The First to Know

by Abigail Johnson

“Happily?” I looked at my sister like I’d never seen her before. “You would have been happy never knowing you had a brother?”

  Selena’s eye twitched.

  “’Cause I can’t, and I wouldn’t want to. Finding out that we have a brother was horrible, but it was amazing too. I know that it’s a mess and it hurts because even though he’s Dad’s son, he’s not Mom’s, and I don’t understand how that could ever happen to two people who are so stupid in love that they’ll sit in the same chair at the dining table when there are six other empty chairs. It’ll never make sense, and if I hadn’t seen what was undeniably our father’s son when I met Brandon, I’d have been where you were, calling me a liar.”

  She flinched, still biting her lips, but now it looked like she was trying to hold back tears.

  “And I’m sorry that I lied to you and that I didn’t find the right way to tell you the truth. I’m sorry I left that envelope on my desk for Mom to find. I’m sorry she left and that you’re gone. I’m sorry that Dad cheated on Mom when you were a baby, but I’m not sorry about Brandon. Take away what Dad did and what I did. Take away everything else but the one fact that we have a brother. You have a brother.” I dashed away the first tear when it fell, and I smiled. “I don’t know how well you got to see him, but he’s really tall and still kind of skinny, like the pictures of Dad at his age. He looks a lot like Dad, and a little like us and, I don’t know, maybe he has your sense of humor. I do know he taught himself to play the guitar just like you, and when he heard you sing, Sel, his expression was just like yours is right now.”

  Her eyes were so full of tears that I didn’t think she could see me anymore. I could barely see her out of mine. She still hadn’t moved closer to me, and I hadn’t taken that last step to hug her. And in that moment, we were saved from having to. Our phones chimed simultaneously.

  I reached mine in my pocket before Selena pulled hers from her purse. Our eyes met, and we knew we’d each received the same message. It was from Mom.

  Mom: Please come home. Your dad and I need to talk to you.

  Without a word, we both spun for our cars, our eyes meeting one last time before we climbed into our separate driver’s seats.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. But what I was thinking was that, between the two of us, I was supposed to be the liar.

  Chapter 45

  I drove home in a blind panic, constantly seeking out Selena’s car behind me in the rearview mirror. Together we parked in front of our house, noting Mom’s car in the driveway alongside Dad’s. I slowed as I approached the front door, waiting until Selena was by my side before opening it.

  They were sitting next to each other at the dinner table when we walked in. I blinked away the ghostly memory from Dad’s birthday. Mom wasn’t sitting in Dad’s lap, but neither was she at the opposite end of the table either. They were sitting side by side, not too far and not too close. Their proximity to each other told me nothing about the conversation we were about to have. Reluctance to find out slowed my steps, and Selena matched my pace. Dad looked much the same as he had the night Mom left—bereft. Mom, usually so put together even when she had her hair piled up on her head and in a T-shirt, looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

  There was such a dichotomy between my emotions. I hated that Dad had cheated on Mom and hurt all of us, but I also wanted to see him and Brandon play catch in our backyard, to join in, and Selena too. I understood Mom leaving the way she had, but I didn’t want my parents to split up.

  “Come on,” Mom said. “Sit down.”

  We did, but with equal apprehension, noting the glance our parents exchanged. As soon as we were seated, Mom reached out and took my hand and also Selena’s.

  “I’m sorry I left like I did. I should never have done that to you two, no matter what is going on between me and your dad.”

  “Mom,” I said, trying to tug my hand free, but she only held tighter. She didn’t have to apologize to me. In fact, I didn’t want her to. As much as Selena and I clashed over blame in this situation, I had been the one to reveal that Dad had a son. I’d brought that pain to her, and I’d always feel guilty over that.

  “No, Dana.” She forestalled another of my attempts to wriggle free. “This is not your fault.” Her eyes drifted to Selena. “It’s not.”

  Beside me, Selena stiffened. She wasn’t ready to acquiesce that easily. “She shouldn’t have—”

  “Selena, I already knew.”

  My sister and I both went perfectly still. “You—” My eyes shot back and forth between my parents and found the same slightly uncomfortable but determined expression on both their faces. “No,” I said. “How could you—”

  “No, no,” Mom said, her hand once again locking onto mine. “Not about Brandon, about the affair.”

  Selena’s hand jerked free of Mom’s, the first real flash of anger lighting her eyes. “You wouldn’t have stayed. I know you wouldn’t have.”

  Our parents exchanged another look.

  “This isn’t something we ever intended to talk about with you,” Dad said, flushing bright red around his neck. “When—”

  “Let me,” Mom said. She released my hand—I’d stopped trying to free it by then due to sheer shock—and placed it atop Dad’s forearm. Even when she began addressing me and Selena, I couldn’t look away from her hand on his arm. She knew he cheated, yet she was touching him.

  “After you were born, Selena, we had a really hard time. Really, really hard. I was taking time off from school and your dad had blown out his shoulder and was having to work twice as hard while going to school himself after losing his scholarship. We never saw each other, and we had no money. We were living in this tiny apartment hours away from my family, and I was still so young.” She looked at Dad. “We both were. I started to think we’d made a mistake, and that it would be better for all of us if we separated, so I took Selena and moved back home for a while. And that’s when I started talking to a lawyer.”

