“All right, baby, if that’s what you need,” Dad acquiesces as he and Mom do that freaky silent communication thing and collectively decide to drop it.
Considering my emotions are all over the place from the latest emails I inhaled before I arrived, I decide I’m doing an okay job because inwardly, I’m freaking out. I’m set to board a red-eye halfway across the country in a few hours and feel relieved they haven’t grilled me so much on the where but mainly on the why. Thankful I pay my own AmEx bill, I look over to my father as he pops a beer and reaffirms my decision that he’ll never know. Even if I have been granted the first and only interview with Easton Crowne—which would no doubt boost circulation—I’ll never use a word of it. That’s the only way I’ll ever live with myself for doing something so deceptive.
With a raw heart and hellfire gnawing my conscience, I drain my beer and look between my parents, only to catch more of their conspiratorial expressions. Though they’re still in silent communication mode, there’s a pride in their eyes as they both turn to look back at me.
“What?” I roll my eyes. “It’s freaky when you do that, you know.”
“What?” Dad asks, his grin growing.
“Talk without speaking.”
Dad gives Mom a smug smirk. “When you’re married to someone nearly a quarter of a century—or the right person—it comes naturally, trust me.”
My parents have always been considered the ‘it’ couple amongst their friends, not that they care. Mom was right in saying I knew the details of how they met—a media conference in Chicago. The way Mom tells it, she took one look at my dad and lost the sense God gave her.
Mom always jokingly calls him her longest one-night stand.
Dad calls her the one that will never get away.
Sadly, I get that part of it now and no longer find it romantic.
After a whirlwind romance, they married just shy of a year of dating, and neither looked back.
Or have they?
There’s been maybe one month of my life where I wasn’t sure if I’d become another statistic of divorce. I was seven. During that time, Mom took me to stay with my grandparents for a week. When we got home, something had changed. They put on a good front for me, but more weeks passed before things truly got back to normal. There was a second shift, and they’ve been fine ever since. I’ve never spent much time thinking about it, but now I’m curious as to why.
“Where is your head tonight, daughter of mine?” Mom asks, a grin on her face as she glances back at my dad with bulging quizzical eyes. With the lift of a shoulder, he pops the top of another beer before reaching down to scratch the ears of our ancient basset hound, Sparky. Forcing myself back into the moment, I scrutinize the two of them.
“Who made the first move?” I ask, tipping my own beer to start a dangerous line of questioning.
They each point their bottles at the other with a smile, like it’s some inside joke.
“Seriously,” I ask. “Who started it?” Inside I pray for satisfaction. Everything inside me wants it to be my father. Much to my dismay, he points the neck of his bottle toward Mom.
“The hell I did, Butler. I couldn’t get away from you fast enough,” she sasses with an exaggerated eyeroll. “Smug, arrogant,” she ticks off before turning to me, “your father was a true jackass.”
“We didn’t like each other much,” Dad adds, “at first, but I damn sure liked what I saw at that party.”
“Until I shot him down,” Mom quips, tabling her empty beer and snatching his for a sip.
“We went toe to toe for weeks until I shut her up,” Dad continues.
Mom smiles in reply. “Not a bad way to be silenced.”
“This stays PG-13,” I remind them both through a forced grin.
“Let’s just say Nate didn’t like answering to me.”
My smile grows authentic as I grin between them. “So, Daddy, you didn’t know she was your new boss when you met at the party?”
“When he hit on me at the party,” Mom corrects. “Only to get shot down and shown up by his new boss the next day.”
“You knew?” I ask Mom.
“Oh yeah, once he introduced himself. So, I just let him run his game.”
“Let’s get this straight,” Dad spouts, taking his beer back, “you were never my boss. You only had me by the balls because the ad company you purchased bankrolled the controlling interest in my paper at that time.”
“Either way, you were completely misogynistic.” Mom widens her eyes at me. “Yep, baby. Hate to break it to you, but your father was a pig.”
“Horseshit,” he grins. “I just loved seeing you riled up. Especially in that red dress—which you only wore twice in two weeks because you saw my eyes dropping inappropriately when you did.”
“So, it was hate to love?” I ask between them.
“Not at first,” Mom says softly. “I had just jumped out of fresh hell with an ex, and your father had just endured the same not long before we met.”
Whipping my attention back and forth, I do my best to gauge their expressions for any bitterness, lingering sadness, or resentment—especially in my father’s eyes. Thankfully, I come up empty.
Be satisfied, Natalie. Be satisfied. Cancel your trip and move on with your life.
“So, you didn’t like each other, and then?”
“Then we did,” Mom says, her eyes meeting Dad’s for a loaded pause.
“Who broke first?”
“Baby, you’re rather inquisitive tonight,” Mom says, her brows drawing as she breaks her stare off with Dad. “Why such an interest?”
“You were getting to the sex part, weren’t you?” I divert, palming my forehead.
“Well, you weren’t immaculately conceived,” Dad delivers bluntly.
“No shit,” I say as Mom narrows her eyes. She doesn’t like me cursing but allows it because my father has the foulest of mouths. Not that I didn’t taste my fair share of soap or get grounded for PMS-induced emotional lash-outs by both.
“When did you know, Daddy? That it was Mom?”
He tilts his head, studying my mother, who stares back at him unabashedly. The answer settled somewhere in her chest. She knows it, and I’m the only clueless one. Dad grips my mother’s left hand, her large diamond glittering due to the candle burning at the center of the table as he slides his thumb along the back of it.
“I can’t wait until you get to figure that out for yourself,” Dad replies softly before turning to me, his blue eyes glowing with sentiment, “because it’s one of the best parts of living.”
“You aren’t going to tell me?”
“No,” Mom answers in reply, getting lost in the moment with my father.
They love each other, still, and it’s clear. They’ve spent my entire existence loving each other, so why am I so determined to dig into my father’s past?
Be satisfied, Natalie!
But I can’t, especially after living the first year of Dad’s old relationship—line by line—until I was forced away from my desk by Mom’s summons to dinner. I spent the entire ride to my childhood home in stunned silence, the truth evident. My father might have been madly in love with Stella Emerson, but Stella Emerson reciprocated that love fully, in black and white.
Even so, I’ve already gone too far.
This has to stop here.
One day I’ll summon the courage to ask, but for now, I need to let it go. If I back out of my half-baked plan now, good karma might give me a break for warning Easton that his secret was coming out. At least now he can prepare himself for the media shitstorm the announcement is sure to toss his way. I’ll just shoot him a text and cancel, assuring him of my word to keep Reid out of it, which will buy his silence.
Just as I reach for my cell to shoot him a text and refund my ticket, my phone lights up with an incoming text…from Easton.
EC: 415 Cedar Street @3