Page 3 of The Broken Beginning: Part One

If I thought the previous night had been just a dream, then what I woke to was nothing short of a nightmare.

Screaming.

Yelling.

Cussing.

Then the sound of glass shattering finally pulled me from my uneasy slumber. The clock beside my bed blared the red numbers at me, letting me know that it was only four in the morning.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I heard my dad yell.

I slowly creeped out of my bedroom, to the banister at the top of the stairs where I could peek through the spindles of wood to see down below. Everything down there was all open from the entryway through the living room and straight to the kitchen. There wasn’t a single part of the downstairs that couldn’t be seen from this vantage point except the hallway that went back to the master suite that was my parent’s bedroom and the garage door on the wall opposite them. It was a weird setup, but one my dad had specifically planned out because he could be closer to his bikes in case of an emergency with the club.

“I don’t know,” my mom cried. She was sitting there on the old couch that had once been a weird, barn and flowers pattern that was done with brown, gold and orange tones on top of a beige canvas. It had probably been hideous when it was brand new, and they had inherited it from my mom’s parents, but now it was just worn out and dingy. You couldn’t even see the cabin in the design on the back of either side of the couch where people sat the most. The one in the middle was really the only one you could still make out.

“He was my fucking brother!” My dad didn’t have any actual blood brothers, so he must have been talking about a man from his club.

“What do you want me to say?” My mom yelled at him as she angrily swiped the blackened tear trails from her face. Mascara smeared across her cheeks as she did, making her look worse.

“I want you to say that I didn’t see what I saw! I want you to say that you haven’t been spreading your fucking legs for my club brother.”

Silence greeted my father’s accusations. That couldn’t be right. Could it? My mom would never cheat on him. They had been in love with one another since high school. That’s what my mother always told me.

Something must have shown in my mom’s face that I didn’t catch because my dad took in a sharp breath and stepped back as if he had been physically attacked. “It wasn’t the first time, was it?”

Mom shook her head back and forth and sobbed even harder. “I’m so sorry, Robbie.”

“You’re sorry?” He asked, and it was my father who was sobbing now. He stumbled until the backs of his legs hit his recliner and then he just plopped down on it as if his body could no longer hold his weight upright. “How long, Mary?”

“Please!” She pleaded with him. “Please, can we just forget…”

“Forget?” His anger was evident in the tone. “Forget that I caught you fucking one of my brothers at the clubhouse tonight when you thought I was in a meeting?” He scoffed and then launched a coaster across the room where it broke into pieces. “Or should I forget that you don’t seem to want to answer my question? How fucking long, Mary?”

“Three years,” was her answer.

No way. My parents were in love. There was no way that my mom had been cheating on my dad for three years with a man from his club.

“When?” My father’s broken voice crashed into the silence of the room.

“Robbie, please, don’t do this,” my mom begged.

He laughed, though the sound was anything but humorous. “You don’t want me to do this? You don’t want me to ask the tough questions? Or is it that you don’t want to give me the answers? Hell, you say three years, but now I’m wondering. Should we go back even further? What about Lily?”

“What about Lily?” My mom’s startled voice cried out.

“Is she even mine?”

“How could you ask that?”

“Because you are a disloyal, cheating cunt! After what I saw tonight, I have every right to ask that.”

The knots in my stomach tightened again and I felt as though I was going to vomit. I always thought I looked somewhat like my dad. I had his darker hair and a slight cleft in my chin like him. We shared the same blue-green eyes too. The rest of me was all my mom, but every time I’d ever looked in the mirror, I always smiled because I saw their love looking back at me. I was always a mix of the two people who I ached to be like. Now, everything was in question, including my paternity.

“Lily is yours, Rob. You were the only man I was ever with back then.”

“Back then,” he scoffed again, hanging on those last two words. “I’ll be getting a test done, just to be sure. She’s mine now, no matter what, but you better believe me when I say… She is the only female that is still mine.”

“Rob, no!” My mom yelled, clearly understanding the meaning behind his words. “We can work through this. It was a mistake. He was just a mistake. You were always gone so much and…” Her voice trailed off as she looked away from him. I think even she knew there was no excusing a three-year long affair as ‘just a mistake’.

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