“No!”
“Tell her.” My mother lifted her chin to him. The trembling was gone and defiance had taken over. “Or I will. This is your secret. You should be the one to tell her.”
“Not here.” He scanned the entire table. “Not in front of their friends.”
I half expected a flippant remark from Jamie, or even Tiffany. None came. I relaxed slightly, but dug my fingers around the table’s edge. They co
uldn’t leave. Not like this. I was so close. “Who did you sleep with? What does that have to do with Ethan?”
“Everything.” My mother gave up. Her shoulders went down in defeat and she hung her head. “It has everything to do with Ethan and everything to do with his accident.”
“Shelby.” My father twisted and gripped her arm. His hold tightened and she whelped from pain.
“Stop it, Dad,” I cried out.
“Don,” Jesse started.
“You don’t talk to me anymore. You don’t have that right, Jesse.” My father looked ready to murder. “You have lost all privileges with my family and with my daughter. Remove your hand at once.”
“No.” His hand moved to my back and he took a possessive hold now. “I don’t have my privileges anymore? Are you fucking with me?”
“Jesse,” Malcolm admonished.
He ignored his father and addressed mine, “To cover your ass, you’ve hurt the one person who was innocent in all of this.”
“Stop it!” His fist hit the table again. A glass tipped over from the reverberations.
Malcolm’s girlfriend scrambled from her chair again, squealing as she fled to the bathroom.
“Tell her. This is ridiculous.”
“Tell me.”
“Your father had an affair.” The words came low and swift from my mother.
“No!” he roared. “I won’t stand here and listen to my good name being ruined. I won’t have it. Shelby, come with me.”
“No, Don.” She touched his arm, but her hand was gentle. He tore away from her. My mother never flinched. “I tried to lose myself because of everything you put our family through. I won’t lose my daughter. She’s my last living child. This has gone on long enough. You wanted to shield her from this, but we’ve done the opposite. We’ve hurt her. It has to stop.”
“Mom?”
“NO!”
“Then leave,” she snapped at him. “But I’m staying. I am staying with my child. You can go, and keep your good name. That’s all you care about. Your name. You don’t even care what you did to Ethan. My son killed himself because of you. It was all because of you.”
My son killed himself… My son killed himself… I couldn’t not hear those words again and I shook my head as they kept repeating. Over and over, I heard them. They wouldn’t stop. Someone stood in the distance and a faint voice said, “I think we should go home.” More people rose from the table. People were murmuring their goodnights. A few touched my arm, but I couldn’t get past what had just been said.
Ethan killed himself?
I looked at Jesse. Guilt. He knew. My gut kicked in as I realized that he’d known the whole time. Sucking in my breath, I started to move away. Why hadn’t he told me? But no, there was more. I lifted my head and saw my mother was still there. She had taken her seat again, looking composed despite the evening’s events. Jesse had sat as well. I kept looking around. No one else remained. It was the three of us and both of them were waiting for me.
Slowly, I reached behind me to feel for my seat. As my fingers found it, I sat but I never looked away from my mother. She picked up her wine and sipped from it. Setting it back down, she leaned back in her chair again. She was still waiting.
I choked out, “What?”
“Your brother killed himself. The car accident wasn’t an accident.”
Jesse spoke up, “We don’t know that.”
My mother sucked in her breath, only to release it at once. The trembling was gone and instead she looked broken. I recognized the look because I’d had it and now I got my second shocking realization for the evening.
I wasn’t broken anymore.
I didn’t know when it happened, but it had. I breathed in and out, trying to get over that surprise and I tried to clue in. This was about my brother. I feared that I wouldn’t hear this again so I shoved everything aside and only listened to my mother.
She started again, swirling her wine around in the glass, “All of this started, well, it didn’t start with the girl, but it did for me. Earlier in the year, Ethan brought a girl home to meet us. I believe you were at a party with the girls. He wanted us to meet her first. You know how Ethan was with you, he always wanted to protect you and make sure you only knew the tiniest bit of information. He did it out of love.”
“I never knew Ethan had a girlfriend.”
“He didn’t. Not for long.”
Jesse leaned forward beside me. His arm touched mine. I knew he did that on purpose, but I pulled away. My hunch was telling me things would different after this evening. The secrets were coming out. All of them.
“This girl was named Claire and imagine my surprise when I realized who she was.” My mother tipped her wine glass towards me. “Her mother used to be my best friend. She worked with your father. I even named you after her daughter.”
My middle name was Claire.
“I thought they had moved away. That’s what Stella told me all those years ago. I think they did move away, but I never knew they came back during the summers. I had no idea, but Stella’s husband, Claire’s father, still worked with Malcolm on a few projects.”
Jesse spoke up, “I took Ethan to a party that summer before. I was bored. My dad was making me go so I asked him to go. I had no idea what would happen, Alex.”
“Anyway,” my mother took center stage again. She had finished her wine so she reached for my father’s. The waiter had poured it after he gulped down the first one. It had been left untouched until now. She picked it up and drank half of it in one swallow. As she took a breath, her eyes moved to the side. She was looking over my shoulder. The pain filtered in and I knew she wasn’t seeing me. She was seeing Ethan. I could feel him. He was always there. “You can’t even know the bomb that she dropped that night. Little Miss Claire recognized Ethan from the beginning. She got close to him because she knew the real reason why her parents had split from us.” She laughed to herself, a sad and lonely one. “She walked in on her mother and your father. They were having an affair. Don never wants to talk about it, but I think it had been going on for a long time. He won’t even tell me when it started, just some time when you and Claire were little. I think they only stopped because her daughter caught them. And afterwards, your father threatened Stella. He told her to go away, to stop our friendship, everything, or he was going to tell her husband. I still don’t know if Jacob ever knew. He was a good man.”
So much was swarming my head. I was struggling to get all the information correct.
My mother continued as she finished my father’s glass of wine, “I think I’m drunk.” She giggled to herself as a tear slid down her cheek. “I think that’s the only way I could tell you all of this.”
“Mom,” I whispered. I was reeling. Everything was being pulled up inside of me and it was swirling into a massive storm. I couldn’t do much except sit there and listen. Everything would settle once again. I hoped it would.
“Your father made them break up. I think he scared Claire away and I think she stopped talking to your brother. It wasn’t good, honey. It wasn’t good at all. We found later that the reason Ethan wanted us to meet her that night was because she was pregnant. I was going to have a grandchild.” She stopped and bowed her head. The wine was pushed away and she began weeping into a cloth napkin.
Jesse found my hand under the table.
I clung to him. It was all I could do.
We listened as she continued to cry. As we sat there, I lost track of time until she had regained control. When she looked back up, I barely recognized my mother. She was broken, but she wasn’t the mother who had raised me. She wasn’t even a shadow of that woman. This person was a stranger now.
She gestured to the wine bottle beside Malcolm’s seat. “Jesse, pour me a glass. I need it tonight.”
He did and when he handed it over, her arm had the shakes. She didn’t care. She didn’t flinch as she guzzled more of the alcohol. “As I was saying,” her eyes grew haunted. “That was the begin
ning of the end. For me and for your brother. Ethan got a letter. She served him with a restraining order to stay away from her and the baby. I didn’t know about that letter until later, but it broke my