Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 84000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
She presses her lips together and looks up at him. Something passes between them, like they know something Oliver and I don’t.
“I want something different for myself,” she says. “Now that you’re all making your own way in the world. I want something more.”
“More than Dad?” I ask. My dad is the most charming, funny, charismatic man, and he’s worked his ass off for this family. What’s the more she wants? Does she want to move to London and shack up with Idris Elba, or whoever a woman hurtling towards sixty sees herself shacking up with?
“You need to be honest,” Noah says. “We need to understand.”
A long silence settles on the table. We’re all waiting for Mom to tell us what she wants, what’s happened, and why she doesn’t want to be married to Dad anymore. An ember of anger starts to simmer in my gut. How can she do this to him—to all of us?
“Will you keep the house?” My voice is a twisted shriek as I imagine the For Sale sign in the yard. All the memories we made here would disappear if she sold the house.
Noah reaches for my hand. I can’t remember him ever holding my hand before. My mouth goes dry. I’m staring at Mom, willing her to give me the answers I want to hear.
She pulls in a deep breath. “I discovered some time ago that your father was having an affair.”
It’s like someone’s reached down my throat and pulled out a lung. I can’t breathe.
An affair? Dad was always devoted to my mother. Wasn’t he?
My brothers are silent, and Mom doesn’t say anything else.
That can’t be it. I want to know everything.
“Okay,” I say. “But relationships survive affairs, don’t they? I mean, you’ve been together for so long. Is it worth throwing everything away for?”
She offers me a pitiful smile. “The affair never ended. In fact, it might have started before we met.” She shakes her head. “I really have no idea. But your dad wasn’t on the road for work all the time.” She emphasizes on the road, like it’s code for something.
Maybe it is.
My vision starts to blur, the image of Mom and my brothers merging in front of me.
Oliver’s jaw is slack and his mouth is open, but Noah doesn’t look as shocked. He’s got one hand on mine and the other around Mom.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Noah says.
“No, it’s not okay,” I snap. “Can you stop giving us bits and pieces of I don’t know what and tell us what’s going on?”
Mom squares her shoulders. “Your father has been seeing a woman in Dayton for years—twenty-five at least. He splits his time between here and there. He’s done it for most of our marriage. When I found out, you were three years old.” She nods at me. “I had a young family and a part-time job. So I made it work.” She shrugs. “Sometimes I’d pretend it wasn’t happening and that he was on the road for work. Most of the time, I convinced myself that you can’t get everything you want out of life, so I should be happy with my wonderful children and my beautiful house and my generally happy life. I just didn’t get a whole husband. Other times, I’d cry myself to sleep at night.”
My head is spinning and my stomach turns inside out. I pull at the collar of my sweater, desperate for air. I don’t know which mind-blowing revelation to focus on. It all seems so bizarre, so completely removed from the reality I grew up with.
“Are you sure?” I ask. It seems so farfetched that Dad—our father, who’d chase us around the yard with the hose in the middle of summer, who would stuff broccoli into his ear to try to make us laugh if one of us had a bad day at school, who cried when I left for college—could spend his time around someone else’s dinner table too.
“I’m sure,” she says.
“Does he know you know?” I ask.
She lets out a cynical laugh. “He’s known since the day I found out. She was pregnant by then.”
“The… mistress? Pregnant?” Oliver asks.
“You have half-siblings,” Mom says. “Two, I think. A boy and a girl.”
“You’re telling us Dad has another whole family in Dayton?” Oliver asks, but Noah stays quiet.
Completely quiet.
“Noah,” I say, my voice laced with suspicion. “Did you know?”
He pulls in a deep breath. “No, I didn’t know.”
Well, that’s something. At least my brother wasn’t lying to me, too.
“I suspected something,” he adds. Even though my stomach is on the floor, it drops further.
Mom reaches for Noah’s arm and he pats her hand.
“I saw him once,” Noah says. “In Dayton. Danny’s mom had taken us to a skatepark there while she went to Costco, and he was there, on the other side of the bowl. I was practicing my drop-ins, and there he was.”