Chapter 5 - What Kayla Couldn't Forgive
She sat down across from me without unbuttoning her coat. That told me how long she planned to stay.
"I got the results," she said.
"I know. So did I."
"So it's real." She said it the way you'd confirm a diagnosis. "Mark is your son. Which means I married my brother."
"Half-brother. And you didn't know. Neither did he."
"That doesn't change one thing about what it is."
"No," I said. "It doesn't."
She stared at the table. Her hands were flat on it, dead still, the way hands go when a person is spending everything they have to keep them from shaking.
"I want to understand something. And I need you to look me in the eye and be honest."
"All right."
"Did you know? At any point? When Mark and I were dating. When we got engaged. When we stood up in that church. Did you have any idea at all?"
"Kayla." I held her eyes. "I was told my baby died in a hospital in 1965. I did not know he existed. I did not know Mark was anything but the man my daughter fell in love with."
She searched my face a long time. Looking for the seam in it.
"I believe you," she said finally. "I hate it. But I believe you."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me." Her voice came up sharp. "Because believing you doesn't fix a single thing. It doesn't fix that my marriage is—" She stopped. "I talked to a lawyer this morning. In this state, a marriage between half-siblings — even if nobody knew — isn't just voidable. It's void. Like it never legally happened at all."
I hadn't known that. The word hit hard.
"Seven years," she said. "Mark and I have been married seven years. We have a mortgage. We have joint accounts. We have—" Her voice broke for the first time. She clamped her lips shut and waited until it came back. "We had an appointment on the calendar. We were going to start trying for a baby."
I wanted to reach across the table for her hand. I didn't. I wasn't sure she'd let me.
"I'm so sorry, Kayla."
"Are you?" She looked up. "Because part of me — and I know it's not fair, I know that — part of me is furious at you. That this secret got to exist. That you had a baby and none of us ever knew. That there was a whole person out there tied to this family and we were all in the dark."
"I was nineteen years old. My mother told me he was dead. I didn't get a vote in any of it."
"I know that." She pressed her fingertips hard against her eyes. "I know. I'm not really blaming you. I just don't know where to put this. I don't know who I'm allowed to be angry at, and the person who actually did this has been in the ground for eleven years, and I can't even—"
She stopped. I watched it arrive on her face.
"Grandma knew," she said. Not a question.
"Yes."
"She knew Mark was alive. She set it up. She let you think he was dead, and then she watched me bring him home for Thanksgiving, and she sat in that church at my wedding, and she—"
"Yes."
Kayla shoved her chair back and stood. She walked to the window and stopped there with her back to me, her shoulders rigid.
"I loved her," she said. "I gave the eulogy at her funeral. I stood up in front of everybody and talked about what a strong, decent woman she was."
I didn't say anything.
"What am I supposed to do with that now?"
"I don't know," I said. "I've been asking myself the same question since this morning."
She turned around. The fury had sunk down into something rawer.
"Mark wants to meet with you. Alone. He told me this morning."
"I know. I want that too."
"I told him I needed a few days first." She looked at me. "I'm asking you to give me those days. Before you and Mark have your — reunion, or whatever we're calling it. I need a few days to figure out how a person lives in a world where her husband is her brother and her own mother built the lie that ended her marriage before it—" Her voice cracked apart. "Please."
"Of course," I said. "Take all the time you need."
She nodded. Picked up her bag. At the door she stopped with her hand on the frame.
"Mom."
"Yes."
"I don't blame you." She said it to the doorframe, not to me. "I want to. It would be so much easier. But I don't."
Then she was gone.
I sat alone at the table a long time. On the counter my phone lit up with a number I didn't have saved.
This is Mark. I know Kayla asked for time. I'll respect that. But I have to ask you one thing, and I need an honest answer.
Did she — our mother — ever mention me? Even once? Did she ever seem like she was carrying something?
I looked at it for a long time. I started typing, then stopped, because the honest answer was the one that would hurt the most.
Near the end of her life, my mother told me once that she'd made a decision she wasn't certain God would forgive her for.
I'd assumed she meant something small.
May you like
I'd been wrong.
---
