“That was not a real camp. Real camps don’t put their kids up in suites and serve meals on fine china. That was Constance’s influence, and I should have known better than to ever listen to her,” she mutters bitterly, throwing the car into park. She and my dad’s mother will only ever see eye-to-eye when they’re both six feet under, their corpses facing each other. “And, besides, you’ve never been a counselor before. It’s a whole different ball game.”

I sigh. “But why does it have to be at a camp three hours away from home?”

“Oh, look! They still have the wishing well!” she exclaims, ignoring my grumbles, waving her lacquered fingernails toward a circular stone-and-wood structure. The lake peeking through the row of tall, scraggly pine trees beyond it is a dark, cold, uninviting blue. “This brings back so many good memories. I always looked forward to my summers here.”

“You grew up in a whole different world than me, Mom.” Public school and family camping vacations at state parks; a tiny two-bedroom farmhouse and sharing a room with Aunt Jackie; drugstore hair-dye boxes and Sears shopping sprees once a year for back-to-school. A station wagon with a gaping hole in the floor of the front passenger seat, if Gramps’s stories are true.

It’s a far cry from the life she married into, the life I know—of a sprawling six-bedroom luxury home, of private school that costs more than many people earn in a year, ski vacations at our Aspen chalet in the winter, and lazy summer days at our beach house on Martha’s Vineyard, if we’re not jetting off somewhere. I know I’m lucky, and I never take it for granted. But gratitude only goes so far. “If you’re going to force me into this—and, by the way, I’m pretty sure there are parenting studies that speak out against this sort of thing—couldn’t I have at least gone to White Pine?”

She glares at me. “You just said you hated White Pine!”

“Yeah, but at least the rooms are air-conditioned.” The website for this place says I’m going to “become one with nature in a charmingly cozy cabin that holds ten campers and two counselors.” Translation: packed into a crowded, stuffy shed for the next eight weeks. With bugs.

“Trust me, Piper. We’re doing you a favor. It’ll be good for you to experience another side of life. The normal side. I’ve tried my best to keep you grounded, but . . . this’ll help teach you to be more conscious of our wealth.”

I struggle not to roll my eyes. Mom’s always talking about how we should try living a more “normal life,” like “normal people.” Ironically, the topic usually comes up as she’s flipping through the catalogue for her next new sports car, or writing a check to pay the caterers for the latest party she’s hosted, or pouring a celebratory glass of pricey cognac for my father when he closes his latest multimillion-dollar deal.

Hell, we drove here in her Porsche!

The truth is, she may not have been born into money, but she has slid into the role of a prim and proper socialite wife to a business tycoon husband so smoothly, no one would ever guess her modest upbringing.

Though, I fear that role is about to change to that of ex-wife.

“So making me do this has nothing to do with you and Dad wanting the summer alone to sort out the details of your divorce?” I finally dare ask, my voice cracking slightly at that last word. One I never imagined uttering in relation to Kieran and Alison Calloway.

Mom shoots me a look but doesn’t offer an answer, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel instead. Her official stance has always been that marital problems are between the adults and not up for discussion with the children. The fact that I know about the “mistake” my father made with a redheaded architect in LA and that a divorce lawyer’s business card slipped out of Mom’s wallet a few weeks ago hasn’t affected her refusal to divulge anything thus far.

“Mom . . .”

“I’m spending a few days at your aunt Jackie’s and then heading out to the summer house so I can think.”

“And are you going to let Dad visit?” I press, a hint of a pleading tone entering my voice. Their raised voices have carried to my bedroom more than once, as of late. My father, insisting that he fly out for the weekends so they can “work things out and move on.”

My mother, insisting that he not.

“He said he was sorry, Mom,” I offer more softly. It feels like the right thing to say in a situation that I’m still struggling to wrap my head around. It also feels like a last-ditch effort to avert what I’m guessing is inevitable.

Her eyes blink in rapid fire to fight the threatening tears from spilling. “I’m trying, Piper,” she whispers hoarsely. “But what he did was—” Her lips purse tightly, as if to seal away the rest of that sentence from escaping, as if too much has already been divulged.

My chest tightens with this rare display of vulnerability from my mother, who keeps her mask of confidence and self-assuredness in place at all times.

What he did was break her heart.

I swallow against the forming lump in my throat and try a different angle. “I deserve to know if I’m coming home to a ‘For Sale’ sign on our lawn, don’t I?” I haven’t seen any real estate agent cards slip from her wallet as of yet.

It’s a long moment before I catch the soft sigh and subtle nod. She clears her throat, and the calm, collected façade is back. “You and your father have a special bond, and I don’t want to say anything that might damage that,” she begins carefully. “Our problems don’t begin and end with his . . . indiscretion.” Her jaw clenches with that word. “Things have not been going well for some time.”

“Is it because he works so much?”

“That certainly doesn’t help.”

For Kieran Calloway, time has always been a valuable commodity, awarded mostly to one business meeting or the next, and never wasted. He’s rarely on time for dinner, and usually comes late to our family vacations and leaves early, granting us no more than five or six days at a time, half of that spent on the phone or his computer.

And yet, for as long as I can remember, he has always found time for me. I used to sit on his lap in his office and make him explain the latest building designs to me over and over again, a thousand “why” questions rolling off my tongue, his display of patience a rarity, seemingly available only for his baby girl. I remember looking out on the city as he’d describe with passion how he wanted the skyline and the downtown core to look one day, drawing in the air with his fingertip. I’ve always been in awe of him—of how he can take an idea and then convince all these people to help him make it a concrete-and-glass reality.

Now we go for days with our paths never crossing and, when they do, he’s usually grilling me on my grades, my tennis scores, and any boyfriend who he needs to approve. Every so often, he’ll poke his head into my room at night—his tie hanging loose around his neck, his face drawn from exhaustion—to see if I’m awake and, if I am, he’ll settle down beside me and tell me about the derelict factory he just bought or the famous architect he just hired. Details of his day that my mother and brother have no interest in hearing, but that I absorb like a blanket of comfort as I curl against him, hanging onto every word.