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“Mack?”
At least her mom was talking again. When she’d gone silent in the church, Mack had been scared she’d killed her or something.
She heard the door open, then footsteps. The bed dipped as her mother sat down next to her. She smoothed her hair as she’d always done when Mack was little and it made her feel like crying again. She was so mad at her mom and yet she’d never needed her more.
Whenever Mack had a problem, her mom was the person she talked to. She never freaked like all the other moms she knew. Phoebe’s mother lectured her. Abigail’s mother shrieked, sometimes when Mack was there, which was oh-so embarrassing. Her mom listened. They’d always laughed together. Because her mother was younger than the other moms, sometimes she’d felt more like an older sister. And her friends had all envied her, although not anymore.
But this time her mother was the problem. She’d lied. How could Mack ever trust her again?
She jerked her head away from the soothing touch even though part of her desperately wanted it.
“Talk to me, Mack. You’re very upset and I understand that.”
“You’re the one who should be talking.” She felt physically sick. What if she threw up in her bed like a little kid?
“Could you at least turn round so I can see your face?”
“Why?” Mack turned, the movement sending her hair whipping across the face. “Checking for something familiar? Trying to work out who my father is?” She hadn’t thought it was possible to feel worse than she already did but she saw the hurt in her mother’s eyes and realized it was possible.
How could you be mad at someone and feel guilty all at the same time?
Her mother took a deep breath. “I don’t need to work anything out. I know exactly who your father is, Mack.”
10
Lauren
Despair: total loss of hope
Lauren stared down at her daughter. How was she supposed to handle this?
This wasn’t how today was supposed to turn out.
She’d had a plan for the funeral. Forty-six carefully laid-out points on her list, all with a red tick next to them. Nowhere on that list had been “Tell Mack about her real father.”
She’d always planned to do it when the time was right, and that time wasn’t now. Mack was hurt and confused, which was the very thing she’d tried to avoid.
She hadn’t even had a chance to process her own emotions and now she had to switch off her own feelings so that she could concentrate on those of her daughter. She had to be a mother, not a bereaved wife. A better mother than she’d been up until now. How, when she’d tried so hard to get it right, could it have gone so wrong?
“We always intended to tell you, but we were waiting for the best time.”
Mack shot upright. Her mascara had smeared under her eyes and her hair stood on end. “The best time was a long time ago.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I wanted you to grow up feeling secure and confident. We were waiting for you to be old enough to understand before we told you. Ed was your dad in every way that mattered. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way.”
“Find out what? That you had an affair? That’s disgusting.”
It had been life changing. On the rare occasions she allowed herself to remember, she could still feel the touch of his hands and the warmth of his mouth. The press of sand against her naked, desperate flesh. When she was with him, she’d felt the electrifying thrill of being alive.
“I didn’t have an affair. That’s not what happened. I was always faithful to your f—to Ed.”
“I can count! No matter how you add it up, you were expecting me when you married Ed.”
“Yes,” Lauren said. “I was.”
“So, what? You had sex with another man on your honeymoon? Ugh.”
Lauren clasped her hands in her lap to try to disguise the fact that her fingers were shaking. She hadn’t slept for a week. She spent her nights crying by herself, shocked by her own grief. She hadn’t known a human being was capable of losing so much water. During the day she mostly held it together but it required such an effort she couldn’t touch food. Her head felt as if it was stuffed with wool and somehow in this state she had to have the most difficult conversation of her life. She could barely find any words, let alone the right ones. “That wasn’t what happened.”
