle Theo has a limp?” I nod. “And why Danny has an eye patch.” I nod again. “Not because Theo fell chasing a dog and Danny banged his head on a rock spear-fishing.”

I shake my head. “Sorry. You were very young when you started asking and those were the best lies we could come up with at the time.”

Another long beat. “They were lies, though.”

“Yes.”

“But you were lying to… protect me?”

“That was the intention.”