Page 67 of Everything We Left Unsaid

“Mom? Dad?” I call out as I enter the house. My voice echoes in the expansive foyer. My father appears in the hallway, emerging from his office.

“Hey, son,” he greets me warmly and pulls me into a hug.

“Hey, Dad. Where’s Mom?”

“She had a lecture this afternoon,” he begins, checking his watch as he leads me through the open office door. “Should be home any time now.”

“Good. There’s something I need to talk to you guys about.”

His brow knits with worry. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” I answer hurriedly, not wanting to cause him too much distress. “I mean, yeah, kind of,” I correct. “But I’d rather wait and talk to you guys together.”

He opens his mouth to argue, but snaps it shut at the sound of my mother’s voice.

“Jacob, honey, are you here? I saw your car parked out front.” Her voice grows louder as she draws closer.

“In here, Ev,” my dad calls out.

“Hello, dear,” she croons as she steps into his office. We exchange hugs and greetings, but I quickly get down to business.

“I need to tell you guys something, and I think it’s best if you both sit down for this.” My mother looks up at me, her eyes widened with worry.

I take a deep breath, dreading this conversation but knowing I need to get it over with. There’s no easy way to break the news to them, so I opt for the most straightforward approach. No preamble. No lulling them into a false sense of security. I’m about to tilt their world on its axis, and there’s no way to lessen the blow. “The first thing you need to know is that I have a child.”

“What?” my father bellows, his eyes bugging out in disbelief as he rises from his chair. I look to my mother, whose face has gone pale. She stares straight ahead, unblinking. “How did this happen? How old is the child? Who’s the mother?” My father’s rapid-fire questions and my mother’s stony silence catch me off guard.

I clear my throat. “I’d better start from the beginning. Do you remember that trip I took with Luke to West Virginia a couple years ago?”

“Yes, I remember,” Dad answers, and Mom slowly nods her head, her eyes unmoving.

“While I was there, I met a girl named Abby...”

My parents sit in stunned silence after I finish my story. I told them everything that happened from the first night I met Abby to the moment I realized I was in love with her. I told them about the incident with Caleb and how I barely escaped being arrested. With my head held high, I confessed that Abby and I had gotten carried away and didn’t use protection, but that she’d been on birth control.

“She was lying!” my mother exclaims, jumping from her seat. “She did it on purpose! To trap you!” She’d been eerily quiet until now, almost to the point I wondered if she even heard anything I’d said.

“Evelyn,” my father warns. “You can’t jump to that assumption. We don’t even know the girl.” She falls back into her seat in a huff, clearly displeased with his admonishment.

“I know Abby,” I inform her through gritted teeth. “She would never do that.”

“Keep going, son. I can tell there’s more to this story.” He crosses his arms and leans back against his desk.

“There’s a lot more, Dad. And it gets worse.” My mother winces as though my words cause her physical pain. Hell, maybe they do. She already has her mind made up that Abby’s some kind of floozy, hell-bent on landing herself a rich baby daddy.

I continue my story, explaining to them how our lives got so busy we barely talked, so when I lost my phone and she couldn’t reach me, she thought the worst. Swallowing hard, I force myself to continue.

“When I lost my phone, that’s when it all went to shit.” My mother’s eyes widen at my foul language, so I continue before she can interrupt with her scolding. “Somebody found it and pretended to be me while I was gone.” Dad curses under his breath and my jaw clenches with barely contained fury. “When she tried to tell me she was pregnant with my child, the person who had my phone made it sound like I didn’t want her. They went as far as writing her a letter on your stationery,” I reveal, pointing to my father, “and signing my name at the bottom.” I pause to take a deep breath before continuing, because all I can think about is hitting something, particularly the person who did this. I want to hit them until they bleed and can’t talk or see or do anything else to screw up my life.

“What did they say?” my father prompts when I fail to speak again, my mind singularly focused on causing my traitor pain.

“The scumbag who wrote it was trying to get her to terminate the pregnancy.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dad growls and stands, pulling his fingers through his greying hair. “Who the hell would do something like that?”

“Arthur, you need to calm down. The doctor warned you about your blood pressure,” my mother croaks from her seat.

“Calm down? Did you hear what our son just told us? How can I be calm? How can you be calm?”

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