“The truth is…” My mother’s hand trembles slightly on the handle of the coffee mug. She puts it down on the coffee table, ignoring the coaster a mere inches away from where she put the cup. On any other day, this would make me crazy. But today, I couldn’t care less. “The truth is that your father isn’t… He’s actually…”
“What?”
“He’s alive.”
“What?”
Two minutes earlier, I had been thinking there was nothing that could ever make me hate my mother. But now I’m beginning to think maybe there is. My father is alive? How could that be? And how could she make me think he was dead for all those years? Daddy was in a car accident. I had accepted her word blindly for over forty years.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” she breathes. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but there’s no easy way to say something like that.”
“How about not lying in the first place?” I grit my teeth. “Why would you tell me he was dead? What happened? Did he run off with another woman?”
I suppose that could make a crazy sort of sense. Maybe my father ran off with some tramp and, in her anger, Mom pretended he was dead instead of a deadbeat. I still don’t know if I could forgive her for lying about it for forty years, but maybe I could try.
“No,” she says. “He didn’t.”
I fold my arms across my chest. Am I going to have to pull the story out of her? “Then what happened, exactly? Where has he been for the last forty-two years?”
Mom looks down at her wrinkled hands in her lap. “He’s been in prison. For first-degree murder.”
Chapter 25
Erika
Everything my mother says is another punch in the gut.
My father is alive.
Punch.
My father has been in prison for over forty years.
Punch.
My father is a murderer.
Punch. Punch.
I don’t even know what to say. I stare ahead at the wall, my heart jumping around in my chest. This has been the most stressful morning of my entire life. At this point, my day is going to end with me in the hospital with a stroke.
“You can see why I didn’t want to tell you,” Mom says, her words coming out quickly. “I thought it would be traumatic for you. And if it got out, the other kids might tease you.”
“What…？” I start my sentence, but my voice sounds strangled. Ugh, poor choice of words. “What did he do?”
“Well, he killed someone.”
“Yes, I gathered that. Who did he kill?” And why?
The wrinkles on my mother’s face deepen. I can tell she doesn’t want to tell the story, but that’s too bad. She’s kept this secret from me long enough. I deserve to know. “It was a woman,” she says. “A woman he was having an affair with.”
“Why did he kill her?”
“He claimed it was an accident. He didn’t mean to kill her—that’s what he said.” She shakes her head. “But his story didn’t make sense. And obviously, the jury didn’t believe it. They thought he planned the whole thing.”
Maybe he just wanted to see her suffer. Maybe he just wanted to see her scream.
“Do you think he planned it?” I manage.
Mom is quiet for a moment. “Yes, I believe he did. She was threatening to expose the affair, so he killed her.”
“How…” I close my eyes for a moment, imagining my father throwing this mystery woman into a dark hole so she couldn’t escape. “How did he do it?”
“He poisoned her.”
I feel that tightness in my chest, the same as I did last night when I discovered Liam was gone. I’m on the verge of another panic attack—my second in two days. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself down.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I say. “After all these years, why tell me now?” And why today?
“Because…” She bites down hard on her lower lip. “I just found out. Your father got parole. He’s out of prison.”
“He’s…”
“And I thought he might come looking for you,” she says. “So… I wanted you to be prepared for that. If you want to see him. Or not.”
“Right.”
Today of all days, this is too much for me to take in. My father is alive and he’s a murderer. He poisoned a woman. And oh yeah, he’s out of jail and might come looking for me.
“I think…” I take a deep breath. “I think I need to be alone right now.”