Page 113 of The Roads We Follow

“What are you saying? That you knew I wasn’t yours?”

“Youaremine,” my father says in a constricted voice. “In every way that’s ever mattered to me,you are mine.” He clears his throat. “I’ve long wanted to have this conversation with you, but out of respect for your mother’s wishes, I’ve stayed quiet. My plan was to tell you when I got home—I even have a letter for you from your mother.”

“You have a ... a letter?” I blink rapidly. “You knew? All this time?”

“Please, son, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

I close my eyes. “I’m listening.”

“I was in love with your mother for several years before she trusted me enough to share the darker parts of her history with me as a friend. I drove for their summer tours and escorted her to dinners when she asked, and sometimes, on the rare nights when she felt particularly open, she would stay up late with me to count the stars. Those were the nights she’d tell me about the monster who lived in her home when she was growing up and all the reasons she vowed never to marry or have children of her own. She didn’t want to carry on her pain, and she struggled to believe she could ever be truly healed. I was honest about my feelings for her, but I respected her enough to honor her wishes and learn to love her as my friend, even though I wanted her as my wife.”

I search the waters beyond, mirroring my father’s words with my mother’s voice in her journals.

“Your mom was at the peak of her career in the early ’90s, but she wasn’t happy. I remember being shocked when I saw her on that last summer tour with Luella. She’d lost so much weight due to whatever new prescription she was hooked on at the time, and her relationship with Luella was a constant guessing game—sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes nonexistent. The stresses and pressures of fame had taken a toll on them both.” He takes a breath. “The night before we rolled into Nashville, I told your mother I loved her, but she replied with all the reasons it would never work between us. Despite what I wanted, I left to go back home to Montana without her. I’ve never regretted a single decision more in my life.”

He’s quiet for so long this time, I’m not sure if he’s still there.

“Dad?”

“I’m sorry, son. I’m trying.” He takes a breath. “Your mother and Luella got into an argument after I left, and she met up with a man she used to trust, someone who’d known her a long time.” Bile rises in my throat, and everything in me wants to tell him I’ve heard enough, but the sound of my father’s hoarse baritone on the other end of the line keeps me quiet. “He consoled her and offered herthe validation she was desperate for at the time. He took advantage of her trust in every way possible.”

I try and fail to block the smug face of Troy from my mind. “And she found out she was pregnant soon after,” I surmise. “How did she tell you?”

“She flew to Montana. She quite literally showed up on my doorstep and asked me if I’d meant what I’d said. I confirmed that I did. And then she asked if I’d be the father of her baby.” His words are choked, strained. “She told me I was the only man she’d ever known to show her love, and she wondered if that love was big enough to include a child that could never be mine by blood.”

“And you ... you just agreed?”

He’s quiet for a moment before he says, “There was no alternative, Micah. I loved her—allof her. Her past, her present, her future. I loved her through her pain, through her grief, through her trauma, and through all the healing that would eventually come.I loved her. There was no question I would love her unborn child, too.”

It takes me a minute to find my breath. “Why didn’t either of you ever tell me this?”

“We went round and round about it. It was the biggest conflict in our marriage for years. Ultimately, we were on two different sides of the fence. I saw it as necessary truth, and she saw it as a necessary protection in light of who and what that guy was. She did agree to a compromise when you were a boy, though: if there was ever a medical or safety reason to divulge the details for your sake, she would. Yet as active as you were, you never so much as broke a bone.”

I wipe my nose with the hem of my shirt. “I’m thirty years old now, Dad. Was sheeverplanning on telling me?”

“She always said she would tell you before you started a family of your own. But once we received your mother’s prognosis, she asked me if I would talk to you after she was gone. Neither of us wanted your last memories of her to be tainted by this, and I ... I can’t say if that was the right choice or not. It’s certainly not the first time in parenting I’ve felt out of my depth. I’ve been praying about thetiming of this conversation since I got to Alaska. I’d planned to take you out on the boat once we were both settled at home—figured we’d discuss it while fishing.” His honesty nearly makes me laugh. My dad was forever saving significant conversations for fishing. Only, this time, I got to him first.

“Micah, when I held you in my arms that first time, I prayed God would allow me to be the father you needed, and wherever I fell short, that He would fill in the gaps. I knew, even then, that keeping your mother’s secret for her would come at a cost. I just prayed that the cost would be less than what it cost her to keep it.”

“I found him, Dad,” I say. “I sat with Troy Rigger at a bar last night at the Gorge Amphitheater.”

There’s a brief pause. “Oh, son.”

“He doesn’t know who I am, but I needed to know who he was. And now that I do, I want nothing more to do with him.”

“I’m sorry. I wish there was a better ending I could offer you than this.”

“There is,” I cut in. “I’m living it. I don’t even want to imagine the man I would have become under his influence. Or the kind of pain he would have caused Mom if she’d stayed with a guy like that.”

“I’ve laid awake many nights thinking the same thing. To me, you were always meant to be Micah Franklin Davenport. I love you, son. I hope you can forgive me for keeping this from you for so long.”

It’s several beats before I can speak again as I watch a hawk fly the distance across the river. “I do, Dad. And I love you, too.”

We’re quiet on the line for some time, each of us lost in our thoughts. It’s a familiar and comfortable silence, one we’ve practiced at campfires, hunting excursions, and hours upon hours of fishing trips. But today we’re not side-by-side, we’re an ocean apart, which means I can’t read him the way I normally can.

I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand and clear my throat. “I have other news to share if you have another minute. It’s of the good variety.”

“I think we’re both due some good news right about now.”

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