Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
My footsteps felt heavy as I approached the familiar door of my parents’ house.
I was torn between confronting them and wanting to pretend it hadn’t happened.
I didn’t want to hurt them but I had to know the truth, even if it hurt.
Usually when I came over I was excited and happy to see them, this was the first time I wasn’t.
The past few days had been a rollercoaster and it was time to get off the ride. Yesterday I had told Matthew and Sophie the truth. I had no idea if Matthew had said anything to Mark yet and I reminded myself I didn’t care, not one bit. His opinion didn’t count at all.
When I reached the door, I shifted from one foot to the other with my hand on the door, about to knock, but I stopped myself and lowered my hand.
What if this went badly? My nerves got the better of me and I wavered, faltering a step backward.
I considered putting it off for another day but that would just be delaying the inevitable.
I gnawed on my bottom lip, trying to work up the courage to confront them. It needed to happen, there was no going back. Then I thought about the father I hadn’t known about and all the time that had been lost. Images of my half-brothers reminded me of all the new things I had gained.
I let out a heavy, emotional breath and knocked.
My father opened the door. “Hey, stranger. You’ve been pretty scarce lately.”
He kissed me on the cheek and I mirrored his movement before following him into the house.
“Your mom’s busy in the kitchen,” he explained, leading the way. “She’ll be so excited to see you.”
Not after she learned the reason I was here. My stomach was in knots. He was so happy to see me but I was sure once he discovered the reason for my visit he wouldn’t be as happy.
My mom was busy cutting some stuff on the cutting board. “Hi, darling,” she greeted with the widest smile, and I almost felt a pang of guilt for knowing what I was about to do. I greeted her like I usually did but she noticed right away that something was off.
“Everything okay?” she asked, setting the knife down on the cutting board and wiping her hands.
“I need to talk to…both of you.” I looked at the kitchen table.
My parents shared a look and complied by taking a seat at the table. I didn’t sit, I was too worked up.
“What’s wrong? You’re really starting to scare me,” my Mom told me, looking very concerned.
“I got a call from a lawyer.” I began staring at the faces of the two people I had trusted the most, but it only intensified my sadness at their deceitfulness. “He called me in connection with an inheritance.”
They shared another look. Did they know what was coming?
“I was sure he had the wrong person but he insisted I was the right person. The inheritance was from my father.”
It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. My mother swallowed and my father leaned back in his chair like he had been winded. There weren’t any denials .
My mother was the first to snap back when she stood and approached me, but I kept my distance. “I need an explanation.”
She dropped her hands from reaching for me and her lip trembled.
“I never…wanted you to find out.”
That just annoyed me. “So it would have been better to never know anything?” I was incredulous and angry.
“I know it’s difficult to understand why we did what we did, but we did it for you.”
My mouth fell open. “How? How could not knowing my real father be the best thing for me?”
I was becoming hysterical and I had to calm down. I turned away from them and took a breath to relax. Count to ten, I told myself. One, two, three…
“It was a very difficult time and we believed we were doing the best thing for you and our family.”
I closed my eyes briefly, feeling a sharp pain in my chest.
“I wasn’t proud of what I did…” I heard the regret in her voice. “And when I found out I was pregnant, I was scared, happy, and a bunch of different things.”
She paused and I looked back over my shoulder to see her share a look with my dad.
“Robert was a close friend I crossed a line with, but I loved your dad. We had been going through a rough patch in our marriage.”
As angry as I was, listening to her made me feel the uncertainty she must have dealt with. I wanted this to be clear cut. Them selfish and me the one who had been wronged, but it wasn’t that straightforward.
“Robert and I both realized that having the affair would hurt our partners but it would be worse if everyone discovered the truth about our infidelity. He didn’t want you to be known as the child who was the result of an affair.”
“But what about me? Didn’t I deserve to know? What about what I lost in all of this?” The pain in my chest seemed to spread with each word.
“We didn’t want you to think you were different from Matthew,” my dad said, and I turned to face him.
