Page 9 of A Family Affair: The Cabin
“An understanding?What, I stay away from your apartment so you can play house with another woman? You told me you needed to think, that you required hours and hours of quiet so you could work on your projects. I believed you.” Elissa swiped both hands across her cheeks.Damn tears. “I did the math. We must have just started dating when Julia found out she was pregnant. Why didn’t you tell me then? Did I not deserve to know? Or, did you think you could have both of us? Two separate families and neither of us knowing about the other?” The tears streamed down her cheeks to her chin, onto her chest. “Damn you, Zachary, did you think so little of me that you thought I didn’t deserve the truth?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you because…I couldn’t let you go.I love you, Elissa, love you so much it hurts.”
She swiped at her face again, blinked hard. “Do not say that.”
“But it’s true. I love you. You, Elissa Cerdi, and it’s you I want to marry.” He dragged a hand through his hair, sighed. “Julia and I were together before I met you; nothing serious, just a few laughs and a drink or two.”
“I think it was a little more than laughs and drinks.”
His jaw tensed but he remained calm. “Okay, we had a thing, but when I headed home after the conference, we were done. I didn’t hear from her again until after you and I were getting serious…that’s when she told me she was pregnant. I wanted to tell you, and I kept trying to find a time, but I was so damn worried I’d lose you…”
“So you proposed instead?”
“That’s not why I proposed.” His dark eyes softened. “I proposed because I loved you. And I still do.” He moved toward her. “Julia’s a great person and I love my son, but she’s not the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with…that person is you.”
When he talked like that it was hard to tell if he were lying or if he meant what he said. “She called you her fiancé.”
Those lips she’d kissed so many times pulled into a gentle smile. “Saying it and wishing it doesn’t make it true. She wanted a life with me, but that wasn’t going to happen. Do you know why?” His smile deepened. “Because I wanted a life with you; the whole ‘happily-ever-after,’ babies, and suburbs. With you, Elissa, nobody else.”
He sounded so convincing, so honest. A tiny piece of her believed him. “Why did she have a key to your apartment?” If he could answer that and it made sense…
“She said that was the only way I could see Christopher.” The dip in his voice pierced her heart. “He’s my child, and no matter how he got here, I love him. I had to do whatever it took to see him and I couldn’t tell you, not yet. I’m sorry, but I was so damn afraid of losing you.”
There were tears in his eyes, pain in his voice. She inched out her next words. “Have you been sleeping with her?”
“No! God, no.”
He answered so quickly and with such force, how could shenotbelieve him? And yet, he’d looked away, just for a second, as if gathering his thoughts or maybe hiding something he didn’t want her to see. Like the rest of the truth? Could she live her life wondering what he was doing when he wasn’t with her? Would she be one of those women who resorted to checking his phone and computer for signs of…what? Another woman?Another life?Would she end up like Gloria Blacksworth, estranged from her family, spending her final days with hired help because she’d refused to confront the truth?
Maybe Zachary was in some bizarre way a victim of bad timing and bad choices. But he’d kept it all a secret, living a lie that included another woman and a baby.
“Elissa, baby…I know you have a lot of questions, and I know you’re hurt.” His voice cracked. “Whatever you want to know, all you have to do is ask. Okay? Anything. I don’t want to lose you.” He paused, touched her cheek. “I love you.”
Those three words gave her the answer she needed.I love you. Had he spoken those same words to Julia? Only a fool would believe he hadn’t, and only a fool would believe he wasn’t lying to her right now. She’d spent her whole life believing in the goodness of others, trusting them to do right, refusing to acknowledge the dark side of human nature.
And look what had happened? She’d believed everything her fiancé told her, no questions, no suspicions, nothing but blind trust and belief in that damn goodness…
“Elissa? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
Now he would tell her about his double life?
Now he would tell her the other woman was a mistake and the baby was a consequence of that mistake?
Now he would tell her that if she only gave him a chance, he’d worship her, cherish her, never, ever give her reason to doubt him again? He’d earn her trust back and spend the rest of his days proving he loved her.
He would make her happy.
If she only gave him a chance.
Maybe the words would hold true, or maybe they would only be true the moments before and after he spoke them. Maybe when he walked out the door, he would return to his old life, hisotherlife.
Who could say? Certainly, she couldn’t, but what shecouldsay and what she knew deep in her soul was that she couldn’t trust him, not anymore. If she couldn’t trust him, what future did they have?
None.
She knew that, even as she motioned him into the living room, sat in the rocker her parents had given her when she moved into the apartment, and eased the look-alike notebook she’d created to mimic Mrs. Blacksworth’s from the end table. There was pain and sadness in this book, and so much torment. Was it not fitting that Elissa should add her own pain to these pages? She grabbed a pen, opened the notebook to a blank page, and said, “Start talking.”
Two hours and twenty-three minutes later, Zachary finished his tale. There were tears with the telling, gasps and long sighs accompanied by folded hands, soft pleas, and a prayer or two. Elissa observed and jotted down his words like a stenographer in a courtroom, emotion removed. She tried to focus on the details as she wrote: the sound of his voice, the gestures, the pauses. It was as much what he did not say as what he said that mattered. Later, she would piece it all together as she and her mother had when they’d set out quilting squares for a comforter. Once the pieces were in place, she would look for patterns in his words that contained truths and nontruths. The smallest details, when stitched together, often carried the greatest significance.
