Empire Falls

scallop and bit it in half, surrendering a half-guilty grin to her father.
    “Charlene has secrets?” Miles said hopefully. It pleased him that she’d been watching him, hinting as it did at the possibility—admittedly remote—of an affection that transcended their long friendship. She’d been between boyfriends for some time, and Miles’s divorce would soon be final, so maybe. And for years she’d been claiming that Miles was exactly the sort of man she’d fall in love with if she had any sense at all—a good man, straight and true, who, with the slightest encouragement would love her all the days of his life. So again, maybe.
    Unfortunately, Charlene had also admitted, even after four failed marriages, her abiding preference for bad men whose insides were all twisted up in knots, and who cleared out the minute the going got tough. They had fast cars and drove them recklessly, and this was something she actually liked about them. There was no telling what would happen if she ever hooked up with a man like Miles, but she suspected she’d end up being mean to him, probably even meaner than Janine had been, which was going some. “I just don’t think I could go through life at your speed, Miles,” she told him once. “Don’t you ever want to just put the pedal down to the floor and just see what it feels like?” Therefore, probably not.
    “Everybody has secrets except you, Daddy,” Tick was saying.
    Miles considered this, then said, “What makes you think I don’t have a few?”
    His daughter didn’t answer right away. “It’s not like you don’t have any,” she explained, for once leaving her fork at rest. “It’s just that everybody figures them out.”
    “I think you’re just repeating what your mother always says about me.”
    “I’m repeating what everybody says about you. Because it’s true. I’m more like Mom,” she added somberly, as if this were something she wasn’t particularly proud of. Since he and Janine had filed for divorce, Tick had begun cataloging her differences and similarities to each of her parents, perhaps thinking this genetic road map might make her own destiny more navigable. “I’ll be good at keeping secrets. If I cheated on my husband, nobody would ever know.”
    Miles opened his mouth, then shut it again, wondering as he often did if there was another sixteen-year-old like this one anywhere else in the world. “Tick,” he finally said.
    “I didn’t say I’d cheat on my husband,” she added. “I just said I can keep a secret.”
    Before Miles could respond, the bell above the front door tinkled and Janine materialized in the doorway, as if summoned by her daughter’s allusion. Without pausing for a moment, she headed right for them through the crowded restaurant. Tick, also without turning around in the booth, seemed to know that her mother had appeared, and she slid over next to the window to make room.
    “We weren’t expecting you for another hour, at least,” Miles said when Janine slid into the booth, pulled her sweatshirt over her head and revealed a hot-pink exercise leotard underneath.
    “Yeah, well, here I am, anyway,” she said. “And don’t be staring at my breasts, Miles. We were married for twenty years, and they never interested you that whole time.”
    Miles felt himself color, because he had been staring at them. “That’s not true,” he said weakly. Actually, he wasn’t really all that interested in them now, except for the fact that they were so completely on display beneath her leotard—though this wasn’t a subject he was keen on pursuing in front of their daughter.
    “I just finished up at the club,” Janine explained, “and I’m hot and sweaty and I haven’t even had a chance to shower.” She turned toward Tick. “You ready to go home?”
    “I guess,” Tick said.
    “You guess,” Janine repeated. “Is there somebody who’d know for sure? Somebody we could consult for a definitive answer?”
    “I have to get my backpack,” Tick told her. “You don’t have to be such a bitch every minute, do you?”
    “Yes, I do, little girl,” Janine said, sliding out of the booth so Tick could get out. “You’ll understand why when you’re forty.”
    “You’re forty-one,” Tick reminded her. “Forty-two this January.”
    Miles watched his daughter all the way into the back room, feeling, as he always did these days, a terrible mix of irreconcilable emotions—the shame of his failed marriage, anger at