The room spun around me. I tried to focus, but I was looking down a long tunnel of blurry images from my past. My spine turned to mush, refusing to hold up my body. I leaned to one side, leaned more, and more. The chair tipped, and I fell into a black abyss of blissful nothingness.
I woke on the couch with Fran sitting beside me and Howard hovering in the background. Pillows elevated my feet.
“What happened?” I heard a shaky voice ask the question and looked around for the speaker before realizing that’d been my voice.
“You fainted, honey.” Fran ran a warm washcloth over my sweaty forehead.
“For how long?”
“Less than a minute. Just lie here and don’t try to get up just yet.”
I fainted? I’d never fainted in my life. As my body functions returned to normal, the reason behind my incident became all too clear.
I knew that top name on the list.
Rosalee Black.
Oh, my God.
“Honey, are you going to be okay? Do we need to call 911?” Fran and Howard leaned over me, both their faces lined with concern.
“No, no. I’ll be okay once the shock wears off.”
“You saw something. What was it?”
I closed my eyes to buy time, faking that I was resting. I didn’t want to tell her. She’d hate me. So would Howard. How could they not hate me? I’d lived a lie for six-plus years and hadn’t realized it. But my ignorance was no excuse for a cold, hard fact I should’ve seen. Neither child looked like Mark.
They looked like…
Him.
I’d never given it much thought. Never once questioned how Mark and I had the athletic ability of a slug, while the children were insanely talented athletes, even at their young age. And they were both natural-born skaters.
Of course they were.
“Caro, honey, are you okay?”
My eyes fluttered open, and I focused on those two worried faces in my line of vision. I had to tell them before they did their own research and figured it out. I wouldn’t let that happen. This was my story to tell, my transgression to admit.
“That summer I graduated a year early from high school, and Mark went to Europe, we broke up for a few months.”
“Yes, we remember.” Fran’s gaze darted quickly to Howard and back to me.
“I met someone when I was working at the skating rink. He was there for a summer hockey program for talented junior players. His name was Easton Black.” My heart pounded in my chest as I waited for their reaction.
“Black?” Howard’s voice cracked slightly, and he sat down hard on the coffee table. Good thing he was a slight man, or he’d have broken the thing in two.
“The first name on the list was Rosalee Black.” Fran stated what we all knew, but I was relieved I didn’t have to explain further.
“His mother.”
“Mark isn’t the father of the twins?” Fran stood and backed away from me as if I were carrying a highly contagious disease. She held her hands over her mouth and stared.
“It appears not.” I sat up slowly, needing to face these two people from a sitting position. “I am so sorry. I never knew. Mark and I got back together within a week of Easton leaving, and I…I didn’t know. You must think I’m a horrible person.” I buried my face in my hands, and the tears came and wouldn’t stop. I cried with huge sobs shaking my body. At some point in time, Fran sat next to me, and Howard sat on the other side of me. Fran rubbed my back, and both said nothing.
“Do you hate me?” I asked finally. These two were all I had in this world except for my kids and my best friend, Juniper.
“No, honey, we don’t hate you,” Fran insisted, but her gaze was full of confusion and uncertainty.
“You made a mistake, but that doesn’t mean we stopped loving you. We’ll get through this together.” Frank was in his take-charge mode, and I was fine with that.
I didn’t deserve the love of these people. They’d already forgiven me for passing my children off as their son’s children, not that I’d intentionally done it, but in my mind, ignorance was no excuse.
“What do we do now?” I said.
“Easton needs to know. It’s the right thing to do. He’s their father.” Howard looked to Fran for confirmation, and she nodded. Despite the shock of a few minutes ago, they’d both recovered remarkably and were already looking to the future.
I was stuck in the present and the past.
I had to tell Easton. I didn’t have an option.
It was the right thing to do.
Easton point of view
That next morning, Coach Gorst called me into his office. It was a typical rainy day in Seattle. Leaves were turning colors and covering the sidewalks, soon to give way to an oppressive gray that would dominate the next several months. In a few days, the regular hockey season began, and I wanted to be on this team so badly I could taste it.
As I was going into the coach’s office, Axel walked out. His head was down, and he didn’t glance in my direction, but he mumbled, “Good luck.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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