Cleo lost herself for a moment, as she used to in the immediate months following the positive pregnancy test, considering all the ways her life would be different if she hadn’t said yes to the invitation, if she hadn’t gotten sloppy for the first time in her life that March evening and had turned in a better first draft of her thesis, if she hadn’t been so reactive to what was really just constructive criticism.

“Anyway, Anna knew of this party on campus. She said it was the computer geeks, so I wasn’t expecting much—but then, I wasn’t in a position to adhere to any social hierarchy.” She thought of Anna and how they immediately lost touch after graduation. Who knew what happened to her; who knew if she had any idea how that night changed Cleo’s life? “And we got to this house, and the boys weren’t nerdy at all. They were playing beer pong, which I didn’t know how to play, but, well, I’m competitive—”

Lucas sniffed at this, and Cleo stopped to see if he had something to say, but he didn’t, so she continued.

“Right, well, I mean, obviously I started taking the beer pong too seriously, because, I mean, I’m me. And a cute boy I’d never met paired up with me, and . . . Look, four hours later, I was very drunk, and so was he, and, well, one thing led to another . . . I don’t want to spell it out for you—”

Lucas finally interrupted and said, “Please don’t.”

“Sure. Sure.” Cleo exhaled. She didn’t know what she was getting right about this story and what she was getting wrong. “Anyway, I was so embarrassed the next morning. It was so out of character for me, and honestly, I just wanted to put it behind me and go home and rework my thesis.”

Lucas, God bless him, turned to her and said (with enough disdain that Cleo understood this wasn’t a peace offering): “Wait, you’ve told me my whole life that girls can do whatever they want with their bodies.”

“Sweetie, I didn’t know what I was doing. Women then, well, I mean, we were strong, I guess, in our ways, but we weren’t like your generation—or I wasn’t, at least. Like Marley having two boyfriends or Esme speaking up to her mother.” Cleo hesitated. This wasn’t what she wanted to say. “This isn’t about that, though. This was about the fact that I was so ashamed of myself for doing something reckless, for not being in control, that . . . I think I wanted to pretend that it never happened.”

“So you wanted to pretend that I never happened?” Lucas said, his face a mix of heartbreak and rage.

“No, no!” Cleo wanted to get through the rest of the story now. “This had nothing to do with you and only to do with me. Lucas, I had spent so long making sure that everything was in alignment and propelling me to the next step that I couldn’t forgive myself when I believed that I’d screwed up. And that screwup ended up being the best part of my life.” Cleo thought of her dad, how similar they were—but different too; Georgie was right about that, and she reached for Lucas’s hand. “I promise. There was never any doubt about what I was going to do—keep you, I mean. If anything, you made me realize that I couldn’t be on my own forever.”

Lucas didn’t reply, and Cleo quickly realized that framing the pregnancy as a screwup was exactly what she didn’t intend. This was why she was always prepared. Accidents happened, mistakes were made when she was not.

She swallowed. She knew what she had to say next, and she knew that however he reacted, she deserved it. All she wanted to do was stand and leave and close Lucas’s door and slink back to the kitchen and not ruin the past fourteen years she very well realized she was about to ruin. But she owed him more than that; she owed her son his truth, even when it meant he would finally see her as she really was: flawed, deceitful, human, but also, his mother who tried her best. She really thought she had. She could see now why she hadn’t.

She said it quickly, before she lost her nerve. “Anyway, this isn’t your father’s fault. I left Northwestern without telling him. He never knew. He doesn’t know.”

Lucas started crying then, his chin quivering and giving way to real tears, and Cleo wished she could go back and redo the entirety of his life.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just didn’t know how else to do it.”

“There were a million other ways to do it,” he managed.

“Yes,” Cleo said. Because she knew now that there were.

They sat that way, in silence, mother and son, until Lucas stopped crying and closed his eyes and turned toward his wall, and after a while, Cleo thought he’d fallen asleep. Which was just as well. She didn’t expect to get much further than they’d gotten. Not now anyway. She watched his back rise and fall, and she missed both her parents so acutely, she was certain she felt an actual hole in her heart. Maybe that’s why she kept the list after all these years: it was what she had left of them, especially her father, to carry around, to plug that hole.

