Chapter 30 Amends
Amends
Deacon
Leaving Jenny fairly shaking like a leaf nearly killed me, but I’d never been so angry nor had I ever felt so out of control.
Disbelief warred with the certainty I finally held all the puzzle pieces in my hands.
I saw how they fit together, but I still didn’t want to believe it.
Because if what Jenny’s mother said was true, my parents had manipulated me away from Jenny to their own advantage.
I spent the night on my knees praying for strength.
Praying for wisdom.
I woke up with neither.
Shortly after ten the next morning, I pulled a chair up close beside my father’s bed. He’d had a rough night, but I would never again put Jenny second to anyone.
Bracing my elbows on my knees, I clasped my hands together and studied his face.
Confusion clouded his eyes as he searched mine. “What is it, Son?”
I swallowed, readying myself for the truth I could see coming straight for me at a hundred miles per hour.
“Jenny and I ran into her mother yesterday.”
At the mention of Jenny’s name, irritation flashed in his eyes.
But it was immediately replaced with panic as he processed my words.
I gritted my teeth. “So, it’s true.”
His eyes skittered back and forth between mine. “Your mother already knows. It’s done and over with.”
“When and how long?”
His habitual mask of calm serenity began to slip over his face. “It hardly matt—"
“When and how long?” I roared, my hands fisting on my thighs.
His eyes widened as his jaw dropped.
He was just a man, a man who stumbled through life along with the rest of us.
He tried, he failed, he loved, he hurt, and he needed forgiveness as much as everyone else.
He chose his path.
I would choose mine.
Hurried footsteps flew up the hall and the bedroom door swung open, bouncing off the wall before coming to a stop beneath the slap of my mother’s small palm.
Her frightened gaze swung wildly between us as she sagged in the doorway. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” she panted.
My father held his hand out to her. “Come sit with me. Seems Deacon ran into that woman yesterday and she dug up the past.”
She stared back at my father for only a moment before standing up straight and levelling me with her fractured gaze.
As if I was the one who betrayed her.
When she spun on her heel and walked away, I followed, catching up with her in the kitchen.
My heart broke for her, and her behaviour, although unfair, finally made sense.
She stood at the counter with her back to me, staring out the window.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
She slowly turned around, accusation shining in her glossy eyes. “How could you do this to me?” She demanded harshly. “Is she so important it’s worth putting me through this? Putting your father through more than he’s already dealing with?”
So.
It was like this.
“She’s worth everything,” I stated calmly despite the fury coursing through my veins.
In that moment, I saw past the facade of what she wanted us to be to what we really were. “You look at me as if I’m the one who betrayed you. I didn’t. But you, you sacrificed my happiness on the altar of your perfect family.”
“What were we supposed to do? Hm?” She challenged. “Were we supposed to plan a wedding where we’d all sit together at the church? All the time knowing while he was coming home with me, he used to sneak out to see her?”
“You knew the whole time we were together,” I accused.
She shook her head. “I found out right after you moved in with Jenny.”
“How?”
She swallowed. “I followed him one night and knocked on her door. He immediately confessed and ended it then and there.”
The illusion of my parents’ perfect love shattered.
She didn’t deserve this. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”
I inhaled a shaky breath as the missing pieces of the past came together. “And then?”
Then they chose to live their lie and dragged me and Jenny down because of it.
She shrugged, her gaze flat. “God forgave him, so it was time to move on.”
God forgave him.
“How fucking convenient,” I snarled, thinking of those first years of service where I threw myself at every-fucking-thing I could, putting my life on the line over and over in my attempt to get Jenny out of my head.
“Deacon,” she snapped, a bit of life seeping back into her face. “We don’t curse in this house.”
“I think cursing is the least of your worries, Mom.” She stared at me, and I realized I’d seen the same look in Jenny’s mother’s eyes. “That hardness in your eyes? It’s the same as the hardness in hers.”
I didn’t see her hand coming, but I felt the sting as she slapped me across the face hard enough to snap my head to the side.
She gasped my name, her eyes wide with horror as she reached for me.
I caught her hand and held it away from me, unwilling to let the betrayal go.
Not this time.
“You did your best to put doubts in my head.”
Shattered, she held my gaze and nodded before giving her excuse, an excuse designed to hurt Jenny.
And me.
“Your father is a good man who made a bad mistake. I didn’t want it to follow us forever.”
“I picked up what you laid down,” I bit out, furious with myself for following her lead. “That’s on me. But you sacrificing my happiness so you could maintain the facade of a perfect family? That’s on you.”
