Page 71 of The Love Audit
“How am I like Dad?”
“I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way, sweetheart. Your father just has a tendency to run from his problems instead of facing them head-on”—she shrugged—“until he has no choice.”
“Ma, I need to know what happened between you and Dad and the Morgans.”
“I’d always hoped I could shield you boys from this, but when I learned that you and Jasmine had reconnected, I knew I’d have to talk about this eventually.
“Your father was having an affair,” she said, as matter-of-factly as if she were telling me the weather.
“Dad was having an affair with Celine Morgan,” I said causing my mother to turn to me in slight shock. “CJ told me.”
“I think I’m gonna need a cocktail if I’m gonna tell the rest of this story.” She pressed a button on the intercom next to her chair. A voice crackled back, and Mom responded ordering a martini for herself, a whiskey neat for me, and a bowl of ice water for Tora.
“I met your father when we were studying abroad in Barbados. The only thing we studied was each other… Grow up, sweetheart,” she added upon seeing my expression. “We didn’t have an all-consuming love affair and we certainly weren’t soulmates, but we had something better; we had friendship. We returned to the US, and a few weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant with Christopher, so we got married.
“Your dad was a great husband and father, and we had a really good life. I was pregnant with you the first time he introduced me to Celine and Jasper. My instinct always told me that something was off about her friendship with your father, but I ignored it.Celine and Jasper were completely in love and trying desperately for a child. Maybe that’s what endeared her to me.
“The three of them got the idea to start a real estate firm. I was never what you would call a career girl, but what I did have was capital. I convinced my father to let me use a part of my trust fund for an investment, and the Morgan Carter Group was born.
“The next twenty years were good. The business thrived. Little Jasmine came along. Your father and I got closer.”
“So what happened?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure when it started. I began to notice cracks in Celine and Jasper’s relationship when Jasmine was about six or seven. They’d been trying for years to have another child. Celine had suffered a number of miscarriages and invasive procedures. Things got progressively worse over the next few years until their issues began to trickle into my marriage. It started with small inconsistencies until they became hard to ignore. I hired a private investigator who caught them in the act, and I filed for divorce.”
“But the company?”
“The company was started with my money. I wanted a clean break. Jasper and Celine reconciled, but they wanted to cut all ties with Christopher. The only thing that made sense was to dissolve the company.”
I was reeling from this information. All these years, I’d built up this narrative based on rumors and lies.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“Because we wanted to protect you.”
“Protect me from what? Chris was twenty-five. I was twenty-one. We were adults.”
“Yes, you were adults, but you were still my children. Sparing you from pain was, and will always be, my first and only concern.”
“So cutting us off from people we’d grown up with with no explanation and letting us believe all the rumors was sparing us pain?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Derek. I dealt with this whole”—she waved her hand dismissively—“situation the best way I knew how. It was handled quickly and quietly, and everyone got on with their lives.”
“How can you say that?” I asked incredulously. “It tore our family apart. Not just me, you, Dad, and Chris. Jasmine was our family, too.”
“You are directing your anger at the wrong person. I loved that girl, but I did not tear our family apart. Your father and Celine Morgan did that. Talk to them.”
I knew what I had to do as soon as my mother said it, but I was dreading it. Calling Chris for advice would have been my next move, but I was afraid he’d talk me out of it.
Our parents seemed to have the perfect marriage, and then in the blink of an eye, it was over with no explanation. I knew I’d spent my adult years avoiding commitment as a result of the divorce and, though he denied it, I suspected CJ had done the same thing. I wondered how he’d felt when he learned the truth. Now wasn’t the time to ask him. I couldn’t handle one more emotional crisis. I needed all the strength I had, plus four fingers of Jameson, to make the call I never thought I would.
The phone rang three times. I was about to end the call without leaving a voicemail when I heard a voice I hadn’t heard in years.
“Derek?”
“Hello, Dad.”
The true reason for my call was too jarring to open with so we spent the first ten minutes of the call trying to catch up on the past few years in the most superficial way. Every sentence was devoid of substance, and every forced chuckle reinforced how fractured our relationship had become. This man had been my hero, the person I’d looked to for guidance. He could do no wrong, until he tore our family apart with no explanation before allowing himself to disappear from our lives.
