Sorry, Sophie (Detroit ABCs #4)

Chapter 13

S he picked up her head, her red-rimmed eyes angry and accusatory. “I cannot believe you behaved this way, Sophia Genevieve Curran. I cannot believe that you treated me this way, the woman who carried you for nine months and then brought you into this world with zero pain medications. Zero!” She put her head back down and sobbed.

“It’s really awful, Sophie,” Juliet chimed in. She was irate, not only for our mom’s sake, but for her own and also our brother’s. I’d called her just before Nicola’s baby was born and told her to get to the hospital fast, so she had been there when we’d all seen little Amelia for the first time. We’d cried, hugged our sister, hugged Jude, and hugged each other. It had been a beautiful moment.

Then Juliet had turned on me, angrier than a wet cat, and she had generally remained that way for the next two days. She was furious that I hadn’t trusted her not to tell Mom and therefore she’d been left out of the hours of stewing in the waiting room while Addie’s fiancé cleared out the vending machines for us. Brenna and Grace had quietly argued; Addie and Granger had whispered together. I had compulsively eaten the vending machine candy and also texted with Daniel.

JuJu said that she should have been there, too. Why hadn’t we told her right away? She asked that a lot, and also, why had we been so mean, especially me? “I could have kept my mouth shut, but I shouldn’t have to! You guys treat Mom so badly!” she’d seethed in the hospital parking lot, and then she’d covered her mouth and shaken her head.“I can’t believe Nicola’s a mom,” she’d said, her voice brimming with emotion.She’d hugged everyone again and we’d all cried more. It had been an emotional night.

Her feelings were nothing compared to my mother’s, though. Mom was angry at Nicola but also in love with her newest granddaughter, so she attacked a safer target: me. No, none of my other sisters had called her either, but I had been the senior child on scene and had informed her that I was the one responsible for the decision to keep her in the dark. After I’d said that, I removed myself from her vicinity as much as possible, but Juliet had told me that I had better come and talk things out. “You owe her that,” she’d accused, “after you excluded her and ruined the birth for her.” So I’d told Daniel that we were meeting and then I’d texted Addie, too. She’d rounded up Brenna and Grace as witnesses, and now here we all were.

One thing I’d learned was that it was better not to argue when Mom was like this. I tried, really hard, to hold my words back so that she could vent and get her own stuff out—this didn’t need to be an argument, just a bloodletting. I folded my hands as I faced her across the kitchen table and I jiggled my leg to let out some of the anger that I was not releasing through my mouth.

“I’m hurt,” she sobbed into her folded arms. “It’s as if a cannonball shot through my chest and obliterated my heart. And my soul! You purposefully, viciously, kept me away from the birth of my granddaughter. How could you?”

She waited for my answer, so I shrugged. “Sorry,” I said.

“You’re not sorry! I can tell that you still think you were right to do it. You think that you were right to ruin everything for Nicola!”

Ok, I had to respond to that. “Nothing was ruined,” I stated, my teeth clenched. I started to add that, in fact, Nicola hadn’t wanted her there, but I managed to prevent myself.

“Nicky needed her mother. She needed me and you let her suffer alone!”

“No, she wasn’t suffering alone.” I looked up at the ceiling and silently asked for patience. “She had her husband next to her and most of her sisters were just outside. In fact, Grace was—”

“Now you’re coming up with excuses,” Mom told me. “You know you were wrong, so you’re trying to make yourself feel better.”

“No, I’m not,” I answered, and now the words poured right out of my mouth. “I don’t need to feel better because I’m already doing just fine! I’m totally at ease with what I did. I knew that you wouldn’t have behaved yourself and you know it too, Mom. You would have tried to push your way back to see her.”

“Of course!” she yelped, picking up her head again. “Of course, because she needed me!”

“Nope,” Brenna said, her voice and expression brimming with ennui. “No one needed you.”

