Chapter Five
Saturday morning arrives gray and overcast, the marine layer thick enough to muffle the usual sounds of surfers and joggers on the beach.
I check my email one more time - still nothing from Jeremy.
Part of me wonders if the email even went through, or if his business account automatically filters messages from strangers.
Maybe it’s for the best. After today’s conversation with mom, I might not even want his response anymore.
Downstairs, Mom’s already in the kitchen, wearing her weekend uniform of yoga pants and an oversized sweater. She’s making pancakes, the fancy kind with blueberries and lemon zest, which means she’s either nervous or trying to soften me up for bad news.
“Morning, sweetheart,” she says without turning around. Her voice sounds strained, like she’s been practicing normal conversation in the mirror.
“Morning.”
Robert’s at the kitchen island with his Saturday crossword puzzle, but I can tell he’s not really solving clues. His pen hasn’t moved in the five minutes I’ve been watching him.
“Sleep well?” he asks, glancing up.
“Like a baby,” I say.
Mom sets a plate of pancakes in front of me, along with real maple syrup and fresh strawberries. Comfort food for an uncomfortable conversation.
“These look amazing,” I say, because someone needs to acknowledge the effort she’s putting into this performance of normalcy.
“Thought we could eat on the patio,” she suggests. “It’s nice out.”
It’s not nice out. It’s cloudy and humid and the kind of weather that makes you want to stay inside with the curtains drawn. But I nod anyway.
The patio table overlooks our tiny backyard, where Robert’s been cultivating what he optimistically calls a garden. Three tomato plants and some herbs struggling to survive in sandy soil. Beyond the fence, I can hear the ocean, waves rolling steady and predictable.
We eat in silence for a few minutes. Mom pushes her pancakes around her plate, taking tiny bites that she chews thoroughly before swallowing. Robert clears his throat several times, like he wants to say something but can’t find the words.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore.
“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.
“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. What matters 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.
“That’s not right,” he says quietly. “Whatever Jeremy did to your mom, that doesn’t give her the right to keep you from knowing your father.”
“But what if she was protecting me? What if being second choice would have been worse than being nothing at all?”
“You don’t know you would have been second choice. That’s your mom’s assumption, not fact.”