Page 21 of Broken Secrets
“So instead you decided I should get nothing?” My voice cracks. “Instead of letting me decide if weekend visits were better than no visits, you just cut him out completely?”
“I was twenty-six years old with a three-week-old baby and my world had imploded!” Mom’s crying now, tears streaming down her face. “I wasn’t thinking clearly about long-term consequences. I was just trying to survive.”
“Well, congratulations. You survived. But I’ve spent eighteen years feeling like half a person because you were too hurt to let me know my own father.”
“And what if I was right?” Mom’s voice cracks. “What if you reached out to him now and he doesn’t want anything to do with you? What if he’s built his perfect little family and doesn’t want reminders of his mistakes?”
I think about the email I sent, the silence that’s followed. Maybe she’s right. Maybe he doesn’t want contact.
I grab my phone and my keys from the table.
“Where are you going?”
“Derek’s. I need to be around someone who doesn’t lie to me.”
“Olivia, please.”
But I’m already walking away, leaving her crying on the patio and Robert looking helpless in his chair.
As I drive toward Derek’s house, my hands shake on the steering wheel. The truth is somehow worse than I imagined. Not because Jeremy is terrible, but because he might not be terrible at all. Because I might have spent eighteen years missing out on a relationship that could have been good, all because Mom was too broken to see past her own pain.
But then I remember the email sitting unanswered in Jeremy’s inbox. Maybe Mom was right to protect me. Maybe some doors are meant to stay closed.
I pull into Derek’s driveway and sit in my car for a moment, trying to compose myself. Through his kitchen window, I can see him moving around, probably making coffee or cleaning up breakfast.
Normal things. Peaceful things.
Things that don’t involve family secrets and lies and the devastating realization your entire life has been shaped by someone else’s choices.
I grab my phone and text him.
Me
Can I come in? I know it’s early but I really need a friend right now.
His response comes immediately.
Derek
Door’s open. Coffee’s brewing.
As I walk up to his door, I think about what Mom said. About Jeremy choosing Lilly and Emma over us. About being second choice. But what if she’s wrong? What if Jeremy never got the chance to choose at all?
What if the only person who’s been making choices about my life is the woman who’s spent eighteen years lying to me about where I came from?
Derek opens his door before I can knock, wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt, his hair sticking up at odd angles.
“Hey,” he says softly, pulling me into a hug that smells like woodsy cologne and laundry detergent. “How bad was it?”
I bury my face in his chest and let myself fall apart, because Derek’s the only person in my life who lets me be broken without trying to fix me.
And right now, broken is exactly what I am. His living room is a mess of throw pillows scattered across the couch, empty coffee mugs on the side table, and the newspaper spread open to the sports section. But none of that matters right now. Whatmatters is that Derek is here, solid and real and not looking at me like I might break.
“Tell me,” he says simply, settling beside me on the couch with fresh coffee for both of us. “All of it.”
So I do. I tell him about the affair, about Lilly being her best friend, about Jeremy being there when I was born but Mom taking me and disappearing three weeks later. I tell him about Emma being only four months older than me, about both of us being products of the same betrayal.
Derek listens without interrupting, his coffee growing cold as I pour out eighteen years of family secrets and lies. When I get to the part about Mom making it legally impossible for Jeremy to see me, his jaw tightens.
