She didn’t imagine the torment of that kind of betrayal had an expiration date.
“Rebecca, she was … God, this is hard.” He picked up his water glass and gulped, spilling a little down his chin and trying to laugh at himself as he wiped it on the shoulder of his sweater. “I don’t want you to think worse of me. But I suppose it’s too late for that.”
“I don’t know, Dad. It was a long time ago, okay?”
He nodded again, steeling himself with a deep breath. “Rebecca Astin was a good friend of your mom’s. And then, after—well, she wasn’t. So I don’t know for a fact how much Hannah knew, but I had my suspicions all along.”
A good friend? Oh, Dad. How could he have? How could Rebecca have? Caroline felt disloyal for having reassured him. This was somehow worse for Mom. And yet … “As in, she may have known about your affair, or as in, she may have known about the pregnancy?”
He shrugged.
Caroline stared. “But you did not know about the baby?”
“Unequivocally not.”
A detail that had been nagging at her surfaced. “Your profile settings, on the DNA site—you’d opted out of the database. Why?”
He squinted at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I’m not sure I want to.”
She sat stunned into comparing this new picture of Mom with the one she’d had before. How could the spouse whisperer, the doting wife who’d always done everything by the book, be the same woman as the shadowboxer who’d met Caroline at the door, ready for a fight she might have had reason to fear? A fight she might have taken questionable steps to thwart?
“If Mom knew all along, why throw you out now? Isn’t it a little late for ultimatums?”
“Turning a blind eye on a hunch is one thing. Having the truth thrust in your face in front of the people you love most is quite another. How else would any self-respecting woman react?”
“But if she knew about Sela, and never said—you’d forgive her that?”
A weighty pause hovered over the table. “You say that as if I’m not asking for a great deal of forgiveness in turn,” he said finally. “Would I have wanted her, or Rebecca, anyone to tell me? Of course. Am I in a position to pass judgment on doing the right thing, and what the right thing even was? Hardly.”
An incredulous grunt escaped her. “Well, where does this ultimatum leave me? I’m the one Sela reached out to. I can’t pretend this hasn’t happened.”
“No one asked you to. I think Hannah knows she can’t ask that, which is what makes this such a blow to her, even if it wasn’t the total blindside it may have seemed.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Listen, she’s your mom no matter what, loves you no matter what. Her role as my wife involves more scrutiny of the data. If you maintain contact with Sela, don’t expect Mom to want to hear about it, but I doubt she’d begrudge you whatever you decide on your own.”
Caroline considered this—the sister she’d sometimes, as a little girl, wished for, but never like this, discovered and then sealed in a secret compartment. A whole part of her life that she’d keep to herself. How would that even work?
Evidently, she could ask Dad for tips. Mom, too, for that matter.
“Without the ultimatum,” she said slowly, “how would you be feeling about this?”
“That is what’s known as a pointless question.”
“This isn’t some customer survey you’ve been hired to pick apart. It’s about you. It matters to me.”
“I’m—” He slouched, and his face flushed crimson, reminding her how seldom she’d seen him embarrassed. “Fine. To be honest, I’m heartbroken that I never knew. I think that’s the other thing that’s so difficult for Hannah. That I would have cared, a great deal—I never would have just let it go. But what I want doesn’t take precedence over her wishes now the way it might’ve then. She says that she could never look at this woman and see anything but my betrayal. That inviting her into our lives would unravel everything else in a way your mom can’t get past—and in fairness to her, she wouldn’t have to get past it if I’d honored our vows. I owe it to Hannah to respect that.”
“Sela might argue you owe her something too.”
“But I’ve unknowingly shirked that duty for decades, Caroline. Is there really a chance of making that up to her now? It’s hard to imagine her directing anything but resentment toward me.”
She shook her head. He might have retired, but he was still an actual professional at finding a mental path to justify most anything.
“Could you back up and tell me about Rebecca? About what happened? Honestly?”
He held up his hands as if she’d caught him. As if he’d known she would. “What do you want to know?”
She stared at the untouched food growing soggy between them. How many details could she stomach? “How did you meet? Through Mom, I take it?”
He grimaced. “This is going to keep sounding worse.”
“If you expect this to be the only time we ever discuss this, I’m not letting it go until I get the whole story.”
He looked away. “I met her at our wedding.”
Worse indeed. “Please tell me you didn’t—”
“Of course not. But it was an at-first-sight kind of thing.”
“Dad. I distinctly remember you calling that whole concept bunk. Multiple times.”
“I wanted it to be. Still do. Rebecca was the friend who Hannah always talked about but I’d never met. She was an artist, talented enough to be accepted to competitive programs before she was even out of high school. They’d been close since they were little, but she’d been studying abroad for as long as I’d known Hannah. A semester in London, a summer in Paris, a year in Italy…” The emotion in his eyes turned to something she’d never have expected. Pride. “Their home lives were equally bad, which is how they bonded in the first place. But for Rebecca, not only did her parents not get along, they wouldn’t get divorced. They were older—had already raised Rebecca’s brother, who was long gone—and the way she put it was that they were over being parents. Her father stopped bothering to hide what a violent drunk he was. Once she realized her talent was her ticket out, she used it. But she and Hannah wrote to each other—your mom wallpapered her dorm room with the postcards.”
Caroline already knew how soon after graduation her parents had gotten married. The following weekend, in fact.
“Hannah was so excited Rebecca was coming back in time for the wedding. At the rehearsal dinner, she forced the two of us together and commanded us to not stop talking until we’d won each other over.” He didn’t look at Caroline when he said this, which was just as well. “I hadn’t any qualms about jumping into marriage up to that point. That’s what you did in those days. Hannah had been my sweetheart since before I understood what a sweetheart was. When we met, she was the shy new girl everyone felt sorry for. Not only was her parents’ split a gossipy disaster, but who moves their kid to a new district senior year? It made me feel good, being able to make things better for her simply by being kind. She was pretty, and loved me back. Why wouldn’t I stay with her at UC? Why wouldn’t I marry her?” He shook his head. “But when I got talking to Rebecca, I never wanted to stop. I began to worry I was starting to understand new things about love. The way it can knock you off your feet, blind you to reason.”