Page 7 of The Hero + Vegas = No Regrets

“This is the next phase of life,” she says, tilting her head and looking at me with pity in her eyes. “The next chapter.”

“But there must be a reason,” Noah says.

Mom glances down, picking at the label on her beer bottle. “I wanted you to have the best possible childhood. The best memories. The most loving home. I hope that’s what I was able to give you. Your father too—” She stops speaking and shrugs. “In his own way.”

“And we did,” I say, glancing at my brothers. I silently urge them to agree, like if we’re effusive enough in our positive recollections, she might change her mind andnotbreak our family apart. “I have the best memories of being a kid. There wasn’t anything about it I would change.”

“Really?” Mom asks. “Nothingat allyou’d change?”

“Well, it would have been nice if Dad hadn’t had to work so much, so he was around more, but—that’s life, isn’t it?”

“It didn’t stop us from having the best childhood ever,” Oliver says.

I glance at Noah, urging him to agree, to encourage Mom not to give up, but he’s looking at Mom. “Tell us why,” Noah says.

She presses her lips together and looks up at him. Something passes between them, like they know something Oliver and I don’t.

“I want something different for myself,” she says. “Now that you’re all making your own way in the world. I want something more.”

“More than Dad?” I ask. My dad is the most charming, funny, charismatic man, and he’s worked his ass off for this family. What’s themoreshe wants? Does she want to move to London and shack up with Idris Elba, or whoever a woman hurtling towards sixty sees herself shacking up with?

“You need to be honest,” Noah says. “We need to understand.”

A long silence settles on the table. We’re all waiting for Mom to tell us what she wants, what’s happened, and why she doesn’t want to be married to Dad anymore. An ember of anger starts to simmer in my gut. How can she do this to him—to all of us?

“Will you keep the house?” My voice is a twisted shriek as I imagine the For Sale sign in the yard. All the memories we made here would disappear if she sold the house.

Noah reaches for my hand. I can’t remember him ever holding my hand before. My mouth goes dry. I’m staring at Mom, willing her to give me the answers I want to hear.

She pulls in a deep breath. “I discovered some time ago that your father was having an affair.”

It’s like someone’s reached down my throat and pulled out a lung. I can’t breathe.

Anaffair? Dad was always devoted to my mother. Wasn’t he?

My brothers are silent, and Mom doesn’t say anything else.

That can’t be it. I want to know everything.

“Okay,” I say. “But relationships survive affairs, don’t they? I mean, you’ve been together for so long. Is it worth throwing everything away for?”

She offers me a pitiful smile. “The affair never ended. In fact, it might have started before we met.” She shakes her head. “I really have no idea. But your dad wasn’ton the roadfor work all the time.” She emphasizeson the road, like it’s code for something.

Maybe it is.

My vision starts to blur, the image of Mom and my brothers merging in front of me.

Oliver’s jaw is slack and his mouth is open, but Noah doesn’t look as shocked. He’s got one hand on mine and the other around Mom.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Noah says.

“No, it’s not okay,” I snap. “Can you stop giving us bits and pieces of I don’t know what and tell us what’s going on?”

Mom squares her shoulders. “Your father has been seeing a woman in Dayton for years—twenty-five at least. He splits his time between here and there. He’s done it for most of our marriage. When I found out, you were three years old.” She nods at me. “I had a young family and a part-time job. So I made it work.” She shrugs. “Sometimes I’d pretend it wasn’t happening and that he was on the road for work. Most of the time, I convinced myself that you can’t get everything you want out of life, so I should be happy with my wonderful children and my beautiful house and my generally happy life. I just didn’t get a whole husband. Other times, I’d cry myself to sleep at night.”

My head is spinning and my stomach turns inside out. I pull at the collar of my sweater, desperate for air. I don’t know which mind-blowing revelation to focus on. It all seems so bizarre, so completely removed from the reality I grew up with.

“Are you sure?” I ask. It seems so farfetched that Dad—our father, who’d chase us around the yard with the hose in the middle of summer, who would stuff broccoli into his ear to try to make us laugh if one of us had a bad day at school, who cried when I left for college—could spend his time around someone else’s dinner table too.

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