“Everyone was great,” Grace piped up, and she knew this personally. Somehow, our sneaky youngest sister had managed to be at the actual delivery, holding one of Nicola’s hands while Jude held the other. Because there were ten years between them, Grace had pretty much been Nicola’s first baby, and I was actually glad that she’d been there to help. Also jealous, but mostly glad.

Juliet turned on her instead of me and they got into it, and at the same time, our mom had a thing or two to say to Brenna (and the Brat had a lot to say in return). For a moment, I was out of the fray and I happily let them go at it, but I did have a part in this. I could almost understand my mother’s feelings. If someone tried to keep me away from Esme when I thought she needed me? I would have killed that person without a thought—but things were different between our own mother and us. We hadn’t needed her for a long time, and either she actually didn’t understand that or she was only fooling herself. Whatever it was, she was committed to the performance.

And I had made things was worse, I supposed, because I had texted my dad and told him to come to the hospital. He’d shown up immediately (alone) had been overjoyed when he saw Amelia for the first time, which had made me really, really upset. He hadn’t felt any joy at all when he’d first met Esme, and he still didn’t feel it. I’d watched him crying over the new baby and felt shafts of anger along with my happiness for Nicola, which had led to me crying all over again, too.

My girl was ok, though. She was outside with Daniel and Addie in the backyard, away from the fracas in the kitchen. My dad was hiding in his home office and Patrick hadn’t shown up in days, neither to fight with us nor to visit his niece. I had contacted him from the hospital but I thought he had probably blocked me and his voicemail was still full when Addie tried him. Juliet might have told him the news by now or maybe Mom had, but neither of them were currently sharing information with me. Right now, they were busy yelling dumb stuff and I was tired of it.

“I’m not arguing anymore,” I said, my voice loud enough to cut through all the squabbling. We had a new baby in the family and she was healthy and so was her mother, my amazing sister. After that announcement, everyone at the table mostly quieted except for Brenna saying that Juliet was going to get what was coming to her one day, and she hoped that day would be here soon. We sipped coffee and poked at the pancakes Mom had not been too upset to make. Although they were probably delicious, I didn’t feel like eating anything. All this arguing was exhausting and old. It just tired me out.

The rapprochement lasted until my mom announced, “Well, I can try to forgive you, Sophie. I can try as long as I have your promise that you’ll never do anything like this in the future.”

“No, I’ll totally do this again unless you can show that you’re listening to us,” I answered promptly, and it all restarted, a cacophony replete with tears, recriminations, and Juliet and Brenna getting close to blows. I physically separated them and by that point, I’d really had enough. I walked through the house and went out to the back, where things were warmer but a lot calmer.

“Come have a seat and listen to this,” Daniel said, patting the place next to himself on the swing. I settled down and took the baby’s hand. “Esme, what were you telling me?” he prompted. “Ba-ba-ba?”

“Bababababa!” she shrieked back to him, smiling.

“This is early babbling,” Addie explained excitedly. “I think she’s a genius.”

“She is,” I assured them. I already had ideas about her winning scholarships, studying abroad, and becoming the President. “She totally is. Esme, ba-ba-ba!”

We were so busy babbling to her and looking at some new pictures of Nicola’s baby that we didn’t immediately tune into the loud commotion in the front of the house, not until Addie turned her head toward it. “What is that? Oh, no, a fight?” she asked. Then she moved very fast, running through the side yard. I was right behind, ready to step in between my sisters again. The easiest thing to do was to take each of them by the hair…

But it wasn’t Juliet and Brenna scratching at each other, not this time. They were outside and so were Grace and my mom, but they weren’t the antagonists. My brother had come home and he and my father were facing off, loudly and furiously.

“Fuck you!” Patrick yelled, and everyone in the neighborhood could have heard him. “Fuck you!” His cheeks were red and his eyes were glassy, as if he’d been drinking or smoking weed again with his stupid friends even though it was still breakfast time. “You can’t tell me what to do anymore.”

