When I was 10, I gave my mother a Polaroid I found in Daddy’s briefcase. She had been in the hallway, painting the knotty pine.

My mother, Imogene, was beautiful: Long legs, auburn hair, green-gold eyes. I looked like my father, pale and slightly stocky, hair like wheat both in color and texture. The attributes worked well on my athletic, masculine father, less so on me.

We lived in a cottage close to the university. Our neighbors were young professors and graduate students. A child in an otherwise childless neighborhood, I rode my banana-seat Schwinn up and down the sidewalk and preened. I used words like virtuoso and happenstance and could define them properly and, while I adored my parents, I was just a satellite caught between two heavenly bodies: Parker Wells the youngest tenured professor in UT history, and his retired ballerina wife.

We knew him, the tanned hirsute young man in the photo. He was Ward, Daddy’s TA in the classics department. Reclining on his side, a lion’s mane of golden hair, one hand outstretched to the photographer, beckoning. Laughing, his mouth slightly parted, dazzling teeth in a Cheshire smile. He was naked on the Turkish carpet, the one my parents bought in Cappadocia on their honeymoon. My father’s briefcase sat forlornly in the left corner, an unwitting voyeur to the affair.

I had been infatuated with Ward, a heartsick cheerleader pandering to the uninterested quarterback. He was patient, but I could sense his distaste. Other adults in the classics department, those who wanted as much of Daddy’s attention as Ward received, proclaimed me “adorable” and “a prodigy,” but Ward was my singular desire. I gave him dandelions, sticks of Fruit Stripe, a drawing of Pyramus and Thisbe.

Though not enamored of me, he lavished affection upon Imogene. Ward, standing on the front porch, a stack of graded papers on his hip, bearing bluebonnets for my mother. Ward and Imogene sitting in the front porch swing, laughing over Maude. Imogene and Ward, mixing gin and tonics and dancing on our back porch while Daddy and I applauded their lissome tango.

I stood in the hallway as Imogene collapsed in a sobbing heap. The day before, we’d made curtains for my bedroom; Imogene said the yellow gingham was happy and bright, just like me. I did not feel happy or bright. That morning, I had been jumping rope outside the next-door neighbors’ house and overheard, “That’s just Calli, Parker and Imogene’s kid.”

“Parker and Imogene Wells? Fat little dumpling. I never would’ve guessed.”

I stood in the half-painted hallway, staring at Imogene’s face contorted by knowledge. She dropped the crumpled photograph and reached for me. I picked up the Polaroid and smoothed it as best I could. I left her there, crying into the shag carpeting. In my yellow-happy bedroom, I added the photograph of Ward to my box of treasures: cicada husks, a rabbit’s foot keychain, and butterfly wings.