Page 20 of Broken Secrets
“So,” I say, setting down my fork. “Jeremy….”
“Yes.”
“Start from the beginning. How did you meet?”
She takes a shaky breath. “High school. We were teens, thought we knew everything about love and life and forever.” A bitter smile crosses her face. “We got married right after graduation. I was nineteen, he was twenty. Way too young, but we were so sure we were different from everyone else who said we should wait.”
“Were you happy?”
“For a while. Yes.” She stares out at the ocean, like the answers are written in the waves. “We talked about having kids someday, building a life together. I was going to be an artist; he was going to work for the power company. We had it all figured out.”
“What changed?”
Her hands tighten around her coffee mug. “Life. Reality. The fact that being married is harder than being in love.”
“Mom.” I lean forward, forcing her to look at me. “What really happened? Why did you leave? Why don’t I know him?”
The silence stretches between us, heavy with eighteen years of unspoken truth. Mom sets down her mug and finally meets my eyes.
“He had an affair,” she says quietly. “With my best friend. Lilly.”
Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t this.
“Your best friend?”
“We’d been friends since grade school. She was my maid of honor, the person I trusted with everything.” her voice cracks. “They’d been together for almost a year before I found out. She was pregnant.”
“Pregnant.” The pieces start clicking together. “With Emma.”
She nods. “I found out about the affair the same day I discovered I was pregnant with you. Can you imagine? Finding out your husband is having a baby with your best friend while you’re carrying his child too?”
The unfairness of it hits me like a physical blow. Emma got to grow up with our father while I got a lifetime of questions. All because of an affair and a choice that was made before I was even born.
“Why didn’t he fight for me? Why didn’t he want custody?”
Her face crumples. “Because I made sure he couldn’t have it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I stayed near by, allowing him around until your birth—he was there, he held you, he signed your birth certificate. But three weeks later, when he sent me that letter about wanting to make it work with both families, I packed up everything and left Michigan with you.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I moved here, established residency, and filed for custody modification. Made it nearly impossible for him to see you.”
The revelation knocks the breath out of me. “You mean he doesn’t know where we are?”
“I mean I made it legally and practically impossible for him to have a relationship with you.”
“But why?” I stand up, my chair scraping against the patio stones. “If he wanted to be in my life, why would you stop him?”
“Because he chose her!” The words explode out of my mom, raw and painful. “He chose Lilly and their baby over you and me during the entire pregnancy. He was planning to marry her while I was carrying his child. He made his decision, so I made mine.”
“That’s not fair! You don’t get to make decisions about my relationship with my father!”
“I was protecting you.”
“From what? From having a father who might actually want to know me?”
She stands too; her face flushed with anger and pain. “From being second choice! From spending your life wondering why Emma gets to live with Daddy while you get weekend visits and birthday cards! From watching him prioritize his ‘real’ family over you!”
Robert half-rises from his chair like he wants to intervene but doesn’t know how.
