Page 78 of Falling For Us Again

“Why do you have my father’s picture, and why is he with your mom?”

Jenna shakes her head, disbelief etched into every line of her face.

“No,” she mutters, her voice trembling. “It can’t be. That’s not—”

“It is,” I cut in. “I know my father’s face. What’s going on, Jenna? Where did you find this picture?”

Jenna’s hands are shaking as she kneels, retrieving the letter. She flips through the journal frantically, her breath coming in short, shallow bursts, as if she’s piecing together a puzzle. Then she stops, her eyes widening. She thrusts the letter toward me.

“Read this,” she says, her voice thick with emotion.

I stare at her for a few seconds before I take the letter from her, my fingers brushing the old, brittle paper. The handwriting is neat and methodical. Time seems to suspend.

It’s my father’s handwriting.

There’s no mistaking it. I’ve seen it a thousand times. I’d know it anywhere, and now it’s here, in my hands, in a letter addressed to Jenna’s mother.

The moment I begin to read, my stomach twists into knots.

The words blur together for a second before snapping into clarity, and I realize why Jenna is so shaken.

The words in the letter are from a man hopelessly in love with a woman that’s not his wife and full of things I can’t reconcile with the man I knew. My head spins, my knees weaken, and I sink into the couch as the implication of the situation settles over me like a heavy fog.

My father and Jenna’s mother. They had been together. In love. Then having an affair on our parents?

“Is this some kind of joke?” I wave the letter in the air; I can't keep the disbelief out of my voice.

Jenna watches me, her arms still crossed. “I truly wish that it was,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

My throat tightens. “My father wrote this letter... I didn’t know about any of this.”

“Neither did I. Until now.”

For a long moment, the only sound in the room is the soft rustling of the pages of the journal. My mind is stuck on the image of my father writing love letters to another woman, to her mother.

“How did they even meet? I can't believe this.” I mutter, more to myself than to Jenna.

“In high school,” she replies, her voice shaky but steady. “They were high school sweethearts. They only broke up because your fathers’ parents demanded that he marry your mom, and then my mother went on to marry my dad.”

I stand abruptly, pacing the length of the living room, trying to make sense of what I was hearing. My thoughts tumble over one another, a mess of questions with no answers.

“This makes no sense. My father was never unfaithful to my mom.”

At the mention of my mother, it all begins to make sense. I draw it a deep breath. “My mother knows about their relationship.”

Her eyes widen as realization also dawns on her. “That would explain why she hates me so much.”

She hands me the journal; the last entry was the day her mother died. She was trying to escape with my father.

“She died trying to escape.” I say softly.

Jenna’s shoulders slump, and for a moment, she looks small, vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen before. “I’ve tried, but I can’t seem to remember anything about that day. I was in the car with her, and now I know that it was your dad driving.”

“I don’t know what to do with any of this,” she says quietly.

I cross the room in a few quick strides, taking her hands in mine. “I'm just as shocked by this too,” I admit, my voice low, my chest tight with emotion. “We have to go see my mother. She knows more about this than we do.”

She nods, her fingers tightening around mine. “I agree.”

---