Chapter 6 - What My Parents Finally Said
My parents called that night. Not together — separately, nineteen minutes apart, which told me they hadn't talked first and gotten their stories straight.
My father called at seven. I let it ring out.
My mother called at 7:19. I picked up.
She didn't say hello. She said, "I owe you an apology."
I sat down on the edge of my bed. The kids were asleep. The house had that specific hollowed-out quiet it gets after a long day — not peaceful, just used up.
"Okay," I said.
"I didn't know about the other woman."
"I know you didn't."
"I didn't know about the money either. Your father called Nicole's future mother-in-law tonight, and she said there were things she'd noticed months ago and never brought up. She thought it was a prenup thing." A pause. "It goes back further than what you found today. He was moving money around long before fourteen months ago."
I closed my eyes. "How much further?"
"They don't know yet. Nicole has a lawyer coming in the morning."
I looked at the ceiling. "Mom. You stood on my porch this morning and told me I should be ashamed of myself. You told me I was a disgrace. You said that to me, and you know what I lost three weeks ago."
Silence on the line.
"I know," she said.
"I need you to actually sit with what that did. Not so you'll feel guilty. So you'll understand it."
"I know," she said again, and her voice had come loose from something. "I kept thinking if I could just get everybody to accept it, the whole thing would stop hurting. Yours included. I thought that was me holding the family together. I thought I was doing right."
"You weren't."
"No." A breath. "I wasn't."
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
"Where's Nicole right now?" I asked.
"Here. She came straight from the hall. She's in her old room." A pause. "She asked about you."
"Asked what."
"Whether you'd ever forgive her."
I didn't answer that. Not because I hadn't thought about it, but because the answer was too big to hand over on a phone call at 7:19 on the night of a wedding that didn't happen.
"Tell her I'll call her when I'm ready," I said.
"I will."
"And Mom." I waited a beat. "Don't ever again tell me to swallow something that's hurting me so everyone else can stay comfortable. Not about Derek. Not about anything."
A long pause.
"I won't," she said. "I promise you I won't."
We sat on the line a little longer without talking. Then she said goodnight, and I said it back.
My father's voicemail was forty seconds long. He said he was sorry. He said he should have listened to me from the start. He said he'd been a coward and he'd known it the whole time. He said he loved me. He said all of it like a man who'd practiced it in the car and still wasn't sure he'd landed it.
I listened to it twice. Then I put the phone face-down on the nightstand and went to check on the kids.
Sophie was awake, flat on her back, staring at the ceiling in the dark.
"You're supposed to be asleep," I said from the doorway.
"I know."
I came in and sat on the edge of her bed. "You okay?"
She thought about it, seriously, the way she thinks about everything. "I think so. Is Daddy going to be mad at me for a long time?"
"That's not yours to carry."
"But is he?"
I looked at her. "Whatever your dad feels right now, it is not your fault and it is not your job to fix. You told the truth. That's all you did. That's all."
She pulled the blanket up. "Grandma Joan cried when she read it. She said, 'oh, that poor girl.' I didn't know who she meant."
"Bethany," I said. "The woman at the wedding. The one with the baby."
"Is the baby okay?"
Something moved in my chest, sharp and quiet at the same time. "Yes," I said. "The baby's okay."
She nodded, satisfied, and shut her eyes.
I sat with her until her breathing went slow and even. Then I went back to my room and lay down in the dark and thought about Derek's voice on that recording — calm, deliberate, threatening a woman with an infant — and about the folder in my bag, and about the lawyer I was calling first thing Monday.
My phone lit up. A text from a number I didn't have saved.
*This is Derek. I know you think you won something today. You didn't. We need to talk before you do anything with those documents. I'm serious. Call me.*
May you like
I read it once. Then I put the phone back face-down.
Whatever came next, I was going to have to be very careful.