  Mom’s hand slid off Dad’s arm, and I knew she didn’t want to be touching him for what she said next.

  “I told your dad that I wanted a divorce. We’d gotten married too young and we weren’t ready.” Her eyes lifted to Dad’s. “I think maybe we were both relieved to hear one of us say it.”

  Dad’s response was immediate. “No, I wasn’t. We were young and it was hard, but you know I never wanted out.”

  “That didn’t stop you from wanting someone else.” Three heads turned, not in my direction but Selena’s. I’d been thinking something similar, but Selena had been the one to say it out loud.

  “I don’t have an excuse. I did have an affair. It was very brief, and it nearly cost me my marriage and my family. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t regret it.” Beside him, Mom’s attempt at stoicism was weak at best. “I thought I’d lost everything and I was working with someone who was also in a struggling marriage, and I made the worst decision of my life. I knew it was wrong from the beginning—we both did. And we both wanted desperately to reconcile with our spouses. I quit that job and told your mom everything. That was the last time I saw Maggie—Brandon’s mother. She never told me about him. I don’t even know if she would have. By then I was too grateful that my wife was willing to give me a second chance to be a better husband and father.”

  “It wasn’t just his second chance—it was mine, ours. No, I didn’t have an affair,” she said to Selena when her eyes flashed. “But I abandoned my husband.” Her voice grew thicker. “I walked out on him when things got tough, and I took his baby girl with me. I don’t know that I could have forgiven him that, but he did. I won’t lie to you and say that forgiving him was easy any more than it was easy for him to forgive me, but we worked through it.”

  I couldn’t remember a time in my life when my parents weren’t the
most disgustingly in-love people on the planet, so hearing them talk about how close they’d come to getting a divorce made me feel sick.

  “We were still broke most of the time and living in a tiny apartment,” Mom went on. “But we found a marriage counselor at a church nearby, and I started taking online courses in computer coding. Things got better—not overnight, but they did. Over the next few years, they got more than better.” She looked at Dad, her eyes shiny, nodding a few times before saying, “I did forgive him, but hearing there was a child—” She shut her eyes. Dad lifted his arm as if to wrap it around her but left it hovering just shy of touching her, like he wasn’t sure if he could offer comfort over something like this. Mom’s eyes opened again. “I can’t describe what that was like, learning that he had a son out there, the product of the most painful thing to ever happen to us.”

  Dad lowered his arm to his side.

  “All that hurt came right back to the surface and I had to—I wanted to have some time to deal with it on my own. Knowing that another woman bore my husband’s child while we were married...” She paused. The rest of us could only sit there and wait and feel sick over the fact that she had to say something like that. “I forgave him for the affair, and this doesn’t change that, since neither of us knew about Brandon before last week, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. And I can’t not feel devastated and angry all over again. I am, and I do, just like it happened yesterday.” She turned to Dad, laying her hand on his cheek. “And at the same time, I’m grieving with you for missing his whole life.” She started to cry, shaking her head like she couldn’t understand her own emotions.

  Dad didn’t hesitate to take her in his arms then, and she went to him.

  I struggled, watching them embrace, still feeling emotional pulls in opposite directions. Beside me, Selena’s posture went rigid.

  “So is that it? Whoops, Dad had a kid, let’s all get over it?” Selena wasn’t pulling any punches. Our parents let go of each other.

  “Selena, no,” Mom said, her voice thicker than usual, her accent growing more prominent. “No one is just getting over this. We’re all going to have to hurt and grieve in our own way. We’ll help each other, and we’ll get help together, okay?” Her eyes moved to include me. Before she could say anything else, Dad was talking.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to me and Selena. “I didn’t just hurt my wife—I hurt both of you. I wasn’t any kind of man back then, and I want better for you than your mom got in me.” His eyes moved slowly to my face. “I’m sorry and I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me.”

  My eyes stung looking at him. I wanted that too, but it wasn’t as easy to feel. I didn’t know if I could ever get back there. Mom must have seen some of the conflict I was feeling, because she addressed me and Selena straight on.

  “You’re not little kids anymore. I can’t tell you to hug and make up. You understand what’s going on here and we’re not going to hide the reality of this situation from you. What we are doing is telling you that your Dad and I are staying together. As much as all this hurts right now, it happened twenty years ago. Dad and I have worked hard at our marriage and loving each other these past decades and we’re not—” she stole a quick glance at Dad “—I’m not going to discount that. The truth is, we’re neither of us the same selfish and immature people we were when we first got married. Back then, I was too in love with myself to love anyone else the way I should have. I wanted to quit, so I did, and it was the biggest mistake of my life.”

  “I should have gone after you,” Dad said, gazing at her. “I was a coward and a fool, and I will regret every second that we were apart until the day I die.”

