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didn’t answer me, just flipped the lid of his suitcase up, allowing it to fall back on the bed with a muffled thump. I moved into the room and sat lightly on the edge of the bed.
    â€œYour father and I are trusting that there’s not going to be any nighttime activity while you’re here, Marshall.”
    â€œMom,” he began to protest.
    â€œNo, just listen to me. I’m allowing Ada to stay with your sister because it seemed to have been worked out beforehand, and I didn’t want to disappoint her. And you’re the one who let them e-mail, so you have only yourself to blame for that. I don’t want to have to talk to Meghan about why Ada slipped out of her room in the middle of the night. Is that clear?”
    Marshall took a deep breath, as though about to explain something obvious to a rather dull child. I called upon my own patience, remembering the times I had thought my own dear parents astonishingly stupid and how they tolerated me with such good humor. But I was mistaken about the object of his forbearance.
    â€œWe don’t—we don’t do that,” he said, nearly strangling on the words. “She’s very committed to her faith, and I support her, I—she makes a lot of sense.”
    â€œWhat is her faith, Marshall?”
    â€œWell, it’s sort of a mixture of fundamental Christianity, evangelical, maybe even a little separatist, but it’s cool. They share everything with the community, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Their guiding principle is really all about hard work, responsibility for each other, and to God. It might seem a bit rigid, but that’s good. Faith requires something of you, right?”
    â€œShe said her mother works in the commissary and her father works in the orchards. Are those church businesses?”
    He nodded. “Yeah, it’s all pretty self-sufficient.” He gave up on unpacking and picked up his suitcase, still splayed open, and dropped it on the floor next to his dresser. He shrugged when he turned back to me. “I’ll just be repacking it next week anyway. I was thinking about taking Ada out fishing tomorrow. Is Dad booked?”
    I shook my head. “I’m not sure. Ask him at dinner. If she’s a vegetarian, I doubt she wants to fish, Marshall.”
    â€œWe probably won’t fish. I’d just like to take her for a ride, maybe see some dolphins, have some lunch. She’s never been out on the Gulf or in the ’Glades.”
    â€œWhat about your father?”
    â€œWhat about him?” He leaned against his dresser, sending his necklaces and charms gently swaying and clinking against each other.
    â€œAre you going to ask him to go along?”
    â€œI wasn’t planning on it. I’ve taken the boat plenty of times by myself.”
    â€œI know, and don’t think your father won’t remember the last time you did. I’d be prepared for that little conversation again if I were you. I was just thinking you might want to spend some time with him, let him get to know Ada.”
    He smiled a wry, sideways smile, something new, something lopsided and slightly cruel. A man’s smile. And, like a man, or at least like the man his father was, he didn’t answer me. Instead he asked about dinner, and asked about my work, and when I left him, he was knocking on Meghan’s door to reclaim his girlfriend.

MARSHALL
    It was startling enough having his mother sit on his bed and address sex so directly, but now the very embodiment of it was standing there, in his bedroom, her hip jutting at him like a challenge. Technically, Ada had been in his room before, his dorm room, when his roommate was gone, studying, wherever the hell he went, but this was his bedroom .
    His every boyhood fantasy had played out in this room. He’d splayed more Playmates across that worn blue spread in his mind. More than Playmates. The most bizarre choices had been flung in all