A tear slid down her cheek.
I turned her hand over in mine so that our palms nestled together the way they so often had when I was a child.
I gentled my hold.
This mess hadn’t started with her.
“He betrayed your marriage and betrayed you. That’s on him.”
Her throat worked as she struggled to swallow.
“You had every right to be angry. You could have tossed him out on his ass. You could have insisted on counseling. You could have held him accountable, but you covered for him instead. You betrayed yourself and that’s what turned you hard and bitter, Mom.”
Her lips trembled even as she pressed them tightly together.
Disbelief, fury, and loss warred with compassion, but the reality of the past ten years of my life and everything Jenny endured alone rushed over me like an avalanche.
Where my mother held her tongue, I could not.
“You settled for the scraps he was willing to give you, convincing yourself that having his name, his children, and living in his house was enough. You might have built something even stronger, but rather than fight for your marriage, you traded it in for the picture-perfect family.”
She hung her head and clung to my hand.
I tried to stop talking but the words kept coming.
“The fact that he allowed you to settle all these years says more about the state of your marriage and his priorities than anything else.”
I loved my mother. I loved both of my parents. But they had betrayed me as surely as they’d betrayed each other.
“And that, more than the other, is unforgiveable.”
“That’s enough.”
I slowly turned my head to face my father.
I’d heard those words in that exact tone my entire life.
He stood in the doorway, clinging to his cane for support.
I narrowed my eyes on his face as I took him in. “You threatened her. You knew what she’d gone through, and you stuck to your course.”
There would be honesty, even if it was just this once, between the three of us.
He offered me a brief nod of acceptance. “I have no defense. I did wrong, and then I compounded it to hide my sin.”
His gaze moved to take in his wife before facing me.
For once in his life, I saw honest pain shining in his eyes. “I’d already hurt your mother so much, I didn’t want to do anything that might hurt her further.”
He turned his head to face his wife. “I have never regretted anything the way I regret those three months. I would do anything, give anything, to go back and make a different choice.”
So would I.
“You never once asked for my forgiveness,” she sobbed quietly, her gaze on the floor.
“I didn’t deserve it,” he confessed. “I still don’t. And I was a coward, terrified you wouldn’t give it. Finally,” he shuffled forward, “I thought I could earn it.”
He swallowed.
Looking down at him, I saw the real man, the one I’d idolized as a child, for the first time in over a decade.
“Deacon is wrong about one thing. There were no scraps. You have my whole heart, you always have. I love you. I loved you even as I betrayed us. I was a fool, chasing a high that reeked of remorse when I had heaven here at home.”
“Why?” she blurted. “Why did you do it?”
My heart broke for my sweet mother, for the betrayal that made her bitter and angry and afraid she wasn’t enough.
It hit me then, hard, how Jenny felt all these years.
My father’s actions told my mother she wasn’t enough.
Wasn’t worthy.
Jenny felt the same.
He sighed, the sound carrying a decade’s worth of regret. “I was weak.”
Her lips trembled as she sneered, “Eve tempted you with her beauty?”
“No. Nothing like that,” he stated firmly. “The bills were piling up, the boys were questioning whether they wanted to farm, and you were struggling. Instead of facing my failures like a man and doing what I could, I ran to someone who allowed me to be a boy with no responsibilities.”
He continued with his heart in his eyes, “I hated who I was with her, but I hated how I’d failed all of you more.”
“You’d never once failed me until then,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Not a single day has passed when I don’t grieve what I did to you. To us.”
“I hate her,” my mother hissed, anger replacing the blank look I’d grown accustomed to.
“You have every right,” he asserted.
“You don’t?” She challenged.
He shook his head slowly. “I feel nothing toward her. I hate myself.”
Bending, I kissed my mother on the cheek. “I love you, Mom.”
She sobbed, stroked my face, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I replied quietly.
I straightened and held a chair out for my father.
He shuffled in and sat down.
“Dad,” I began.
He shook his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Son. I’m sorry for the choices I made. All of them.” He paused. “And though I was trying to protect the woman I love from further humiliation, I’m sorry for trying to keep you from the one you love.”
He shook his head. “I thought it was a crush. Had I known…”
I rested my hand on his shoulder waiting for his nod, his thin hand coming up to rest on mine momentarily.
This was the man I knew and loved.
I took in my mother’s tear-stained face.
“I’m sorry, Son,” she repeated. “If I’d known she was the one for you, I would have chosen differently.”
And there was the woman who put her children first.
Giving her a nod, I turned to the door.
I had my own amends to make.