Amy
I was out of breath when I entered Conner’s. My eyes scanned the restaurant and locked with Will’s. As I walked toward him, a look of panic ran across his face.
“Will, do you know where Seth is? I need to talk to him.” My voice was shaking. When I had left the house, I kept telling myself that I was probably wrong. There was no way that John was Seth’s father. Seth would have told me. My gut seemed to know better, and the more I thought about it the more it made sense.
“He’s at his grandparents’ house.”
“His grandparents?” I said, confused.
“Um, their house…” He trailed off. I gave him a blank stare and he pursed his lips.
“John’s his father, isn’t he?”
Will nodded. “Amy, listen—”
“Did everyone know but me?!” I let out the breath I was holding in. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“You need to talk to John,” Will said, getting closer to me. He gave me a sympathetic look. It didn’t make me feel any better.
I shook my head, my heart pounding. “I need to talk to Seth.”
Will looked down at the rag he was holding. “I’m not sure when he will be back.”
I nodded slowly, getting angrier. Will wasn’t going to tell me anything. “Great, thanks.”
I whipped around and stormed out. I called Seth’s phone for the fifth time, but it went straight to voicemail.
As I walked back toward my house, I tried to calm myself down and think through this situation. I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt. I wanted answers. Answers I should have asked for a long time ago.
My hand was on the knob of the front door when a familiar voice spoke.
“Mom was your fault.”
I froze. Seth was in my kitchen. I jerked my hand back and quietly peered through the window.
His voice was low, a tone I had never heard from him. I could feel my body run cold as I stood there and kept listening.
“All this time you were blaming me. I was blaming me—when you were the one to blame. How could you?!”
“I’m to blame?!” John shouted. “You were the one that didn’t go with her that night. You should have been there to stop her!”
“I was there!” Seth said, his voice rising. “I want to know what happened that night! Explain this!”
Seth shoved a piece of paper at John’s chest. I could see John’s facial expression as he read the contents. His face went pale.
“How could you tell her never? How could you tell her that you would never move to Shelby?! That’s all she wanted.” Seth choked. I held my breath as the pain in his voice caused tears to form in my eyes.
“She was sick. She needed hope, and you destroyed it.” His voice was shaking. “You…destroyed…her.”
“Seth, please—” John pleaded.
“Did you think that cutting me out of your life and starting over would get rid of your guilt?” Seth said over him. “Did you think that pretending I didn’t exist would make her memory go away?!”
“Seth, I didn’t know that was what she would do,” John finally said. “I didn’t know that…that…was the last straw.”
The air was still and I could see John clenching the paper in his hands.
“I don’t believe you,” Seth spat. “You kept this from me. You kept the house from me. You didn’t even bother to tell me you remarried.”
A weird feeling crept into my stomach and I suddenly felt sick. He knew, I thought to myself. He knew who I was from the beginning.
Seth grabbed the piece of paper from John. “You don’t want a son? Fine. I’m not your son. I drowned along with mom.”
I gasped, just as the door opened and Seth nearly smacked into me. His eyes were glazed, and when they focused on me they showed no emotion. We stared at each other for a few more seconds, tears staining my cheeks. Too many emotions were flooding through me, and my voice was caught in my throat with all the things I wanted to say.
He stared at me for a moment longer before pushing me aside and walking away.
A noise in the kitchen caught my attention, and I turned to see John was now staring at me as I stood there, frozen. It wasn’t until he turned and walked to the back door, slamming it shut behind him, that I walked into the house and watched John’s car slowly disappear.
I’m not sure why, but at that moment, alone in the house, I thought of the silence after the divorce. The house felt the same, lifeless and loud with all the ways I didn’t know how to handle the pain and all the things I couldn’t yet understand.