“We didn’t want you to feel any less loved.
Do you really believe you would still be as close to Matthew and Sophie if you had known?
” In my eyes he was also partly a victim in this.
“I love you as much as I love your brother and sister.”
That teared me up and I trembled. “And I love you even though I’m mad and not sure how long it’s going to take for me to forgive you.” I moved my gaze to my mother. “Or you.”
My mom nodded and my father got up to put his arm around her. She leaned against him and I could tell she was quietly crying. I didn’t want to see her upset but I wasn’t in a place to make her feel better when I felt so desolate inside.
“I know it might not mean much now, but we are sorry,” my dad said, hugging my Mom tighter. “There were many times we wondered whether we had made the right decision.”
“Robert loved you so much,” my mom whispered, and I felt my heart tighten. “I sent him photos through the years so he could see you grow up. I hadn’t heard from him in a while.”
“He was diagnosed with cancer. He died a few weeks ago.”
My mother teared up and my dad consoled her.
I remembered the photo album with all the photos of me. Some had been sent by my mother and some had been taken by him in secret.
“I need some space to figure things out,” I said, needing to get out of there. It felt like the walls were closing in and I was finding it difficult to breathe.
My mom stopped me. “We made a mistake. Please don’t punish us for it. If we could do things again maybe we would have done things differently.”
It didn’t matter because there was no going back, no undoing the decision.
Would I be a completely different person if they had made a different choice?
Being split between two homes for holidays and every second weekend?
I couldn’t imagine it. Would my relationship with Matthew and Sophie have also been affected by it?
There were so many what ifs and, honestly, none of them really mattered now.
“When I’m ready to talk I’ll call you.” It was the best response she was going to get out of me.
“Sweetheart,” my dad said, but I shook my head.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take but don’t push me.” I left with my hands shaking and my eyes tearing up. Seeing my parents so upset had also affected me. I didn’t want to see them like that but I couldn’t just pretend that none of this had happened.
This was a repercussion that couldn’t be swept under the mat.
Tears blinded me as I closed the door behind me. Outside in the sunshine I looked up to the sky and inhaled sharply. Air filled my lungs and for the first time I could breathe again. Then a sob tore through me and I put my hands to my mouth to smother the cry.
Getting back to work had taken more concentration than I had been capable of. My life was different and it was taking some time to get used to the idea of having more siblings. I wasn’t speaking to my parents at the moment, I was still too raw to try and forgive.
Matthew and Sophie had been greatly supportive.
Mark… Well, that was a whole different story. He had called and I had ignored his calls. I hadn’t listened to any of the voicemails he left. When I wouldn’t respond, he had started to send messages but I had deleted them before re ading them. I wasn’t interested in anything he had to say.
I was surprised he hadn’t shown up on my doorstep. Ignoring him before had never worked, so I did wonder why he was keeping his distance this time.
A couple of times I had opened the door to my apartment and I had expected to see him waiting, but it had always been empty. For a fraction of a moment I had experienced disappointment before relief.
You don’t care, I kept telling myself, even though I knew it wasn’t true. I didn’t want to care but that wasn’t the same.
I had avoided Sunday lunches by my parents and Mark as well.
My inheritance had been an astronomical amount of money and I no longer had to worry about paying my bills month to month. I was even considering buying a home so I could have more space. I could even have my own studio.
But no amount of money would be able to make up for the emptiness I felt inside, like I was missing something important, like the father I had never met. It was hard to pull myself out of my pity party and try to do mundane day-to-day things.
As much as Matthew and Sophie tried, they didn’t know what I was going through, which made me feel closer to the half-siblings I barely knew. When I felt sad, I called Sebastian. He understood on a level no one else did. Maybe it was because he was also mourning the same father.
No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t connect to the man whose pictures I had pored over while trying to see something more than what was laid out in a Polaroid.
Other than the kind eyes, I couldn’t decipher much else from his pictures, and even though I had listened to countless stories of him, I was still struggling to find something we had in common.