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“Got into the habit as a kid,” he answers, penetrating the chaotic prism of memory wreaking havoc on my brain. “There’s something peaceful about it, knowing no one can see you or judge your taste in food.”
“Judge you?” I step forward, crossing my arms to keep some sort of barrier between us. “What for?”
“I’m a middle-aged man eating Lucky Charms at one in the morning,” he replies, moving his phone toward me. “Not to mention, scrolling through Sci-Fi Twitter, as if the first half of my situation wasn’t bad enough.”
A grin cracks my lips, splitting them apart for a moment. “Well, everyone already knows you’re a nerd.”
“That’s true, but when you do things in the dark, there’s less chance for evidence.”
It’s an admission slipping off his tongue, but he doesn’t even realize the double meaning.
As he glances back down at his phone, scrolling past different posts and liking the occasional one, anger builds like floodwaters inside me, a hurricane crashing along the coast and destroying everything in sight.
My stomach cramps, invisible knots forming as all my anxiety morphs into rage, my hands balling at my sides. Like a volcanic eruption, the accusation tumbles out of me, hot lava coating him where he sits.
“I know you’re sleeping with your receptionist.”
Blinking, his finger freezes mid-scroll, and he lifts his chin. “Excuse me?”
“I said, I know you’re sleeping with—”
“Jesus, wait. I heard what you said.” He holds up one hand, then scrubs it over his face, fingers disappearing into his dark hairline. Dropping his arm on an exasperated sigh, he shakes his head. “But how did you... ah. Boyd told you.”
“No, I heard you in your office,” I snap, my nerves firing on all cylinders now, churning at accelerated speeds. He exhales, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling, and his words finally catch up with me. “Wait. Boyd knew?”
“Yeah, he saw me a few weeks ago with her. I figured he’d have told you immediately.”
Disappointment settles in my gut like dead weight, my mind trying its best to keep track of the secrets unraveling. “You’ve been sleeping with her for weeks?”
“Fiona, what I do in my spare time isn’t—”
“Do not finish that fucking sentence.”
My body springs into action before my mind can tell it not to, reaching into the wooden block at the center of the island and pulling a filet knife from its slot.
I hold it up, trying not to read too much into the fact that this is the second time I’ve threatened someone with a knife this week—maybe I’m far more like my family than I thought.
“What you do in your spare time is exactly my business, Daddy, because do you know what I do in mine?” I raise my eyebrows, pointing the tip of the knife at his chest. “I take care of your fucking wife. You know, the one who gets a little closer to death every single day. Who literally did not know who I was this week and mistook me for her dead son. The woman you’ve supposedly loved for the last thirty years? That ring any bells?”
“Fiona, put the knife down and we can talk about this like adults.”
Tears spring to my eyes, a sob catching in my chest. My grip on sanity slips as his words set my world ablaze, razing the beacons of control I’ve erected to the ground. “Why, am I being too dramatic for you? Scared I might pull a Kieran and make you pay for hurting our family?”
“It’s not like that—”
“It’s always like that! I’ve put my entire life on hold to make sure Mom lives out the rest of her life as comfortable and well-taken care of as possible, and you’re out here cheating on her. Wrecking the only foundation I’ve ever known like none of it fucking matters at all.”
The words spill from my lips, unbidden, taking us both by surprise. Silence stretches between us, a tether pulled to the breaking point, and he gets up from his stool, reaching out to pry the knife from my hand without so much as a wince, as if he knows I’m not actually going to hurt him.
Part of me really wants to. Wants him to suffer.
But the anger inside me dissipates as I try to make some sense of what’s going on, racking my brain for some logical explanation.
I know I didn’t make up the love my parents have for each other. Even if the foundation was sometimes rocky, I know it was poured from a good, genuine place. That’s not the kind of relationship that can be forced or faked.
I know my father once changed himself for love. Altered his state of being and became the man my mother needed.
But I don’t know the man standing in front of me now, with his panic-stricken gaze and the stiffness in his shoulders. Don’t know how someone can cheat on their wife in the same house she’s dying in and go to sleep next to her every night.
