The Truth


    “Everything. I told her everything,” I tell Ford, pacing behind my desk, the blinds to the internal office pulled tightly shut. “I didn’t n on it but I saw her and I just—I don’t know. She wants me toe clean to Sutton tonight. Tell him everything.”


    Ford sighs. “You’ve been holding onto it for almost thirty years. You’ve been Sutton’s boogie man for half your life, brother. She’s not wrong. You need to tell him.” There’s a pause as I brace one hand against the ss windowprising the entire back wall of my office. I stare down into the gridlock traffic below, at the tiny people ducking in between cars, riding bicycles, wearing backpacks, holding big coffees. “Why haven’t you, anyway? He’s clearly read about things online.”


    “Has he ever asked you about it?” I question, though I know the answer. If my son had approached my younger brother at all about what happened all those years ago, Ford would have told me. He’s my best friend.


    “No, though he did call me for guidance on his wedding vows the other day,” Ford tells me. My chest detes, though it shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be surprised. Sutton has always leaned on my brother as a father figure, and all these years I’ve let him because I thought it was best for Sutton. I’ve always wanted a rtionship with my son, but making him aware of the truth never became so ringly important until Avery.


    He’s going to have his own family one day very soon. It’s time he knows the truth. Avery is right.


    “I told him to ask you,” Ford continues in absence of my response.


    “I’m going to their house tonight. I’m going to tell him everything.” My voice breaks and I clear my throat. “I don’t want my grandchildren to think I’m a monster.”


    Ford’s voice softens. “You don’t want your son to think you are either, Geo. I know why you let him go along with it all these years, but now is the time. You don’t deserve this, you never did. Enough is enough.”


    This is what a pep talk from Ford looks like. And it’s exactly what I need. I bob my head along with his words, steadfast and true, resonating hard. “Margot was a wonderful mom, but she was a confused, lost soul. You did everything you could to keep her, but some souls, they just, they can’t be kept. They can’t be tethered to this Earth. And it was awful what happened. I hold the utmost respect for you for loving Margot so much that you refused to stain her memory, for the sake of your son and his undying love for her. But he’s thirty-five years old, Geo. He’s no longer a heartbroken child. He can handle the truth about her. It’s time, for your sake.”


    I let out a hefty sigh as I watch a woman chase a singr piece of garbage down the sidewalk, all the while keeping her cell phone rooted to her ear. “Thanks, brother. Enough with me. How’s it going over there? How’s the new location doing?”


    Fordughs, but not a humorous one. “It’s one thing after the next. Every time I open a new bar, I tell myself it’s thest new bar.” He sighs. “But we’ll get through it.”


    “And how is Cade? I didn’t get to chat with him much at the engagement party the other night.” My niece Kat works with me, so I may be more up-to-date on her life out of sheer proximity. My nephew, Ford’s son, the college professor, on the other hand, I hardly see.


    “I just got off the phone with him. He’s got a hair across his ass about transitioning one of his sses to an online lecture format.” He pauses a moment, then asks, “How do two of the most easy going men in all of San Francisco have two of the most uptight sons?”


    At that, I chuckle. “Kat’s just like you though.”


    “That’s true. She is.” He clears his throat. “Actually, you may know this, I’m not sure, but Kat asked me to dinner tonight. She’s bringing her new girlfriend.”


    My brows rise. “I did not know she was seeing someone, but she’s been out of the office making so many deals recently, I haven’t seen much of her.”


    “Same,” my brother confirms. “But tonight I’m going to meet the new girl. Apparently, it’s already quite serious.”


    “Good luck,” I tell him, knowing how critical he is of everyone that dates his daughter. He’d be critical of Cade’s dates too, if he ever dated. “Go easy on her.”


    “Good luck to you too and hey—thank Avery for me. Because I’ve been trying to get you to tell Sutton for years.”


    We end the call, and I stand behind my desk, staring into downtown in a nervous haze for another twenty minutes before packing up my things and leaving for the day.


    I haven’t seen Sutton all day, and I haven’t seen Avery since she left my office hours ago. She sent me a text message–the first one she’s ever sent me, despite the fact I’ve been programmed into her phone since our first staff meeting. This text, however, does note from Mercer’s stager. This textes from my future daughter-inw.


    Eight o’clock tonight.


    Yes, Sutton knows you’reing.


    I stare at my phone as I wait at a traffic light. Sutton knows you’reing. It would be foolish to expect a “Sutton is looking forward to it!” text because he’s not. I know he’s not. He may even be dreading my visit. The light turns green and I elerate, my mind veering to a new set of questions I hadn’t considered just yet.


    Does Sutton know why I’ming over?


    Avery is so sweet and genuine, I cannot possibly see her keeping our talk from him. Around me, Avery has always been the kind of person who does the right thing even when no one is looking, who overtips waitstaff, who picks up another person’s garbage just because she doesn’t want the Earth to suffer, the kind of woman who brought two cakes to my office partyst year because she didn’t know which vor I like and didn’t want to disappoint me. A person like that does not withhold vital information, but then again, she’s so thoughtful and sensitive, too—I could easily see her exining to Sutton that we talked, but having the foresight and generosity to allow me to exin things to him.


    All of this thought is just something my brain is doing to keep me busy. If I was left with my most primal thoughts–I’d be hitting the road for the hills, going far away from even the mention of having this talk with my son.


