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“And a secret from thirteen years ago broke us apart.”
She looks confused. Unlike me, I’m guessing she hasn’t been thinking about this on a daily basis.
“Do you want to know why I let Chloe paint me like a jerk with the press? Why did I give her more than half my money even though she doesn’t need it? Or deserve it for that matter?”
Dread is painted all over my mom’s face. But she has no idea. No idea just how bad this is about to get. I am shaking from the inside out.
“Chloe knows about Fletcher.”
The penny still hasn’t dropped, because she’s buried her secret six feet under. Her gaze tells me she has no clue what Chloe could know about perfect boy Fletcher. She’d never imagine my ex-wife could know about something that was hidden long before I even met her. I feel like screaming. Shouting. Yelling at my mom for bringing this on me. Logan was right. It’s my responsibility to make a decision now, but Jolie was right, too. My mom should have never done this to me. To my dad. To any of us.
I wish she’d put it all together, but she still stares at me, waiting for me to put her out of her misery.
I speak cold, hard words, my jaw tightens, and I say all I need to for my mom to understand. “I guess Chloe must have needed a tie.”
“A tie?” Confusion sparks in my mom’s eyes.
I watch her carefully, as slowly, the questions drain and her brown eyes fill with terror and the answer to her question.
“That’s right. Chloe knows everything. And when I said I wanted a divorce, she made the incorrect assumption that I’d go to the press and talk about her affair. I wouldn’t have. But she made sure that would never happen. She hung our family’s secret over my head and said if I ever leaked the reasons for our split and put anything other than irreconcilable differences on our paperwork, she would have a story of her own.”
My mom claps a mortified hand over her mouth. “But then she told everyone you cheated?” Shame coats her words. “Why?”
“Because shecould, Mom. She did it because she could. Because when you mess up and don’t own up, you lose your power. You lose your right to speak. To move on. And to fall in love ever again… and that, Mom.That’swhy Jolie isn’t here.”
I know Mom doesn’t understand everything, but she understands enough.
Still, as I’m finally able to unload a conversation I’ve carried around with me for over a decade, I’m not done putting down the most vulnerable one of all. It’s a selfish thought. It’s a weak thought. But I’ve felt it many times nonetheless. “You chose one son over another asking me to keep your secret. And that I could understand. Fletcher’s life would be vastly different, and in your eyes, mine would go relatively unchanged. It wasn’t right, and yet, a part of me can reach in deep and understand why you asked me to keep quiet.”
Mom’s eyes mist over, but she’s a stoic woman who holds it together until I say the next words.
“Yeah. I understand how me hanging on to the truth about Fletcher seemed the lesser of two evils. But you chose to protect Fletcher even though it put a burden on me. I love my brother. I don’t want him hurting any more than you do. But what’s really bad is you choosing yourself because you never once admitted this whole thing is about you, too.”
She comes to her own defense. “I should never have put this on you but I wasn’t thinking about me, Ashton. I saved those papers to protect your brother. I could have just put your dad’s name on the birth certificate and been done with it. It was legal and binding to do that, and nobody would have had to know. But I worried that not having access to his real dad could one day be a mistake. What if Fletch got sick with some disease and needed… I don’t know… a kidney or something? I tried to do the right thing by keeping in contact with—” She stops herself short of saying his name. “It would have beenmoreselfish to have never told you, your dad,orFletcher about his real father.”
And just then, her gaze slides over my shoulder, and horror paints her features. I spin quickly, and there he is, a sick, almost nauseated expression on his face.
Fletcher.
“Sweetie…”
“My real father?” he says, as confused as he is disbelieving. “What the hell does that mean? My real father?”
I’m too stunned to speak. Even though my plan was to ensure my mom and dad told Fletch the truth or else I would, him thinking he’s coming home to a happy family affair and finding me and Mom coming to blowsover this would have been the last way I would have planned to deal with it.
My mom races over to his side and grabs his arm which he quickly pulls away.
“Tell me what the hell is going on here.”
I try in vain. “We can talk about this later. Let’s go celebrate with Dad.”
“Dad? As in the man who raised me or this other father you’re talking about?” He’s angry. “No, Ashton. I need to know what the hell you two were talking about here. I heard my name. I heard—” He hangs his head then peers up from under pinched eyebrows. “Tell me.”
The strain of holding in years of secrecy drains out of my mom’s body. A soul-stirring calm fills her eyes, and she says to me, without taking her gaze off my brother, “Go on down, Ashton. Light the candles and sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”
Even though it really is my mom’s story to tell, right now, seeing her like this, full of shame and heartache, I want to step in and save her from this moment. I want to tell him for her, because I know she’s going to cry.He’sprobably going to cry.
But instead, I do what needs to be done. There’s a house full of people downstairs and a beautiful, caring man who cheated death down there celebrating his second chance at life. That’s where I’m needed. Before I leave, I wrap my arms around Fletcher’s frozen body and pat his back with silent affection.
