Chapter Twenty-Five
When Jenson pulls into my driveway later that night, my stomach lurches as he gets out of the truck and I see his face.
Something’s happened.
“Anxious?” he says as he gives me a kiss and walks inside. “It’s okay. Nothing’s going to be more stressful than what just happened, so I’ve decided to just sit back and see how the story unfolds. I highly recommend you do the same.”
“What happened?” I say. “Because clearly something did.”
“My mom and Dee have separated.” He puts up his hand as I start to ask him why. “I’ll fill you in. It’s a bit tricky.”
Jenson and I sit down on the living room floor with Bernie and get comfortable. Jenson tells me that after he talked to her about me, he told her he met Donald. Cindy then scheduled an emergency session with her pastor and said she felt at peace for the first time in years.
And she knew what she had to do. She went home and immediately talked to Dee. She told him about her affair with Donald and how she had Jenson tested when he was a baby to confirm who his father was. She even told him how she hid the amended birth certificate from him. And Dee was angry. Very angry. And hurt. But he said that he was the one who raised Jenson, not Donald, and that Jenson is still his son, biological or not.
“That’s good, right?” I say.
“But then…” Jenson begins. “They decided to separate.”
“Oh, God.”
Jenson shrugs. “They fight all the time although I never thought it meant they’d divorce. But they both want space. They’ve always seemed kind of distant, I guess. But it’s all I’ve known.”
“So where are they living?”
“My mom didn’t want to stay in the house alone, so she’s moving into the same apartment complex her sister’s in, and Dee’s staying in the house for now.”
“This feels like dominoes. One truth comes out, and then another truth comes out, and then another until soon the entire landscape looks different.”
“And speaking of that,” Jenson says. “My mom was supportive of me telling Donald the truth. I’ve set up a meeting with him for next week.”
“And he thinks this meeting’s about real estate?” I say.
“Right.”
“That should be interesting.”
“Yeah,” Jenson says. “Dee and I are…kind of weird. I don’t know. He’s very upset I knew about Donald for years and didn’t say anything. He’s angrier with my mom, and he knows she put me in an impossible spot, but he’s just really upset.”
“Of course. It was unfair to you from the beginning, and Dee should understand that.”
“Donald was his best friend, and the betrayal has rocked him.”
I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. “I feel like we had a choice to keep things the same or to detonate them completely, and we chose to detonate. And so did your mom.”
“We had a choice to be together or to give up completely, and we chose us,” Jenson says. “This is us. You and me, Olive.”
* * *
Cindy calls in the morning and tells Jenson she’s arranged for our family to meet at the banquet hall.
“No more secrets,” she says to Jenson. “I’ll see you and Olivia this Saturday at two o’clock. The hall had a last-minute cancellation, and I took it as a sign, a sign that it’s time to tell the truth. Isn’t that great?”
“Great,” Jenson says as he looks over at me, and I feel the anxiety already building. “We’ll be there.”
* * *
I spend the week living in the mall with Hayley as I try to find the perfect outfit to wear on Saturday.