  The regret clawing though Dad’s voice brought goose bumps to my skin. And it was more than his words and hers; it was the way they looked at each other when they said them. It was so naked that I had to look away. But the second I did, my gaze fell on Selena and the tears swimming in her eyes. They were for our parents, for the scene before us and the love no one in that room could deny, but I felt them for someone else too.

  Whatever equilibrium I’d regained watching my parents recommit themselves to each other and our family lurched away. There was one other big question that hadn’t been answered.

  “Mom,” I said, slowing after that because I needed to pick my words very carefully. “What about Brandon?”

  Chapter 46

  I already knew Dad wanted to know and be known by his son. He didn’t even know the name of his own father, and he loathed the idea of denying his son even that same basic knowledge. But Dad didn’t yet know how vehemently opposed Brandon was to having any kind of relationship with him. So then what? Have Dad join me for a little parking lot stalking to catch the occasional glimpse of his son? Should we ambush Brandon again and force him into an unwanted role in our family? Or worse, should we all try to go back to our ignorance? Pretend Dad didn’t have a son and Selena and I didn’t have a brother? Could any of us do that? I’d already shown how incapable I was of walking away from him. I’d sunk pretty low in my desperate attempts to feel connected to my brother. So when I asked my family what about Brandon, I meant it. What could we do?

  The answers were not forthcoming, from anyone. We must have all been running though similar questions, and none of us had any good answers. Mom was the one to break the silence.

  “You met him?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay.” She breathed deeply, like she was in physical pain but determined to push through it. “Tell us about him.”

  So I did. I told them everything from the first messages we exchanged to showing up at Jungle Juice. I didn’t look at Dad when I relayed how adamant Brandon was that I stay away from him. And I didn’t look at anyone when I mentioned spending time with Chase and the secondhand info I’d gathered from him. When I got to the last meeting with Brandon, the one at Selena’s work, I pitched the conversation to her and she continued it. It was strange, hearing her side, knowing that beyond that first flicker of recognition while she was singing, she hadn’t allowed herself to see Brandon for who he was. Her actions and disbelief that night had been as genuine as her anger toward me. The disbelief was gone, but the anger still simmered, though more in Dad’s direction now than mine.

  Mom didn’t say a single word while we spoke. Occasionally, the whites of her knuckles showed through her tan skin, the only real sign that she was struggling with hearing about her husband’s son. Dad asked questions though, a lot of questions. It was as if Mom being there beside him allowed the floodgates to open, and it fell to me to answer. I did the best I could, but the reality was that I didn’t know a lot about my brother. I also was far from comfortable talking to Dad about him, especially given the audience we had.

  I felt a genuine pang for Dad when I had to tell him that Brandon had refused all contact with us. I told him we couldn’t know what might happen in the future, but I wasn’t holding out hope that Brandon would change his mind, at least not without a major intervention, and he’d refused to hear more from me. What did give me hope, however, was watching Mom take Dad’s hand in front of me and Selena and seeing the look they shared in the wake of real but forgiven pain.

  Knowing Dad hadn’t been lying to her for their entire marriage but had confessed and sought her forgiveness did mean something to me. I didn’t have to torment myself wondering if every sweet exchange between my parents might have been changed if Mom knew the truth. She did know, and her smiles and kisses were as real as they’d looked. She was still holding his hand even then.

  And I felt the balance between my conflicting emotions shift in a direction I wouldn’t have thought possible even a week ago.

  * * *

  It was late by the time we finished talking, so Selena didn’t protest too much when Mom suggested she stay the night. Mom and Dad didn’t get up when Selena and I did. Late or not, they still had
a lot to work through together, but the operative word was together. I carried that thought with me as Selena and I traipsed up to my room.

  All her clothes were at Whitney’s, so I loaned her some shorts and a T-shirt to sleep in. Neither of us spoke until we were under the covers and staring up at the faintly glowing star stickers on the ceiling.

  “Why haven’t you taken these down? We put them up when you were eight.”

  “I never notice them during the day, and at night—” I shrugged “—I guess I still like them.”

  Selena exhaled, and it was almost a murmur of agreement. “I put some up in my dorm room.”

  I turned my head toward her. “You did?”

  “I guess I still like them too.” She turned her head toward me. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?”

  We weren’t talking about glow-in-the-dark stickers anymore. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t fair to you. I honestly have no idea what I would have done if I’d been the first to know.” Selena squirmed. “I couldn’t reconcile one thing being true at the expense of the other, so I blamed you. I didn’t even know I was doing it. Honestly, Dana. I didn’t mentally flip a coin or anything. I think I thought I could get past you lying, but Dad having a son? I still can’t—I mean, how is—” She stopped herself. “That doesn’t matter right now. You’re my sister and I should have believed you no matter what.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to believe me either, but thanks.”

  We were lying shoulder to shoulder in the same bed that had been our childhood flying carpet, our Dawn Treader, our hidden castle when we’d draped sheets from the ceiling fan. Our days of sharing a room had already ended. Even if we resolved everything between us, it made sense for her to stay at Whitney’s. And in a few months she’d be moving to Nashville. After having heard her sing, I knew she had a real shot at making it. Who knew where her voice would take her? We might never again be as close as we were at that moment.