“And you’re my dad. Nothing will ever change that, either.”
A chill swept through him.
“You got an earful yesterday,” he said.
“I needed to hear it. That was reality. Mom kept it from me for a long time. But the truth finally found me.”
“We now know why your mother kept Antrim to herself.”
Gary nodded. “I owe her an apology.”
“She’d appreciate that. She and I made a ton of mistakes a long time ago. It’s good to know that they’re all resolved now. Or at least I hope they are.”
“You’ll never hear me speak of this again. It’s done.”
“As it should be. But how about this one thing. Let’s keep what happened here to ourselves.”
His son smiled. “So Mom won’t kill you?”
“Something like that.”
Silence grew between them as they admired the gardens. Birds flitted across the grass in quest of tidbits. Thick trunks of mottled yellow and green bark cast a peaceful look. He recalled a story about the crumbling oak he could see in the distance. Where in November 1558 a twenty-five-year-old imposter dressed as the Princess Elizabeth, a role by that day he’d played for twelve years, was told of Queen Mary’s death. He’d been reading a book and glanced up from the page at hearing the news that he was now ruler of England.
His words were prophetic.
This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.
The last two days flowed with a calm finality through his mind. Much had happened. Much was over. But as with the imposter that day in the garden, so much lay ahead.
He wrapped an arm around his son’s shoulder.
“Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
MALONE FINISHED HIS STORY.
An hour had passed.
Pam had sat at the table, in the quiet kitchen, and listened to every word, her eyes moistened with tears.
“I wondered why I never heard from Antrim again. I lived in fear, every day, that he would show up.”
He’d wanted to tell her all of this for some time. She should know the truth. But he and Gary had agreed to keep it to themselves.
“I learned why you suddenly decided to tell me the truth about Gary,” he said to her. “Antrim confronted you in that mall. He saw Gary and knew. He surely threatened to tell me himself. You had no choice.”
She said nothing for a time.
“It was bad that day in my office. He made it clear he wasn’t going away. I knew then you both had to know the truth. So I told you first.”
A call he would never forget.
“Gary was so different when he returned from you that Thanksgiving,” she said. “He apologized for the way he’d been. Said he was okay with everything. Told me that you and he had worked it all out. I was so relieved I didn’t question anything. I was just grateful that he was okay.”
“It was just that the ‘working out’ almost cost us.”
The concerned look on her face confirmed that she understood what he meant. Both of their lives had been in jeopardy.
“Blake was a terrible man,” she said. “When we were together, back in Germany, I just wanted to hurt you. To lash out. To make you feel the pain I felt from your betrayal. It could have been anybody. But stupid me chose him.”
“I might actually understand that, except you never told me that you had the affair. So how was I hurt? Instead, you only hurt yourself, then lived with the consequences inside you.”
And they both knew why that happened. She’d never been able to let go of the fact that he’d strayed. Outwardly, she forgave him. Inwardly, the shock of his cheating festered like a cancer. Occasionally it would rear its ugly head during an argument. Eventually, her lack of trust destroyed them both. Her confessing at the time that she had done the same thing might have changed all that. Maybe their marriage would have ended right then.
Or maybe not at all.
“My anger was so strong,” she said. “But I was nothing more than a liar and a hypocrite. Looking back, we really never had a chance to stay together.”
No, they hadn’t.
“Seeing Antrim that day in the mall brought it all back. The past had finally come to reclaim what it had lost.” She paused. “Gary.”
They sat in silence.
Here was a woman whom he’d once loved—whom in some ways he still loved. Only now they were less than lovers, but more than friends, each knowing the other’s strengths and weaknesses. Was that intimacy? Probably. At least partly. On the one hand it bred a measure of comfort. On the other, a level of fear.
“Blake attacked me the day I broke it off,” she said. “He’d always been aggressive. Had a temper. But that day he was violent, and what really scared me was the look in his eyes. Like he couldn’t help himself.”
“That’s the same thing Kathleen Richards described.”
Richards had called him a couple of months after everything happened and visited Copenhagen for a few memorable days. They emailed a little after that, then lost touch. He’d sometimes wondered what happened to her.
“I never wanted Gary to know that man. Ever. He meant nothing to me, and I wanted him to remain that way.”
“Gary saw firsthand what was important to Blake Antrim. He heard what Antrim really thought of him. I know it hurt, but it’s good he heard it. We both now understand why you kept him to yourself.”
“He’s your son all right,” she said. “Never once has he ever let on he knew anything about his birth father.”
He smiled. “He’d make a great agent one day. Let’s just hope that line of work doesn’t interest him.”
“Part of me hates that Gary saw Blake as he truly was. I don’t want him wondering all of his life if that’s what he’ll become.”