She rose from his bed. She wanted to share this with Georgie, to see if maybe she thought this made sense.

“You shouldn’t have done it that way,” Lucas said, not asleep in fact and still facing the wall.

“I know,” Cleo said, because all that he was accusing her of with those few words was fair. And she thought of her evening, of Francis, of their fall. “I didn’t want to admit that I was wrong, that I’d made an absolute mess of the most important thing in my life.”

“So fix it,” he snapped, turning to look at her, to meet her dead in the eye.

Cleo stepped forward and kissed his forehead and then made her way out of his room, closing the door behind her. But not before she promised that she would.

Georgie was waiting in the kitchen with a new glass of wine and the merlot stain wiped clean.

“Are you OK?”

Cleo nodded.

“Is he OK?”

Cleo shrugged. “Not really.”

“He will be,” Georgie said. “Teens are resilient. Just look at you.”

And then Cleo started crying again, and Georgie opened her arms to her. Cleo leaned in to her sister and dropped her heavy head onto her sister’s shoulder, leaving a damp circle of tears in just seconds. And when she had finally sputtered to a stop, she untangled from Georgie and was amazed at how much stronger she felt, just by making herself vulnerable, just by allowing herself to be held up.

TWENTY-SIX

Cleo couldn’t sleep. She checked on Lucas twice and composed an email to Gaby—who had called three times, which Cleo had ignored while tending to her son—demanding an explanation, but thought of Georgie’s advice and opted not to send it yet. Gaby had been her best and really only friend for more than a decade, and rather than deploy her usual slash-and-burn tactics, Cleo opted to lean in to her growth and consider that she should give Gaby the benefit of the doubt. So for tonight, she let it go.

She logged in to Facebook.

MaryAnne had cooled it a bit with her scathing posts, though she had already posted the YouTube video on her page. The comments below, however, were unexpected.

Oliver Patel: Hey, MaryAnne, can we maybe ease off this vendetta? Aren’t we all adults now?

Beth Shin: Far be it from me to defend Cleo, but I’d never have the guts to attempt the Dirty Dancing lift in public.

Maureen Allen: OMG, remember how obsessed we were with that movie???? Wine and rewatch soon?

Cleo giggled in the darkness of her office. News cycles came and went, she supposed. But Patrick Swayze was forever. She missed MaryAnne and the simplicity of their middle school friendship, before the complications that came next, so acutely.

She rolled her neck and shoulders, which were stiff from the evening’s fall, or maybe stiff from the stress of the enormity of everything.

On a whim, she typed in his name:

Doug Smith.

Facebook offered the promise of connecting with anyone at any time from your past. She held her breath and waited.

There were thousands of Doug Smiths. She tried to narrow it down to Northwestern, but that didn’t help. She tried Chicago. But that didn’t help. She scanned the first few pages of profile photos, squinting and leaning close toward the screen, but that didn’t help, and honestly, she wasn’t even sure how well she’d recognize his face, fifteen years later and sober, all those beer pong chugs long forgotten.

She tried Google, but the generic universality of his name was a nonstarter. Google Cleo McDougal, and you knew exactly who you were getting. Google Doug Smith, and it could be a mechanic in Denver or a PE coach in Phoenix or an accountant in Buffalo. (Her home state! Would it be ironic if he’d voted for her? she thought briefly, then dismissed it.) All these men were Doug Smith and yet none of them was her Doug Smith. Not hers. Lucas’s. She didn’t need to find Doug Smith for herself. She’d never wanted the white knight: not with Matty, not with Nobells, not even tonight, when Bowen had graciously lifted her to her feet.

She reconsidered that last one, then pulled up her email quickly.

Bowen—I have found myself behaving like an asshole too many times in your company. I’d like to say that it’s because you intoxicate me, but it’s also probably that I can be an asshole. I’d like to get that drink with you. But I insist on paying.

-Cleo

She read it over once and, unlike her note to Gaby, she hit Send immediately. It went off into the email-sphere and now out of her control, but she had no regrets.