When I had a feeling—I just fucking had a feeling what my dad was up to. And I didn’t follow him. I didn’t confront him. I didn’t stop him.
“But I could have,” I say, my voice quieter, filled with regret now. For the past. For the missed opportunities. For justice back then. I close my eyes, dip my face, sigh heavily.
After a few seconds, a hand comes up the back of my neck into my hair. “Banks, is this about today? Or something else?”
It’s about…everything.
I look up, meet her caring gaze. As she strokes my hair, I weigh the decision to tell her. I’m not an impulsive guy with my mouth. I’m not even impulsive with my actions.
For work, I react, I anticipate. Ithink. And it’s the same in my personal life too. I haven’t even told my past girlfriends about the way my family splintered. It’s personal, and it’s embarrassing.
But when Ripley looks at me with kind eyes and a big heart, when she senses what I need, maybe even before I realize it, Iwantto tell her. I don’t want to keep carrying this by myself.
I take her hand from my neck, clasp her fingers through mine. Like that, we head to the couch, Hudson at our feet. Once we’re seated, I say, “You know how I told you it was messy when my parents split?”
“Yes.”
I swallow past the shame and the hurt. “I grew up in Lucky Falls. My dad was the football coach for my high school, and I played on the team. I was a tight end,” I say, as tainted memories flicker by. The way Dad was everyone’s buddy. The way my teammates looked up to him, admired him, honestly, even worshiped him. “He also owned a sporting goods chain. About six stores or so, including one in Lucky Falls. And another in San Jose, about two or two and a half hours away. That was the flagship store.”
She nods, encouraging me to keep going.
“He was there a lot. Got a place there. A little apartment. Three days a week or so he stayed overnight. Ostensibly for business,” I bite out. “Or so my mom thought.”
A quiet gasp crosses her lips. “He had an affair?”
I meet her gaze straight on and rip off the terrible truth. “He had a second family. He had young kids. He raised them with their mom. He owned a home with her. He went there to take care of them. Be someone else’s dad, someone else’s husband for half the week.”
Her lips part, and her eyes widen. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that was like.”
But I can because I lived it. “It was awful. It came out on social media, which was still relatively new at the time, but that didn’t matter. Someone found out, posted it online in some forum, and one thing led to another. Everyone attacked him. He was beloved and everyone on the team, all the families, all the parents were shocked. There was so much outrage. The photos, the details, our address, her name, their names,” I say, shaking my head in disgust as those terrible memories crawl to the surface. “Don’t get me wrong—he deserved it. All of it. He’s a liar, a cheater, a fraud. But my mom was dragged through the mud.How did she not know? Was she aware of it? How do you miss the signs?”
Ripley sets a hand on my arm and rubs sympathetically. “I am so, so sorry. That sounds terrible.”
“It was. She was devastated. The life she had, the marriage she had—it was all a lie. And she couldn’t work for a while. She was floored. She had to take a break from work, even though he’d drained some of their accounts. She was…depressed. Which is kind of an understatement.”
“Of course,” Ripley says gently. “It sounds like she went through hell.”
My jaw ticks. I clench and unclench my fists, then dig down and ask the question that sometimes plagues me, that often drives me. “But what if I could have stopped it?”
“Oh, Banks. How would you have stopped it?”
“Sometimes he was late coming home. Sometimes it felt like he was spending too much time elsewhere. Sometimes he was on his phone more than he should have been. Ripley,” I say, my voice full of cracks and potholes. “I had a feeling. I fucking had a feeling. For a few months there in my junior year. Before it all blew up.” I draw a tight breath. “I should have done something sooner.”
She squeezes my arm tighter, then gently presses her other palm to my face, and turns me toward her, making me meet her caring gaze. “You couldn’t have stopped it. You couldn’t have done a thing.”
“Maybe I could have prevented it from spiraling,” I say, because c’mon. I could have. “Right? Don’t you think?” I’m practically imploring her.
“No,” she says, firm, emphatic. “His affair was not your responsibility.”
“But what if I followed him there? Confronted him? Took his phone?” I ask, tossing out options like a desperate man.
She shakes her head, her eyes welling with sympathy. “People do what they do. You can’t control them. You can’t stop them,” she says, then takes a beat. “He made his choice. And part of that choice was you and your mom and sister bearing the consequences.”
I close my eyes. Trying, fucking trying, to let her words sink in. My mom has said the same. My sister too. Mostly I believe them, but sometimes I don’t.
I open my eyes. When I look at Ripley, I want to believe she’s right. No, I have to. I have to believe the truth that they reminded me of all along. That there was nothing I could have done.
“This is why you do what you do, right?”
