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“She was always dramatic, but she was always truthful,” Verona continues. “Which is why I know if she wrote in that journal about Teddy not being your son, well…there’s no reason for me to believe anything else.”
My heart, which previously stopped cold, begins to race in my chest, a galloping thunder that’s making it hard to breathe.
“Feel free to read through it yourself,” she tells me. “I’ll let you keep it since we already made our copies.”
Then she walks to the door, pausing only for a moment.
“You know, Colton, I never understood what she saw in you, but I always assumed I would be forced to deal with you for the rest of my life because of Teddy. Now, I know there is an option that exists without you. Push me, and I’ll take it.”
And then she’s gone. Out the door.
Leaving me behind to collapse onto the floor with the broken pieces of my soul scattered in a mess around my body.
***
I ask Emily to watch Teddy, not stopping to answer any of her questions as I fly out the front door, taking only my keys and the purple book with me.
Speeding down the highway, I take a hard turn onto Summer Canyon Road, following it all the way up into the hills until I’ve reached Sunset Point, a small campground that overlooks Sandalwood and the Pacific Ocean.
Teddy used to fall asleep really easily if he was in his car seat, so I often drove him around in an attempt to keep him asleep for longer periods of time. When we moved to Sandalwood, he had a hard time adjusting to his new bedroom, so I’d put him in his car seat and drive him around our new neighborhood, exploring the area while my son fell asleep in a somewhat familiar environment.
That’s how I came across Sunset Point.
For whatever reason, this felt like the place to come to think over what Verona said to me.
And to read Melody’s journal.
It takes me almost half an hour to finally muster the courage to open it, and when I do, I realize I’m in for a whole lot of answers that are going to hurt me so much more deeply than I ever realized.
The journal begins during the year we were trying to get pregnant. Entry after entry are Melody’s fears about being a mother, how she doesn’t feel ready, how she wishes she could live a life without children but her mother keeps pushing her so she feels like she has to at least try.
There’s a gap of time before she finds out she’s pregnant when she doesn’t write anything, and then it picks up again once she gets a positive test. The same kind of fears, the same wish that she could turn back the clock and the…
I cry when I read it. The desire to miscarry.
I have to set the book down at that, my heart turning over in my chest. My hands grip the steering wheel as tears fall down my face, my fingernails biting into the leather with the desire to rip it off the wheel.
I’ve been wondering for months if I really knew Melody. If I ever really knew and understood the woman I spent six years of my life with. Began to raise a son with.
And now my beliefs are confirmed. I never really knew my wife. I never really knew what mattered to her, what was important to her, what drove her and gave her true happiness. Because if I’d known any of these things I’m reading…
I shake my head, picking the book back up again and continuing the arduous task of reading through it.
Halfway through, she makes notes about us getting a divorce, something she thought would be a relief for us both. She comments on the fact I’ve asked her to go to marriage therapy for us to work on things.
That’s when I find it. Just a simple comment, a throwaway almost: Sometimes I wonder if I should tell Colton he probably isn’t Teddy’s father during one of our sessions just to see if that’s enough to get him to consider divorce again.
I close the book, a sob quaking through my body, then chuck it onto the dash. My hands bang at the steering wheel and I let out a primal scream, the rage that has been bubbling up inside of me at Melody finally truly and surely boiling over.
How could she do this to me?
How could our entire life have been a lie?
It’s nearing nightfall when I finally calm myself to the point where I can drive again, and I roll myself slowly down Summer Canyon Road and back to the highway, into town and down the end of Bluebell Drive.
To the pretty little house that held a life filled with nothing.
I stare at it for a long moment before I can muster the energy to drag myself inside.
