Michaela took a deep breath then said, “I found pictures of Torrie…and a video on a thumb drive.”
“Torrie?”
“Yes. Naked photos…and a sex tape.”
I couldn’t grasp it. “What? Naked?”
“I know. It’s a shock. My father had apparently been having an affair with her for years.”
Mack’s mother finally spoke. “Deep down, I think I knew that Michael had been unfaithful to me at some point in our marriage. But the level of betrayal that this has brought upon our family is beyond comprehension.”
“Did you confront him?”
Michaela nodded. “We confronted them both. They didn’t deny it. They claimed it’s been over for a long time.”
“Does Mack know?”
“Yes. After my mother and I confronted my father and Torrie, we went to Mack’s and told him everything. He basically went into shock. He’s having a very hard time accepting this. He’s given up a huge chunk of his life for that woman, only to be burned in the worst possible way. Not to mention being betrayed like that by your own father.”
For some reason, it hadn’t dawned on me before, but when the thought entered my consciousness, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Oh, no.
No.
No.
No.
“Is there a chance that...” I couldn’t even say the words.
She finished my sentence. “That Jonah is my father’s son? We believe there is a chance, yes. But we just don’t know.”
Oh, dear God.
“How long has Mack known all of this?”
“We told him when he got home from his last visit with you, the one where I was watching Jonah.”
That explained the bizarre behavior soon after he left me.
“He’s been acting strangely toward me,” I said. “I thought it had to do with my own situation. He obviously chose not to tell me any of this.”
“As you can imagine, he’s not handling it well. Knowing that there’s a possibility that Jonah could be our father’s is causing him a lot of mental anguish. He’s been shutting us out, too. In some ways, I feel terrible for having uncovered this, but I suppose it’s better to know than to be kept in the dark about something so significant.”
I turned to Mack’s mother. “How are you handling it?”
Her voice was barely audible. “Not well, I’m afraid.”
“How long are you both here in town?”
Michaela looked down at her phone to check the time. “We’re heading right back to D.C. in a few hours. The purpose of this trip was to meet you and to let you know how sorry we are for everything that happened but mostly to make you aware of what’s happening now.”
There’s nothing harder than trying to keep a brave face in front of your kid when it feels like your world is crumbling around you.
“Want some more sauce?”
Jonah nodded. I lifted the ladle, pouring the marinara over his spaghetti and frozen meatballs. I was a suckass cook before, but with everything going on lately, the cuisine around here was even more sub par than usual.
He twirled the noodles around with his fork. I hated that I obsessively stared at his face now every chance I got, looking for signs of my father. This was my son, and nothing was ever going to change that.
I wondered if Jonah thought about why my beard was almost fully grown. I also wondered if he could somehow sense the pain that was now constantly squeezing at my heart.
Making matters worse, I couldn’t even bear to look at Torrie. I’d been staying in the car whenever I would pick him up or bring him back. Since the day my mother and sister dropped the bomb, Torrie and I had barely spoken. During one conversation that took place while Jonah was at school, I’d demanded that she come clean as to whether my father could technically be Jonah’s biological father. When she admitted that it was a possibility, I flew off the handle. She kept apologizing, using her age at the time and naivety as an excuse, pinning it on my father as the seducer. She kept emphasizing that the affair was brief and had ended years ago. She even tried to place the blame on me, saying she felt vulnerable to his charms because of my lack of affection toward her.
In addition to smashing some of her possessions, I made a number of empty threats I knew I would never follow through with. Filing for full custody was one of them. That wasn’t an option because Jonah loved his mother too much despite her faults. As vile as I now realized she was, I didn’t want to put my son through another major transition; it wouldn’t have been fair.
My son.
As for my father, I couldn’t get myself to confront him out of fear that I would’ve wanted to physically annihilate him. I couldn’t ever lay a hand on Torrie despite my anger; the idea of physically harming Dad, however, didn’t seem that far-fetched. So, I stayed away for my own good.