“I’ve never been able to tell you anything,” Dad answered. “You never listened.”

“Frank,” my mom said urgently, and pulled on her husband’s arm. “He’s had a difficult year.”

“If he has, it’s because he made it that way. He put himself exactly in this spot,” my dad told her, which caused Patrick to start yelling again as my mom tried to appease them both by recommending that they come inside and have pancakes, asking if they were excited about the new baby, and remarking that in our family, we all loved each other and communicated in indoor voices.

Neither of them paid attention to any of that. “I’ll never be good enough, right?” Patrick shouted. “I’ll never be the son you wanted.”

“That’s not true, Patty!” my mom piped up, but my dad didn’t answer. I was furious at Patrick for a lot of things but this was terrible—it was as if I was watching him crumble when our father didn’t correct him. He didn’t say no and that Patrick was a wonderful son, and he didn’t even say yes, Patrick had made mistakes but of course Dad still loved him. He steadily stared and my brother moved forward with a horribly hurt expression on his face that morphed into pure fury.

I automatically stepped in front of Esme and Daniel but as usual, Patrick’s mind wasn’t on his daughter. He got even closer to our father so that they were eye to eye and almost touching. “I’m shit, right? I’m nothing,” he said. “Fuck you, Dad.” As we watched, my brother shoved him. Hard.

And my dad just wasn’t the same guy he’d been ten or even five years before. Patrick wasn’t very big, but neither was our father and he wasn’t as strong as he’d been—he stumbled back, into his car. My mother screamed and moved to step between them, and so did I. I was faster.

“Stop it!” I yelled at my brother. “Patrick, what are you doing? Stop it!”

Spit foamed at the corners of his mouth. “Fuck you, Sophie! Fuck you, too!”

Juliet yelled at her twin and I heard Daniel say something but he had Esme, and things were moving fast. When Patrick pushed me, I wasn’t prepared, and I also stumbled. I got myself square on my feet pretty quickly, though. When I clocked him under the chin with a haymaker, he wasn’t expecting that, either.

He went down. He sat hard on his butt in the driveway and then fell back onto his elbows. He wasn’t knocked out, but he was knocked silly. “Stay there,” I told him. “Just let it pass. You’ll be ok.”

“Sophie! What did you do to him?” Juliet shrieked, and the next thing I felt was her landing on my back. She sucked at fighting but she was bigger than I was, and she was strong.

“Oof,” I wheezed and stayed up. I elbowed her in the ribs and then I heard Daniel.

“Nope,” he said, and she was lifted away. When I turned, I saw that he held her around the waist and off the ground. “Everybody calm down,” he ordered, but we were past that. Brenna dove at JuJu, nailing her in the stomach and solar plexus with her shoulder. She’d gotten a running start and Juliet and Daniel both fell. I saw Addie taking off for the house with Esme in her arms, so the baby was safe and I was free to go at it. I ran to Daniel to get him out from under my brawling sisters, but then Grace also jumped onto the pile of bodies. No one was doing much damage and it was mostly hair pulling, scratching, and screaming. He was doing his best to crawl out and I grabbed his arm to pull.

That was when my mom turned on the hose.

“Fighting like animals in the driveway in front of the neighbors,” she seethed a few moments later. “I’m eternally humiliated!”

We glared at each other from beneath the beach towels that Addie had brought out for us. Daniel was holding paper napkins to his bloody nose, where Juliet’s head had nailed him. My dad seemed shaken, but was all right. Brenna had an inflamed scratch down her left cheek, Patrick’s face was swelling, Grace’s hair had suffered a lot but besides that, she seemed fairly unscathed. Addie was furious with all of us and Esme had picked up on the upset and was definitely fussy in my arms. “It’s ok,” I soothed her. “It’s ok.” But it didn’t feel that way.

