Tell Me Everything

To put his mind at ease, Bob buys Matt a cell phone and sets it up so that he can track Matt’s location. Matt asks if he can track Bob, too, and Bob agrees, even though he does not let Margaret track him. When Matt wonders why not, Bob explains that it is because he is trying to hide his smoking habit. Sheepishly, Matt tells Bob that he can always smell the cigarette smoke on Bob’s clothes. “Oy,” Bob replies—but he cannot wait to tell Lucy about the conversation.

Olive calls Bob and tells him a fact she just remembered about Diana Beach. Olive was friends with the mother of the woman who had been Diana’s guidance counselor, and the mother once let slip to Olive that Diana Beach had been sexually abused as a child. Bob tries to find out more, but there are no police reports of any abuse. When Bob asks Matt about it on the phone that night, Matt says he doesn’t really know what happened.

Time passes, and Bob is increasingly tormented by his feelings for Lucy. One day, Bob sees Lucy at the grocery store, and he is about to go over and greet her. But before he does so, Bob notices that Lucy is having a conversation with a woman who used to work in the local bookstore. To Bob’s surprise, Lucy appears to be cold and impolite to this woman. With a start, Bob realizes he does not know Lucy as well as he thinks he does, and he recalls her words from days earlier: “we are all standing on shifting sand.”

Ever since her fight with Bob, Margaret has felt uneasy. She is especially haunted by her own falseness in the moment when she accused Bob of raising his arm to her. At breakfast one morning, Margaret nervously asks Bob if he loves her. “Of course I do,” Bob says, seeming genuinely surprised by the question.