The lit path up to the scientific and research trailers simply glows tonight beneath the amazing-as-all-fuck African sky. Out here, it’s like you can feel the whole world in your tiny palm. Like the whole universe is speaking right through to your soul.

The fireflies buzz around me, sparkling as I trek the paperwork from the latest lion birth up to the office. I know it’s necessary to track and mark every single thing on a preservation. I know we need to keep order and files on our business to keep it running. But it doesn’t mean I want any part in the task. I’d rather get beaten over the head with a rubber mallet than spend my night documenting.

I’d been in Tanzania almost eight months and I doubted I’d ever feel the urge to leave. The work I was getting to do here? The people? Top notch. It was like living in a less jungle-like Jurassic Park. Without all the murder by dinosaur and bad Jeff Goldblum impressions.

Sure, I missed my friends at home. I wished that the time difference wasn’t so terrible so that I could talk to Clint more. I missed sleeping three to a bed with Chloe and Minka. I missed hanging out with Jackson at the East Coast preserves. But I felt my work here was too important. The things I was doing, the animals I was saving, they were too vital.

As I neared the small complex of buildings that was deemed the administrative offices, I noticed the lit panel of windows. It was late, no one was supposed to be in the office at this hour. As it was, I was way past due with my paperwork and it was the only reason that I was up here.

All of the buildings were basically walls of glass windows that allowed the office staff to watch the animals throughout the day.

Which was why, as I neared the conference room that was lit up like the Fourth of July, I could see two people clearly in the middle of fucking each other’s brains out on the sustainable wood table.

Awkward! I feel like I found myself in these situations a lot. Must be the world’s way of confirming just how odd I was. I giggled, trying to figure out a way to let myself into the building without disturbing their obviously secret tryst.

But then they moved. And I saw their faces. The woman, Candace, my parent’s executive assistant had her chest and stomach flat against the surface, trying to grip at something as she was fucked from behind.

The person giving it to her? My father. My very married father.

The whirring in my ears was so loud that I almost couldn’t hear the erratic beat of my heart. My face was burning with shame and embarrassment. One at finding them, but also because this was my father. The one who had never shown any ounce of compassion or warmth toward another human being, especially my mother.

I’d learned a long time ago that my parents did not have a typical marriage. They were not warm or loving, most of the time they seemed so uninterested in each other that I wondered why they were still together. And they could never be bothered with the needs of me, their child.

But for him to be screwing around on her? Behind her back? In such an obvious and cheap way. It was disgusting. My mouth filled with saliva and I knew I was going to be sick. I ran for the bushes that would hide my retching and let my stomach come up and out my throat.

When I glanced up again, they were still there out of the corner of my eye. I could feel the big, salty tears dripping onto my shirt and realized I was crying. My mother was not a saint, she could barely be concerned with anything outside of her animal science projects, but she did not deserve this.

I ran for the dirt path I’d just cheerily walked up. My thoughts were going a mile a minute as I sprinted back down to the housing village. And then it all came clear. If it were me, I would want to know. Not that it ever would be. My parents had guaranteed that. Love between two people was not everlasting, and hardly even existed. This cemented that even more.

My mind was made up. I had to tell her.

Checking her tent, I found it empty, as usual. There was only one place she ate, slept and breathed.

Trekking across the grounds, my stomach balled into ugly pit-sized knots, I still felt like I might toss my cookies. How did you tell your mother that your father was up in the office right now screwing the woman she worked the most closely with every single day?

I found her in the lab, pouring over dozens of stacks of papers on her wide, metal desk.

“Mother…” My voice caught in my throat, threatening to unleash the well of tears behind my eyes.

She couldn’t even be bothered to look up at my entrance. “What is it?”

“I…up at the offices…” I didn’t know how to proceed with this. I’d never had a bonding or intimate moment with my mother, and this was certainly not an easy way to start.

Finally, she looks up, her fiery hair tamed back as usual in a sleek bun. “Spit it out, Kelsey Elizabeth, I have work to do.”

“Dad, he’s up at the offices with Candace.” I try to convey with my eyes just exactly what they’re doing up at the offices. I know she gets the message the minute her eyes fill with concern and upset. But after the flicker, it’s completely gone. Replaced by the cool exterior I have come to associate with Madeline.

“What your father does with his free time is none of my concern. As long as his work on the preserve is uninterrupted, he can have whatever flings he likes.”

I feel like she’s told me Santa Claus isn’t real all over again. I’m gobsmacked, and I know I’m crying at this point even if the rest of my body is numb. “How the hell can you say that?! He is your husband! He is your family!”

I can feel the anger and upset clouding my vision, building into a full on shit fit. “You’re just going to let her tear your marriage apart? How can you just sit here?!”

My mother sighs, finally picking her head back up from where she’d been writing some notes with her signature expensive black fountain pen. “I know you are a young woman, naive and inexperienced. So you won’t understand when I tell you this, but marriage is not about love. Love is a farce, a young girl’s fairytale. Real marriage? It supplies surety, a partnership to a better living. Your father and I have not been a married couple, the way you think one should be, in a very long time. He has his ‘friends’ and I get to keep the rousing scientist as mine. The intelligent business partner that I came into this partnership for. Humans are so fickle, trying to make fate and feelings part of our cohabitation decisions. You’ve seen how animals are. They mate, they move on. No attachments or hard feelings. We would all be better off if that’s how we lived our lives.”