Chapter 18
that kind of “love”
Cecily
Mark’s sitting across from me, elbows on his knees, fingers wrapped around a mug he hasn’t taken a sip from in a while.
He studies me for a moment before asking, “How are you… with everything?”
It’s the first time we’ve seen each other this year. Mark spent Christmas in New Orleans with his grandmother, his only living relative. She’s eighty-eight now, doesn’t like leaving the house much, let alone traveling. He stayed with her for a few more weeks, soaking up every moment he could.
Last week, when I texted him after leaving my parents’ house and asked him to call when he had a moment, I already knew he had a full day ahead, a meeting with Renée and a few other commitments.
He called later that night, when I was sitting alone in my bedroom just after the kids had gone to sleep.
Ethan and Alicia could tell something was off, but I reassured them it wasn’t anything they needed to worry about. I couldn’t tell them the truth. Not when I was still trying to understand it myself… still trying to make sense of a world that had suddenly shifted beneath my feet again.
The moment I told him everything, Mark offered to fly back within a few days. But I told him it wasn’t necessary. I just needed his voice, someone steady to help me make sense of the mess my life had suddenly become.
Colin came by that night, after dinner. We didn’t talk. He sat with Alicia in the living room for a while, but she barely spoke. Just short, clipped answers, empty of anything that felt real.
But I saw it—the way his shoulders eased, just a fraction, simply because she was talking to him at all, for the first time since… everything.
Before leaving, he looked at me with that hollow kind of regret that can’t fix anything anymore. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m handling everything so you’ll never have to face the consequences of what I did again.”
I just nodded. There was nothing left to say.
And then he left.
I think for a moment before answering… because even I don’t really know how I am. As if there’s a single word big enough to hold what these last few days have felt like.
“I’m…” I start, then stop. “Honestly? I don’t even know.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just waits. That’s one of the things I’ve always appreciated about Mark. He never tries to fill the silence with empty words.
“The past few days have been awful,” I admit. “Every morning feels like waking up in the middle of something I can’t quite escape. I’m trying to find some kind of balance, between what I’ve lost, what I still have to process, and what I refuse to carry anymore.”
Mark’s gaze softens. “You’ve been through hell, Cecily.”
“Yeah.” I let out a breath that sounds more like a tremor.
He leans back, eyes searching mine. “Have you spoken to your parents again since that day?” he asks softly.
I hesitate, my throat tightening before the words even come. “They’ve called a few times,” I whisper.
His eyebrows lift slightly.
“And yesterday, while I was out getting groceries, my dad texted me. I hadn’t even noticed the two missed calls until I pulled my phone out of my purse. He said he was standing in front of my house.”
Mark straightens a little, his jaw tightening. “What did you do?”
“I told him I wasn’t home. He said he’d wait for me.”
“And?”
“I told him he could wait all he wanted, but only if he was ready to tell me the truth. The whole truth.”
I stop for a second, steadying my voice.
“When I got home with the groceries, he was already gone. No reply. Nothing.”
My mom’s been calling too, but only to ask me to talk to him, as if I’m the one who needs to fix what he broke.
Mark sets his mug down, rubbing the back of his neck. “Do you think he will?”
I swallow hard. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I just know I’m not willing to accept lies or half-truths anymore.”
For a while, neither of us speaks.
I draw in a slow breath and force a small smile. “But tell me more about New Orleans,” I say, needing the shift.
He returns a small, tentative smile of his own and starts sharing little pieces he hadn’t mentioned in our texts or late-night calls. Stories about his grandmother, the neighbors who insisted on sending him home with food.
I let his trip to New Orleans become the distraction I need right now, allowing myself—if only for a few minutes—to forget everything that has come undone in my life.
I look at the phone screen.
In less than five minutes, my mother will be here.
She called yesterday, asking if we could talk this morning while the kids were at school. When I asked if my father would be coming too, she told me he’d gone with an old coworker to a conference in Chicago and wouldn’t be back for two days.
I’d be lying if I said hearing that didn’t feel like déjà vu… all those “work trips” Colin used to take. Trips I once never questioned.
