Move the Stars (Something in the Way 3)

“And you never try to see anything from my point of view. What makes you think I’ve got it all figured out?” I asked.

“Because I’ve had to stand by and watch it my whole life. That’s the result of living in your shadow.”

“In my shadow?” I asked. That was the last straw. How could she possibly think that was true when it’d been the other way around? I nearly vibrated with anger. “Growing up, you were constantly talking over me, getting everyone’s attention any way you could manage, even when I wasn’t fighting you for it. I let you have the spotlight and you pushed me out of it anyway.”

“Exactly. You didn’t even have to try.” She gripped the arm of her chair. “Unless I was talking loudest, Dad ignored me. And the older you got, the worse it was.”

“That’s only because of college,” I said. “Once I wasn’t going to USC, he was done with me. Why do you still care what he thinks anyway? He’s always been a jerk to both of us, especially you.”

She held her cigarette deep in the “V” between her pointer and middle finger. After a drag, she squinted at me as if thinking. “You know,” she said, “you’re more like him than you realize.”

I pulled my shoulders back. Maybe once that’d been a compliment, when I’d bent over backward to impress my father. Now, there was perhaps no greater insult. “I’m nothing like him.”

“Neither of you will make the first move because you’re too proud. You’re both book smart but you lack compassion. That’s what my therapist says.” She coughed into a fist. “But you know what makes you the most like Dad? You’re a cheater. Manning wouldn’t tell me exactly what happened between you two while he was in New York, but I know enough.”

A cheater? I’d never heard myself described so callously. That was more the kind of adjective to describe someone like Tiffany or, yes, my dad. Except he wasn’t a cheater. Why would she say he was? “I don’t understand.”

“Never mind.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Forget it.”

“No,” I said, sensing she was trying to cover something up. “What do you know?”

Sighing through her nose, she ran her nail along the butt of the cigarette. “I guess you’re old enough now. Remember Dad’s secretary with the orange hair? It wasn’t quite blonde or even red . . .”

The sister I’d barely spoken to in years was suddenly talking, but I didn’t know how to register what she was saying. My dad had a funny way of showing love, even to my mom, but he’d always taken care of us. He’d always been loyal. But then again, everyone liked to say how naïve I was, and maybe in this case, it was true. The patio’s overhead light got eerily yellow as I put two and two together. “Dad had an affair?” I asked. “When?”

The lines in Tiffany’s face eased a little and she turned her face away, as if she were the guilty one. “When we were kids, I walked in on it at his office.”

My dad’s secretaries had come and gone over the years. I vaguely recalled who Tiffany was talking about because of her hair color and the amount of makeup she’d worn. At the time, she’d seemed older to me, maybe even sophisticated. Trying to picture her again, I only saw a girl younger than I was now. “She was, like, early twenties, wasn’t she?”

“Young, old, pretty, ugly. Whatever, who cares?” She rubbed her eyebrow. “Maybe there were others, too.”

“Does Mom know?”

“Yep.” She bobbed her head. “I was really confused about what I saw, so I told her. She brushed it under the rug and got some nice outfits out of it.”

The cigarette smoke was getting to me. First, it’d been just another frustrating reminder of Manning, but now it seemed to have filled my lungs, thickening into a mass in my chest. “How come you never told me?”

She picked at the table’s rubber edge. “I just . . . didn’t think you needed to know. It was kind of weird growing up with that information. And you looked up to Dad.”

“But it would’ve changed how I saw him, and didn’t you want that?”

“I don’t know. Not enough to traumatize you, I guess.”

It was weird to think Tiffany had protected me in her own way when it’d rarely felt that way as a kid. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You could’ve told me.”

She looked out at the pool. “I wonder if it would’ve changed anything.”

With Manning was the part she left off. Would I have stayed away from him in New York if I’d grown up knowing my dad as an adulterer? I didn’t think so, and I doubted Tiffany did, either. “You think I’m like that?” I asked. “Like what he did?”