“She said you were the one at fault, but that revenge wouldn’t bring my father back. She’s been helping me hold it together. Comes in when I’m at my worst. Talks me down.”
So that was it. Susan knew. She knew our son-in-law was the son of the man I got killed.
And she’d been helping him. Comforting him. Keeping the truth from me. I didn’t know what I felt most—anger, pain, relief. “Does Katie know?”
Mike shook his head. “No. Susan said we can’t tell her. It would destroy your family. Her family.”
“Katie loves you. If she found out you were responsible for my father’s death, it would break her in half. She’d be torn between us. Susan thinks silence is the only way to spare her.”
“And you? Do you want revenge?” He looked me in the eye for a long time. Then he said quietly, “I don’t know.”
“Part of me does. Part of me wants you to hurt the way I hurt, the way my mother hurt. But another part of me loves Katie. And I love your wife too, in a different way. She’s been kinder to me than I deserve.”
“I don’t want to destroy any of this. But I can’t forgive you either. I’m stuck between hate and love, and it’s driving me out of my mind.”
I sat down on the edge of his bed because my legs felt weak. My head was spinning. All those nights, all those suspicions—and the truth had been real, just not the truth I’d imagined. My wife wasn’t cheating on me.
She was protecting me. Protecting all of us from a truth that could blow the whole family apart. “What happens now?” I asked hoarsely.
“I don’t know,” Mike said with a shrug. “Susan says eventually it’ll get easier. That I’ll make peace with it and move on. But right now… right now it’s still bad.”
I looked at him—this young man I had made fatherless 28 years ago. I took away his father, his childhood, his family’s stability. And still he had married my daughter, lived in my house, and tried to hold himself together. He was stronger than I ever was.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, Mike. I was guilty. I was a coward then, and I stayed one. I don’t deserve forgiveness, but I’m asking anyway.”
He didn’t answer. Just stood there looking at me. There was no rage in his eyes now, and no forgiveness either. Just exhaustion. Then the front door opened.
Susan’s voice came down the hall: “Victor? I’m back from the doctor.” Mike and I looked at each other. He wiped his face on his sleeve and straightened up.
“You should go,” he said. “I’ll be out in a minute.” I stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind me. Susan was taking off her coat. She saw me and smiled.
“You look pale. You feeling okay?” I walked over and hugged her hard—harder than I had in years. She stiffened in surprise, then hugged me back.
“Victor, what is it?” “Nothing,” I said into her hair. “Just… thank you. For everything.”
She didn’t know what I meant. But I did. Thank you for holding this family together. Thank you for helping Mike. Thank you for carrying what I should have carried myself.
My Susan. My strong one. That evening we all sat together in the kitchen.
Susan made pot roast and potatoes, my favorite. Mike came out for dinner and sat across from me. We ate mostly in silence. Susan tried to keep conversation going, asking little questions, but neither of us gave her much.
She could feel the tension. I could see it in her face. But she didn’t push. After dinner I said I was going for a walk, put on my jacket, and headed outside.
Cold November evening. Streetlights on. I walked through our neighborhood, past the playground, past the benches where the older folks sit in summer. Now it was empty and still.
I made my way to the edge of the subdivision near an old row of detached garages. I used to rent one there years ago before I sold my truck. No point keeping a vehicle in retirement if you don’t need it. I stopped by the fence and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
I’d quit ten years earlier, but that day I’d bought a pack on the way back from the doctor’s office. I lit one. It tasted awful. Bitter. But it gave my hands something to do. I stood there smoking and thinking about what I’d learned.
Michael Sullivan. Nick’s son. He hadn’t entered my family by design, apparently. Life had just thrown him and Katie together. Or maybe fate, if you like that kind of word.