My mom had also claimed to be injured, because apparently the hose nozzle had violently pinched her finger. She had a big bag of frozen peas held to the invisible injury and Patrick had taken another bag (mixed vegetables) to hold against his chin. Despite her terrible finger problem, she felt well enough to excoriate us for a while.

“Juliet, you injured a guest!” she said, rattling the peas at my sister. “Brenna, you’ve been watching too much lucha libre . Why did you need to insert yourself into that problem?”

Brenna muttered something but low enough that Mom was able to ignore it and move to me.

“And Sophie. You struck your brother! You could have caused permanent brain damage! You could have knocked out his teeth!”

“Jacqueline, stop it,” my dad said and she did stop, kind of jerking up to stand straight and lowering her arms, which she’d been using to gesture angrily at all of us. “It’s time for everyone to go home,” he continued sternly. He pointed at Brenna and Juliet and they bolted from the yard, and Addie shook her head and left, too.

Next he turned to me. “I’m leaving,” I said before he could speak. “I’m going back to my house and I’m taking Esme with me. I’ll pack up her things.”

“No, you can’t do that!” my mom said.

“I sure can,” I answered. “I’m out and I’m certainly not leaving her here with you.”

“Are you planning on trying anything else?” Daniel asked my brother. “Because you’ll deal with me, next. She put you on your ass but I’ll put you in the fucking hospital, you piece of shit.”

“Daniel!” my mom gasped.

“Let’s go, Sophie.” He put his arm around me and we went into the house, just as Esme started to cry. I hated to sound like my mom, especially at this moment, but all the negativity was bad for her. She was definitely picking up on things…or, maybe she needed a new diaper. I sniffed, and found that it was probably a combination of two problems.

Upstairs, I started to solve the diaper issue while Daniel started to pack, which he did by grabbing a bag and angrily stuffing belongings into it.

“That’s my brother’s duffel,” I pointed out. “And you just took his shoes.” I didn’t think Patrick was interested in that pair, though, since most of his clothes had been moved out weeks before.

Daniel took the shoes, opened the window, and threw them outside. My jaw dropped, because I’d never seen him do anything like that. He spun around and pointed at me with the duffel. “We’re taking this. He owes you a damn bag.”

“I’m ok,” I told him. “He pushed me but I only stumbled because—”

“I can’t believe what I just witnessed outside. All of you fighting like that? Your mother was right about the neighbors. They were out there watching and cars slowed down, too.”

“I don’t care what people think,” I informed him, but I winced. “They all saw?”

“I can’t believe that your brother pushed your father. I can’t believe he put his hands on you. You hit him, Juliet jumped on you, Brenna jumped on her—”

“Brenna shoulder tackled her and she did it really well,” I interrupted. “Yes, we behaved like children. But Patrick started it!”

“He did, and we’re not letting the baby near him.” He picked up a shirt, looked at it, and shoved it into the bag. It was mine so that was ok. “We’re dripping wet. Did your mother have to leave the hose turned on for so long? I used to wish for a family like yours,” he told me. “I used to think you were lucky to have them and now I think that you were lucky to have survived them.”

“No, I really am lucky to have them. Even Patrick, I guess. That was a very, very bad showing for us but we’ll settle down and be friends again.”

“I swear to God, Sophie, if I ever see one of them put their hands on you …” He stopped and inhaled.

“I don’t want to fight like that, either. I thought my brother was really going to hurt my dad,” I said, and picked up the sweet-smelling baby, who was back to smiling now. “I wasn’t going to hit him until he pushed me, and then I saw the look on his face. He had lost control.” I paused and Daniel nodded. “We haven’t fought like that in years. Really,” I promised. “Not since what happened when Grace turned sixteen and took Brenna’s car, even though she didn’t actually have a license and she’s such a bad driver.”

“If Grace was sixteen, that made you twenty-four. You were fighting like that at age twenty-four?”

“Yes, it was no one’s proudest moment!” I said. “But I won’t do it again. I don’t want to fight physically or any other way with my family! I do love them. Even Patrick.”

