Page 55 of Myself

“She just didn’t want Becca to have what she wanted,” he says softly.

I look at him, and he pulls his eyes away from the picture and meets mine. “What does that mean?” I ask slowly.

He looks back down at the picture. “You look just like him.”

I swallow the lump in my throat but ask, needing him to say it. The words that I haven’t heard in so long. “What?”

“Your father,” he says matter-of-factly, and that lump in my throat gets bigger. “She sees him when she looks at you and doesn’t want her daughter to have what she wanted.” I don’t say a word. I can’t. The lump has grown to the point of suffocation. He sighs. “I know that my wife slept with your father.”

The words don’t surprise me because I knew this, but the fact that he does shocks me. I still don’t say a word, but my face must portray my surprise. “What? You thought I didn’t know?” He shakes his head. “Just because I’m not around doesn’t mean I’m blind.” My chest tightens at his confession. “What does surprise me is that you know.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. O’Kane ...”

He waves off my apology. “It wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t your father’s either. I blame my wife. She took advantage of him. After your mother had passed, he wasn’t the same.” I nod my head at that. None of us were the same. “But what I can’t forgive is her using him.”

“How did you know?” I ask, clearing my throat.

“Your father told me,” he says simply. “He came to me.” He lets out a long breath. “He was a great friend and ashamed of his mistake; he asked for forgiveness.”

“And?” I almost choke on the single word.

“It was never a question,” he says, sitting back down slowly.

I sit down as well ‘cause my legs are having a hard time holding me up. I place my elbow on the desk and rub my eye. How are we even having this conversation?

“You knew about it.” It’s not a question, but I nod.

“I had gone to my parents’ house to check on my father. You were right; he wasn’t the same after my mother passed ...” The toll of having to watch my mother die was hard on all of us, but he just crumbled. Like a building he had once designed. Watching it fall to the ground and blanketing the city in nothing but dust. He never was able to see clearly again. “I heard him in the kitchen.” I swallow not able to look him in the eyes. “I walked in to see a naked woman. I had spun back around before I could see who it was and excused myself. I ran out of the house but came to a stop when I saw the car in the driveway. I hadn’t noticed it before. But it was hard to miss after that. She had seen me, though. It was too late to deny it.” I was twenty-five, Becca eighteen.

“Did she ever come to you about it?” he asks.

I shake my head. “No. She avoided me.” He nods, and I swallow. “I should have told you, sir.”

He waves a hand in the air. “It wasn’t your place.” He laces his fingers and places them in his lap. “Plus, do you think your father was the only man she ever crawled into bed with?” I don’t answer. “No.”

I look down at my hands. The thing was I hadn’t thought less of my father when I saw him with a married woman. My best friend’s mother, no less. I knew he wasn’t in his right mind. I knew he was hurting, and although I know it wasn’t right, I still couldn’t bring myself to judge him. And I’m thankful for that ‘cause two years later, my sister and I lost him too.

“Anyway,” he says, “what about Conner now?” Changing the subject as if he wasn’t just talking about his wife’s infidelity with my father.

I’m happy to comply. “Well, I’m just guessing here, but I think your wife is still paying him because he won’t go away.”

“What do you mean by won’t go away?”

“He keeps texting Becca, and then last night he called her saying that he needed to come up to her apartment ‘cause he left some stuff behind in Seattle and needed to retrieve it.”

“Please tell me Becca didn’t fall for that.” I don’t answer that. He sighs. “What happened when he got up there?”

“He attacked Ashlyn,” I say not really giving him the truth but enough to get him to see the picture.

“Is she okay?” he asks wide-eyed.

I nod. “Security was called. Then Ryder had extra security brought up to guard their door. He’s not gonna get in, but I doubt your wife knows they’ve split.”

He nods and then stands again. I stand with him this time. “I’ll take care of it.” Then he turns to walk out.

“Mr. O’Kane?”

He pauses and turns to face me. “Please, don’t ...”

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