Something between us changes. I was sure he would deflect like last time. I was sure he would leave.
But he wants to stay. He wants to show me what's deep inside him. It's so far beyond my comfort zone that I can't comprehend it.
"Why?" How can he want to revisit this painful memory? And why does he think he can confide in me about this big thing?
He fixes his gaze on me meaningfully. "Because only the truth matters."
Oh God, no, it doesn't. The truth makes bad things only worse.
"I don't want to lie," he says emphatically.
I immediately understand what he means, even too well. "Because then you'd be like your parents." And like them, he doesn't want to be. "However, the truth always comes at a price. And sometimes that price is just too high."
He acknowledges my argument with a thoughtful expression. "Sometimes it takes days, sometimes months. And sometimes,like in my case, it's years. But one day, the truth always comes to light."
Everything inside me tightens up, so much so that I feel short of breath. Anxiously, I gaze outside where the winter landscape sparkles in the sunlight.
"The first snow of winter fell five years ago when I found out who my real father was," he says with a thin voice. "And that my mother deliberately got pregnant by him."
Oh. That's intense. "She had an affair?" I ask, my gaze fixed on the wild beauty of the winter landscape.
He snorts, clearly agitated. "No."
Confused, I turn to him. "But what..."
Kjell shakes his head. "The man who pretended to be my father for years couldn't father children."
So his mother was with someone else... just to... Wow. "Her desire to have children must have been incredibly strong," I say, as it's the only explanation that comes to mind.
He responds with a heavy sigh. "They thought it was a brilliant idea. They actually believed it would go unnoticed by their feelings."
"But it didn't," I continue his words. "What happened?"
A pained smile flickers across his face. "With each passing day, my so-called father hated me a bit more. Because he couldn't get the image of my mother with someone else out of his mind."
"How do you know that?"
A watery sheen covers his eyes. Though he tries to hide it from me, I can see it clearly. "I overheard him accusing my mother."
No, this can't be! "He said what?"
"When I found out, I confronted them both," he says, the words leaving his mouth with a hard edge. He clenches his fists, and his knuckles turn white. "At first, they denied it, but then their damn happy facade, the one they'd maintained for eighteenyears on that brightly lit stage where they presented their daily theater, crumbled away like plaster from damp walls."
Inevitably, I picture the scene. I see an eighteen-year-old version of Kjell.
Angry and hurt. Disillusioned.
"He hurled everything at me. The hatred, for me, for my mother, and for himself. The anger he had hidden behind that well-lit stage where he performed his daily drama for eighteen years. And the harsh truths." Kjell's voice grows quieter.
I understand what he feels. It's as if the same thing happened to me. Everything he had believed in until then. Everything he had considered right. Everything that had defined his life.
Everything shattered at that moment.
He clenches his teeth. "Nevertheless, I'm glad I know it," he says, and I see his strength in its entirety.
He won't be defeated. By anything or anyone. He is who he is, and it's so pure that suddenly I'm ashamed I'm not.
A single tear escapes from the corner of my eye and rolls down my cheek.
"Only the truth matters," he repeats his earlier words and looks up at me. "And now you know why."
I nod in silence as he wipes the tear from my cheek with his thumb. And even though he probably has no idea what's going on inside me, I wish it were different.