“Sophie.”

All three of us in the bedroom/yoga studio turned and looked at the door, where my brother stood.

“Don’t try anything,” Daniel warned. “Don’t take another step into this room.”

“I’m just saying sorry,” my brother told him. He turned to me. “I’m sorry, Sophie.”

I shifted my body so that Esme wasn’t in his direct line of sight, as if that somehow protected her. “What are you doing, Patrick? Why would you push Dad?”

“Did you hear what he said to me?”

“Why should he be proud of you when you only—”

“Sophie,” Daniel said, and I closed my mouth. “Just leave,” he ordered my brother.

Patrick looked at me and blinked. “I should have asked Grandpa to teach me to hit, too.”

“You were always too busy basking in all the attention from Mom—”

“Sophie!” Daniel said. “Are you really going to start up again after what you just told me?”

I stopped, ashamed of myself. Here was proof positive: I was too much. “No, I’m not. I appreciate your apology, Patrick, but I don’t accept it. I don’t want you near me or Esme. I’ll be filing for custody of her, so expect papers to get served on you soon.”

He looked at me for another moment and then nodded slightly before he walked away. We heard him going down the stairs, and I watched through the window as his beat-up car drove away slowly. “When they turned sixteen, he and JuJu got a really nice car to share,” I mentioned. “First he backed it into the garage, then she drove around on an underinflated tire until she damaged the rim. Neither of them had any sense and Nicola would yell at them, and then Mom would defend them and fix everything. My dad ignored it. He just took a pass on parenting because every time he tried, my mom would argue him down and tell him he didn’t know, or he was wrong. I’m not sure how Juliet grew up to be even slightly rational, but it makes sense that Patrick would be a jerk.” I looked down at Esme and remembered how I wasn’t going to badmouth her dad. “Also, he’s a real animal lover and he has a sweet side. And he’s very fun at parties. He’s the best dancer out of all of us.”

“Let’s go,” Daniel said. He reached for Esme and I wiped my eyes, nodding. We needed to get out of this house. My dad was nowhere to be seen and I assumed he was hiding in his home office, but my mom was waiting in the kitchen. She stood up and went right to the baby.

“Don’t keep her from me in anger, Sophie,” she said. “You know, I could stop you from leaving right now, but I won’t.”

“Because then you’d be stuck taking care of her by yourself, and you aren’t capable of that. Mom, I’m not going to argue with you again,” I said, cutting her off as she started to, of course, argue. “Esme is best with me and we all know it. I won’t prevent you from visiting but you have to tell me when you’re coming first, and you have to listen when I say it’s time to leave. And you can’t bring people, like Patrick, without letting me know.”

“You can’t ever bring him,” Daniel said. “He’s violent and he shouldn’t be around the baby.” He glanced down at her little head. “But I’m not badmouthing him, either. He was a very good dancer.”

“He’s definitely the best out of all of my children,” my mom agreed. “Remember when he was the duck mascot in high school? He never complained about wearing that suit even when it was hot, and he really knew how to shake a tailfeather.” She wiped her eyes. “But it’s all such a mess now. I don’t know how this happened.”

My father had said exactly the same thing to me, and not very long ago. “You and Dad need to talk,” I told her. “I’m not getting involved in your marriage except to say that now’s the time to try to figure out how to act as a team and fix some things. Also, you can’t bother Nicola with the story of what happened today.” I saw her eyes flick to her phone, and I hoped my warning wasn’t coming too late. “Mom, don’t. She has enough going on. She has a new baby.”

“I know! And I missed—”

“Not this again,” I said, and went to the door. Daniel and I had come together, and I was glad that we were leaving that way, too. It was pretty awesome to have him on my side, like a partner in crime. He would definitely have tagged in if we were a wrestling team, based on how he’d grabbed my sister and wanted to throw hands with my brother, too.

“Thank you,” I said when we were in the car. “Thank you very much for defending me and getting into the middle of our family battle.”