It’s unsettling how quickly your perception of someone can shift, how everything you trusted can suddenly feel painfully naive
Weeks ago, I would have called my father or driven to his house the moment he returned from his trip, asked how the conference had gone, and we would have talked for an hour, maybe longer.
The doorbell rings. I glance at the app, and the second I see it’s her, I go to the door. When I open it, she’s already looking at me, waiting for something I don’t give. I just step aside so she can come in.
Mom brushes a kiss against my cheek as she passes, like always, like nothing has changed.
I follow her into the living room and sit across from her.
She takes a big container out of her bag and places it on the coffee table.
“Berry chiffon cake. Your favorite. And your father’s too,” she says, her tone soft but pointed. “There’s enough for you and the kids.”
I thank her. She tells me to put it in the fridge while we talk. I offer to make her favorite tea, but she asks only for a glass of water.
When I return, I set the glass in front of her, but she doesn’t touch it.
“Before anything else,” she begins, her voice calm, “you need to know it was me. I was the one who insisted your father and I bury the subject and never speak of it again.”
She looks composed, but I notice the subtle movement of the hand resting on her knee, the faint tremor at the corner of her mouth at the end of each word.
“It’s not a time I like to remember. You and Colin were still living on the Upper East Side. We didn’t see each other that often, which made it easier to avoid questions. You had a little boy to care for. Telling you wouldn’t have changed anything.”
I nod slowly.
“And what about all the years after that?” I ask. “What about now, when the same thing has happened to me? Why not tell me then? Why keep insisting I shouldn’t go through with the divorce, to the point where we can barely talk without arguing—when you went through the exact same thing, Mom?”
She draws in a long, shaky breath.
“Because I know it doesn’t hurt forever,” she says. “Because I know you can survive this. It might feel impossible now, but when there’s love… there’s very little that can’t be overcome.”
I lower my head, unwilling to follow her down that road. Not when everyone around me keeps using ‘love’ as a way to romanticize the most selfish choices and unthinkable betrayals.
“Your father’s been suffering with the distance between you two,” she says gently. “You used to talk every day. You visited weekly.”
“And what about me, Mom?” I ask, sharper than I meant to. “Do you think this isn’t hurting me too? That I’m not disappointed in both of you?”
I look at her for a moment before speaking again. “With you, it’s different. You were hurt too. And from what I can see, you know just as little about what really happened as I do.”
“I know all I need to,” she replies, her voice firm, chin lifting in defiance. “That woman was vile—she seduced a married man.”
It stings how easily she says seduced, as if my father were a helpless man swept into someone else’s allure instead of the one who chose to betray her. But I don’t argue. I just let her talk.
“I found a red lipstick in one of your father’s jackets after he got back from a two-day trip to Cambridge.
” She pauses, swallowing hard. “I tried to come up with every possible explanation for how it ended up there. Told myself it must’ve belonged to a friend’s wife, something he’d picked up by accident to return later.
I put it back in the same pocket… and decided not to think about it again. ”
She stares past me, at some fixed point on the wall only she can see.
“A few weeks later, your father was invited to speak at a university in Ohio. The conference lasted five days, and he said he would stay three more to explore the city with some old colleagues. When he came back, I started unpacking his suitcase… and that’s when I found a scrap of red lace lingerie. ”
She falls silent. I don’t press.
As much as I want to know the rest, I understand. I’ve lived that moment.
The discovery. The sudden drop of your stomach.
The cold rush through your veins.
The kind of memory that stays with you and never really fades.
After a beat, she continues, her voice thinner now:
“The next time he mentioned traveling, I started paying closer attention. But nothing seemed different. He was still the same man. I don’t know what came over me, but I followed him that day when he left for the airport.
He said he was flying to Seattle… so when he didn’t take the highway to JFK, I knew something was wrong. ”
A tear slips down her cheek. She wipes it away quickly, as if the emotion itself were something to hide.
“Almost three hours later, he finally pulled up to a house in a quiet suburban neighborhood in Montauk. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat—terrified he’d somehow recognize my car, even with all the distance I kept. But he never once looked back.”
More tears spill, one after another. She keeps wiping them away, but they just keep coming.