Read Barefoot Beach for Free Online Page B

girl a congratulatory e-card and posted a photo of her with Alex Trebek on my Facebook page. With Tiffanie, I just listened and lost sleep.
    â€œThe call wasn’t from Tiffanie. But yeah, she’s involved in a way. You and I were going to talk,” he said. “We really have to, Mom. Now.”
    My heart flipped. It bounced so high on the rebound it nudged a cough from my throat.
    There was space next to Jack on Mooncussers Rock and I fervently hoped he’d pat an invitation to sit down, because my legs were suddenly too weak to hold me. But he stood up. “I’ve got pins and needles in my ass from this rock.” Wry smile. “Let’s walk.”
    It was going to be bad. He’d said Tiffanie was involved. He wanted us to be on the beach, among people, because he knew I wouldn’t make a scene in public and he was afraid I’d scream and froth at the mouth when he told me she was pregnant and he was going to quit college and live with her and the triplets over her parents’ garage. Or she’d written a sequel to
Fifty Shades of Grey
, only it wasn’t fiction—it was autobiographical, and she’d named names and devices. Or she . . .
    â€œThis goes way back,” Jack was saying. Somehow I was walking. Alongside him. One bare foot in front of the other. I’d gotten a pedicure before leaving Baltimore, and on a whim I’d had my toenails painted blue. What had I been thinking? Beach equals carefree; that’s what. Not this.
    Jack took my arm as if I were an old lady in danger of toppling over. “The phone call was from the Baltimore Fertility Bank.”
    It took me a moment to recognize a name that had once sounded like poetry.
    â€œI called there yesterday before I left Durham. I asked them to start the process for me to contact my Donor Dad. My DD.”
    Donor Dad! DD! Freshly minted phrases I didn’t like the sound of.
    It wasn’t long after we told Jack about the circumstances surrounding his conception that he’d nicknamed #1659 “Sixteen.” For a while, after he’d helped scatter his dad’s ashes on the ocean behind the Surf Avenue house, he didn’t talk about Sixteen. Maybe he thought it would be disrespectful to Lon’s memory. Then, a few years later, he did ask some questions. What state did Sixteen live in? I didn’t know, I told him. I could only assume he’d been living in Maryland when he’d donated. The sperm bank wanted you close by. But the donation was immediately frozen to last for a long time, so by now he could be anywhere. What did he looklike? I stalled on that one, trying to decide what Lon would have done, then showed him the photo of the blond kid. “Cute,” he’d said, and printed out a copy that I never saw again. The bar mitzvah of his best friend set off a round of questions. What religion was Sixteen? Which led to: Was he athletic? Good in math?
    I consulted my shrink friend. “Tell him everything you know,” Josh advised. So I did. And that seemed to satisfy Jack. But on his sixteenth birthday, after an impromptu party at a friend’s house, he came home laughing-jag drunk on Goldschläger, cocked a finger at me, and said, “Here’s a riddle for you. I’m sixteen, right? And my donor is Sixteen, right? So what’s sixteen from sixteen? Zero, right? Oh boy, I am so shitfaced.” He got grounded for a week; I agonized for months.
    â€œDoes that mean he thinks he’s a zero?” I’d asked the same psychiatrist.
    â€œEvery adolescent boy has self-esteem issues, Nora,” he said. “But soon they grow out of the acne and into their egos. Your son sounds pretty clever, by the way. The sixteen-from-sixteen riff. He was just showing off. I wouldn’t make a big deal of it.”
    Last year, after guzzling too many beers at a family cookout, my brother had taken Jack aside for a private conversation. Mick had