“You’re welcome, but believe me when I say that I don’t want to do that again.” He gently touched his nose. “Your sister Juliet has a hard head. I think she got her share, though, because Brenna backhanded her right across the face. If she doesn’t get a black eye, I’ll be surprised.”

“It would do wonders for her career. I hope she doesn’t bruise like that.”

He glanced over at me. “You’re really not mad at them?”

“I am right now but we will make up, eventually, and things will go back to normal. But I don’t want only our normal—I hope that things will improve. I hope that my dad thinks about what he said to Patrick, or what he didn’t say. I hope my mom looks at her behavior and realizes that it doesn’t help anyone, not even herself. I hope those things a lot.”

“Just don’t hold your breath while you wait for them to happen,” he advised, and I agreed.

“It’s funny, because I was considering how it wasn’t fair to Esme that she won’t have siblings. Now I’m rethinking that,” I mentioned. “When I was a kid, I was jealous of only children and I may be returning to that opinion.”

“So while I was wishing that I had your situation, you were…no, I know you weren’t wishing that we could swap.”

“I wasn’t, and I should have done something about your dad and what he was doing to you. I talked a big game but it didn’t mean anything.”

“We were only teenagers. We both said a lot of stupid stuff.”

I thought again of what he’d said to me, and I wondered if now was the time to approach it or if I ever should. I opened my mouth, but then closed it.

“I didn’t only envy your siblings, though,” he continued. “You had two parents and I saw that your mom was odd and your dad was gone a lot, but it was better than how I was living.”

We listened to Esme talk and answered her, making her funny sounds right back. “She’s lucky to have you,” he told me when the baby took a break. “I wanted a mom so much. I guess I felt desperate. We weren’t religious and I wasn’t sure about what I believed, but I used to try to make deals with a higher power. ‘If you make her alive again, I’ll get good grades in school. If you bring her back, I’ll improve at football and make the team.’ I made a lot of promises but I didn’t ever get the result I wanted.”

“Did your father tell you that she was dead?”

“I was pretty scared to ask about her, but I got up the nerve a few times when he was in a calm spell. Once, he told me that she’d gone back to Kentucky to be with her family and that he thought she was buried there. But he also said that she’d run off to California to follow a band and that another groupie had sent him a letter saying that she’d driven off a cliff. It seems like I would have found that letter, if he’d really gotten it. He saved every other piece of paper he ever had his hands on.”

I nodded. There had been a lot. I swallowed, too, as I considered things.

“Did you ever look her up?” he asked. “You’re not doing the investigation stuff anymore and I know you’ve been busy, but you had said—”

“I did,” I answered. “I did, and I wrote a dossier.”

“You did? On my mom?”

I nodded. “I was hesitating to give it to you. I’ve had it for a while.”

“How long ago did you do it?”

I hesitated now, too. “It was last spring, when you gave me the incomplete job application from the restaurant where you thought she might have worked. At first, it threw me off, but there was enough information to find her.”

Daniel had taken his foot off the accelerator and we were slowing to a stop, but it was ok. We were almost in front of his house. “Find her?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“Turn here,” I said, and pointed to his driveway. He nodded and pulled into the empty garage, where all the boxes had been stacked before. There had been so much stuff but he had only found those two pieces of paper, a menu and an old form, to give any clues about his mother.

“Tell me,” he said, and I nodded as well.

“I printed it out,” I explained. “I’ll go get it.” I looked over at my house and hesitated, though.

“I’ll come, too.”

The three of us went there together. I hesitated only a little more before I strode determinedly into the office, but I heard Daniel and Esme walking around for a while before they joined me.

“It wasn’t like this before. When did you…” He stopped as he looked at the folder I held in my hands. “Is that it? That’s the information about my mom?”

