5 - THE TRUTH EXPOSED #3
Victoria saw it all in fragments—the way Joey’s mouth opened and closed without sound, the way his hands clenched into fists at his sides, the way his face went pale and then red and then pale again.
She saw his eyes track from her disheveled clothes to Brock’s unbuttoned jeans to the grease-smeared hand that had frozen halfway to his zipper. She saw the exact moment he understood.
The laptop bag hit the concrete.
“What the fuck,” Joey said. His voice was quiet. Too quiet. “What the fuck is this?”
“Joey—” Victoria stepped forward. Her voice was a stranger’s voice, high and thin and useless. “Joey, let me explain—”
“Explain what?” His voice cracked on the word.
His eyes—those tired brown eyes that had been sad for weeks, that had searched her face every morning for some sign that things were getting better, that had looked at the ultrasound photos like they were the most precious thing on earth—his eyes were filling with tears.
“Explain what, Victoria? That you were fucking my father? While I was at work?”
“Son, listen to me.” Brock’s voice was steady, the correctional officer’s calm, but Victoria could hear the terror beneath it. “We were going to tell you. Tonight. We were going to—”
“Tell me?” Joey laughed. The sound was broken, jagged. “Tell me what? That my wife is a cheating whore? That my father is—is—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. His voice splintered. “How long? How long has this been going on?”
The silence was the worst part. The silence and the neighbors.
Victoria could see them now—Mrs. Henderson across the street, frozen in the middle of watering her petunias.
Mr. Ackerman two doors down, his leaf blower hanging forgotten at his side.
The teenage boy next door, phone raised, recording everything.
“Since the night the IVF failed,” Victoria said. The words came out flat, mechanical. “The night you passed out on the couch. Brock and I—we—”
“The night the IVF failed.” Joey’s voice was distant now. Far away. “The night I found out I couldn’t give you a baby. The night I drank myself unconscious because I felt like a failure as a man. That night. You fucked my father that night.”
“It wasn’t—I didn’t plan it—”
“Didn’t plan it.” Another laugh. Harder now. Angrier. “You didn’t plan to suck my father’s dick while I was passed out upstairs? You didn’t plan to let him fuck you in my childhood home? You didn’t plan to—to let him cum inside you?”
The neighbors were definitely hearing this. Mrs. Henderson’s hand had gone to her mouth. The teenage boy’s phone was still raised. Victoria felt the heat of their stares like a brand, like a scarlet letter being sewn into her skin.
But none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was Joey standing in the garage doorway, his face crumpling, his whole world collapsing around him.
Then his eyes dropped to her belly. To the curve of her sixteen-week bump. To the place where Brock’s hand had been pressed moments ago.
“The baby,” he said.
The word hung in the air like a guillotine.
Victoria’s hand moved instinctively to her stomach. A protective gesture. A possessive gesture. The gesture of a mother shielding her child. “Joey—”
“Is it mine?”
The question was a blade. Victoria felt it slide between her ribs.
Felt it twist. She looked into her husband’s eyes—the eyes of the man she’d loved for four years, the man who’d held her hand through every doctor’s appointment,
the man who’d traced the ultrasound photo and said he wanted a little girl with her eyes—and knew that the next words out of her mouth would destroy him.
But she couldn’t lie. Not anymore. Not with Brock’s semen drying inside her and the neighbors watching and the truth already written across her face.
“No,” she said. “It’s not yours.”
The silence that followed was worse than any sound Joey could have made.
Then he made a sound. A sound Victoria would hear in her nightmares for the rest of her life. A sound that was part sob, part scream, part of something that had been torn straight out of his chest.
“There was no mistake at the clinic. It’s his.” He pointed at Brock. His hand was shaking. His whole body was shaking. “The baby is his.”
“I’m sorry,” Victoria whispered. “Joey, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?” He was screaming now. The neighbors had given up any pretense of not watching. “You’re sorry? You’ve been carrying my father’s baby for four months and you’re sorry?”
“Joey, please—”
“Don’t.” He held up a hand. Stepped back. His face was wet with tears, his glasses fogged, his chest heaving. “Don’t come near me. Don’t touch me. Don’t you ever fucking touch me again.”
Brock stepped forward. “Son—”
“Don’t call me that.” Joey rounded on him. The grief on his face twisted into something sharper. Harder. “You don’t get to call me that anymore. You lost that right the moment you stuck your dick in my wife.”
“I know you’re angry. I know you have every right to be. But we need to talk about this. Inside. Away from—” He glanced at the neighbors. “Away from everyone.”
“Oh, now you want privacy? Now you want to keep it quiet?” Joey laughed—that same broken, jagged sound. “The whole neighborhood saw you with your pants around your ankles. It’s a little late for privacy, Dad.”
The word privacy was acid on his tongue.
Joey turned back to Victoria. His eyes dropped to her belly again, and for a moment, the anger flickered. Something raw and wounded pushed through—the last dying ember of the love he’d felt for the baby he’d thought was his.
“Four months,” he said. “I’ve been talking to that baby for four months. Reading to it. Singing to it.”
His voice cracked. “I named it. Did you know that? I picked names. Louise for a girl. Lucas for a boy. I’ve been saying them to myself in the car, practicing. And the whole time, the whole goddamn time, it wasn’t even mine.”
“Joey—”
“How could you do this to me?” He looked at Brock. “When I showed you the ultrasound photos, so happy, so fucking happy that I was finally going to be a dad. You just smiled in my face and lied.”
Brock’s mask finally shattered. His gray eyes—those gray eyes that Victoria had fallen into, that she’d dreamed about, that had looked at her with such love and such heat—filled with tears. “Yes. I lied. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Joey flinched like he’d been hit. Like Brock had put a fist through his chest instead of a confession.
“You stood there and let me cry on your shoulder. You told me everything was going to be okay. You told me to give Victoria space, that she’d come back to me. And the whole time, you were the reason she was leaving.”
“I never meant for this to happen. Neither of us did.”
“Don’t.” Joey’s voice was ice. “Don’t stand there and pretend this was some cosmic accident. You made a choice. Every time you touched her, you made a choice. Every time you lied to me, you made a choice. You chose her over me, over and over again, and you didn’t stop. You never stopped.”
He was right. Victoria knew he was right.
She’d known it every time she slipped into Brock’s bed, every time she pressed her lips to his, every time she opened her legs and let him fill her with the seed that had made this baby.
She’d made choices. So many choices. And every single one of them had led to this moment, to the destruction of the man standing in front of her.
“I’m going inside.” Joey’s voice was flat now. Worn out. “I’m packing a bag. And then I’m leaving.”
“Joey, wait.” Victoria reached for him. “Please. Just give us a chance to explain—”
“Explain what?” He shook his head. “There’s nothing to explain. You’re pregnant with my father’s baby. You’ve been fucking him for months. You’ve been lying to me for months. What explanation could possibly make that okay?”
She had no answer.
Joey stared at her for a long moment. His brown eyes—those tired brown eyes, the eyes of a man who had tried so hard and failed so often and was now failing harder than he ever had before—were empty.
Drained of everything except exhaustion and the faintest trace of the love that Victoria had spent four months destroying.
“I hope you’re happy,” he said. “I hope he makes you happy. I hope the baby is worth it.”
He turned around and walked toward the house.