Page 132 of The Cost of Forgetting You

It takes a minute for him to find his footing again, to draw the words back from where they disappeared to, but when he does, his face softens around the memory like a candle set alight. “We couldn’t date. But we were friends. Good friends.”

“You wrote notes to each other, right?”

His eyebrows leap to his hairline. “How’d you know about those?”

“I found them in the box of your things from school. They’re in your desk if you’d like to read them.”

“Well, thank you for that.” He rolls his lips, tears pricking his eyes. “I’d forgotten about those notes. Lucy brought them back to me after finding them in a closet she was cleaning out. I couldn’t believe she held on to them for all those years.”

My heartbeat slows and my breath catches. “You must’ve meant a lot to her.”

He nods. “She meant a lot to me, too.”

I don’t want to upset him. Not after everything that’s happened the last couple days. But there’s a question itching just beneath my skin, begging to be let out, and I have to know. Before it’s too late. “Did you two… was there…”

He blinks at me, confused.

I draw a breath and try again. “The affair. How long had it been going on?”

“It was just that one kiss. I—” His lips shutter closed. “I shouldn’t say j—ugh.” He rubs at his mouth, his beard crinkling against his touch. “I shouldn’t say ‘just.’ One kiss is enough. I cheated. It was wrong.”

My heartbeat slows to a crawl. I shake my head, more at myself than at him. “All this time I thought Jessica caught you sleeping together.”

He barks a laugh. “I wish!” Silence swallows his laughter, and a grimace steals the joy from his face. “Sorry. No. We never slept together.”

He said that to me once, on his knees in the kitchen as he pleaded his case. But a part of me never believed him. Not with the rumors—and Mom’s accusations—filling my head with another story. Not until now, when he has no reason to lie.

I press my fingers against my temples, trying to make sense of it all. “But there were feelings before? Right?”

“For who?”

“For Lucy.”

He opens his mouth, a little sound of realization escaping, and nods. “Yeah.” The word is wistful. Breathy. “I’ve loved her my entire life. Or at least for every second she was a part of it.”

Now my head is really starting to hurt. “But you married Mom?”

His brow furrows. “Kimberly?”

“Yes.”

“She was pregnant.” He mulls it over. “With you, as a matter of fact.”

A squirrel shoots across the cemetery, startling us both. My mind is at once spinning and holding incredibly still, trying to keep up while attempting not to move too fast and miss it all in the process.

I lay a hand over Dad’s. His skin is bruised where they gave him an IV, so my squeeze is gentle. “Were you ever happy?”

His lips curl upward, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I was happy being your dad.”

“But not with Mom?”

His head drops. “Kimberly is a…difficult person.”

I snort. I don’t mean to, but it slips out. A flock of starlings evacuate the oak branches overhead, calling out their distaste. Dad chuckles, too, though there’s something broken in it. In us.

When the laughter subsides, it leaves behind a raw ache in my chest. I push my palm hard against my breastbone, but the pain remains just out of reach.

“Were you and Lucy together after Mom and I left?”

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