I nodded and we traded Esme for the folder. I watched him open it and start to read, and my words began to tumble out. “I didn’t give this to you before because I thought it would make you upset. No, it was because I knew that it would make you really sad. And angry, probably, because I would be so furious if I were in your shoes. It did make me feel that way. I’m furious at both your parents, but mostly at her. I’m also sorry. I’m very sorry.”

He looked up at me. “This says that she’s still alive. She’s still alive?”

I nodded.She was.“But…”

“What are these names? This is the wrong person,” he told me.

“No, this is the right person.”

He shook his head sharply. “I found my birth certificate. Her maiden name and her married name are on there, and they’re different from what you have here.”

“It confused me too, at first, because she had also written ‘Aileen Ryder’ on the job application for the restaurant. Maybe that was the name she used while she was with your dad or maybe he wrote that himself, filling it out for her. And yes, it also says that on your birth certificate. I got a copy of it, but the maiden name she put on there wasn’t correct, either. That was her mother’s name, your grandmother’s. When you were born, her true name was Aileen Liska.”

“Liska? I’ve never heard that before.” He had returned to staring at the sheets of paper that I’d carefully clipped together, but he was shaking his head again and I doubted that he saw the words on them. “So she didn’t change her name when she married my dad.”

“No, because…well, she wasn’t ever married to your dad. I don’t know how long they were together, and I can’t find any proof that they even cohabited. Liska is her married name, though.”

“What?” He looked up at me. “What are you saying?”

“I’m almost positive that the woman I’ve identified is your mother. Even if she didn’t use her real names on your birth certificate, I would bank on it, and you could do DNA testing to confirm it. Your dad is listed as your father.” I hesitated. “But when you were born, she was married to someone else.”

“She was married to someone else—are you saying that my dad isn’t really my dad?”

“I have to assume that he is, because he raised you. It would be a little unusual for someone to take over the care of a kid and claim to be the parent.” We both looked at Esme, happily gnawing on her teething ring. “I mean, I’ll tell her that I’m not her mother, but your dad never said that. He said he was your father. I think we would have to believe—”

“I can’t believe any of this,” Daniel interrupted. He was staring at the papers again. “He said she was from Kentucky. He said that she’d died in California.”

“She was born in Pontiac and she currently lives in Rochester.”

“She’s from the suburbs. She still lives here, near Detroit,” he interpreted, and I nodded. “So she left me with a man who may or may not have been my father, and went back to her real husband. No,” he answered himself. “No, because I see that she has a different name now. Is this correct?”

“Yes, she was divorced right after you were born but she got married again and took the new husband’s name. And—”

“They have kids. Four kids. I have four half-siblings. So she left me, and started over with someone better, and she made a better family. A real family.”

“Daniel,” I started to say, but then didn’t know how to continue. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve known this for months but you didn’t tell me.” He looked just the same as my brother had earlier, when my father had disappointed him so much: crushed.

“I knew but I didn’t want to tell you. I was looking for more proof…no, that’s no excuse. Everything was happening with Esme getting deserted by her dad, and it was the same thing. I can’t understand Patrick and I couldn’t understand why your mother did this, either. I didn’t know how to tell you, but I kept looking for the right time.”

“I could have lived a normal life with her. Did she know?” He crumpled pages in his fist as he searched through them. “Did she know how my dad was acting? How he was treating me? Or was it like you, she just ignored the truth because it was too hard to deal with?”

“That wasn’t why I didn’t tell you! I wasn’t ignoring the truth. I didn’t tell you because it was so awful. And you’re doing so well! Your life is wonderful and I didn’t want to upend it.”

“I don’t care why you didn’t tell me. I can’t believe that you kept it from me.” He turned and walked out of my office, leaving a few pages on the floor behind him. “I’m going home. I don’t want to see you for a while.”

“Wait. Danny, I’m so sorry. Please, can you believe me? I’m so sorry!”

He didn’t wait, and I didn’t blame him. Once again, I’d thought I’d known what was best. Once again, I’d ruined everything, through my own stupidity and hubris.