    Ford thinks I’ve done Sutton a disservice by letting him hate me. But Ford doesn’t remember all the quiet moments of perfection that Sutton and I shared with Margot.


    The way he stared up at her in the orange glow from his night light as she sang him “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” before bed. The uproariousughter that came from the depths of his belly when she chased him, her hands covered in barbecue sauce after a cookout on thewn. My brother didn’t know the intimate time the three of us shared, and how perfect our family was in the moments where Margot was content.


    Sutton and I may never discuss our past. We may never bring up Margot, and the memories we made before we lost her.


    But I know he remembers.


    And tonight, by making him see me in a new light, I’m taking those memories from him. And that single take, the rug pull, that shift in reality is why I’ve always been hesitant. Fear and inability tomunicate my deepest, darkest thoughts, yes, but also, taking the onlyfort left from his childhood memories, too.


    I don’t want to do it.


    I’m here, though, and Margot is not.


    And Sutton is going to get married. To Avery. The sweetest woman he could have possibly met. She’s perfect for him in all ways, and many of her good qualities remind me of things I liked about Margot, too. The way she is kind to everyone. Her generosity and eptance, and I can’t ignore her work ethic. Margot was the same, determined and hard-working.


    All of that is to say that I’m the person their children will know. I’m the man who will be Papa, who will show up at recitals and t-ball games, who will cheer them on when they’re down, who will be their ear when Mom and Dad are being difficult. I’m what his future children have, and because of that, they need to know who I am. That means Sutton needs to know who I am.


    After tonight, he will.<hr>


    Pushups. A hot shower. Sweats. A ss of whiskey. I do everything I can to rx and prepare myself for what I think is going to be an argumentative and tumultuous evening. Sutton’s heart has been hardened to me for so long, I’m not even sure if he’ll believe the truth anymore.<fnf5c8> Official source is f?ndnovel</fnf5c8>


    Before I leave, I grab the USB drive from the top drawer in my study, pocket it, and head out. Sutton purchased a home a few years ago—arge estate in Pacific Heights. It’s a ssic Victorian, redone to modern meets mid-century, and I love it. I wish I came here more often, but the times I’ve been invited I can count on one hand and still have fingers left up.


    I park around back, locking my SUV with the push of a button on my remote. I check to make sure I have my wallet and phone, and when I’m officially out of stall tactics and my stomach is knotted up in nerves, I force myself to the door.


    My finger lingers over the doorbell button but I never press it, because Avery answers, wearing a white, wide-legged jumpsuit, the top without straps, hugging her slender body, defining the every curve of her small breasts. Her blonde hair is damp, like she’s just showered, and her face is free of makeup, blue eyes shining in the faint light.


    “Hi. Come on in.”


    It worries me that she hardly smiles as she greets me, but I follow after her anyway, treading quietly as wee to the kitchen. Sutton, wearing track pants and a UCLA t-shirt, nces up from where he’s positioned at the stove. His eyebrows lift and then he returns his focus to the pot on the stove, where he stirs and blows. An eyebrow lift is the way he says hello, and there is no amount of time that can make that not hurt.


    “Hello, Sutton.”


    Another lift of his eyebrows as he sprinkles salt into the soup he’s stirring. “Avery said you caught her in the office today, and that you need to speak with me.”


    Avery, who disappeared a moment ago, returns with three long-stemmed wine sses and a bottle of red. I wait for her to look my way, and when she does, I smile. “Thank you for inviting me, Avery.”


    She smiles in return, but it fades when Sutton looks up between us. “Did you share with Sutton what we discussed?” I nce at my son, and immediately have my answer.


    She didn’t tell him.


    “I didn’t want to betray your confidence, Geo.” She curves the counter andes to stand right in front of Sutton, sinking her hands into the flesh that hides beneath his t-shirt as she grabs his hips, aligning their bodies. She blinks up at him, half his size but double both of our courage, apparently. “I did not want to share with you something that shoulde from your father.” She rocks to her toes and he dips down a little, like her asking for his ear is something she does often enough for him to bend down without question. Routines, rituals, they have all that. Sutton is happy and I adore Avery.


    As much as it pains me to be here, Ford and Avery are right. It’s time.


    When she sinks back onto the balls of her feet, she drags her hands out from beneath his shirt, tugging gently at the hem as she whispers, “Okay?”


    He nods, and bends down to kiss her, and my chest constricts from not having what my son has, from seeing the tender way she soothes him, from being witness to a pure and beautiful love.


    Sutton slides a lid onto the soup and takes Avery by the hand, and I follow their lead, heading into the open living space. They take a seat on a couch, and I take a seat across from them on a chair no doubt hand-picked by Avery, a burgundy velvet tufted chair, one that looks fantastic in redone Victorian era homes, with aspen wood feet and ornate backing. I smooth my fingers over the luxurious armrest, and finally look up at them.


    Avery is wearing a small smile of hope, while Sutton simply frowns. My eyes fall to therge stone on Avery’s finger, and I remember that I have to do this.


    “Talking about her never gets easier, all these yearster,” I start, wasting no time with preamble about how our days went or how wedding nning is going. He knows I’m here with intent, and if I don’t rip the Band-Aid off, Avery might.


    The noise of the room–the whirr of the ceiling fan, the clicking of the arm on the grandfather clock, the gentle sway of olive leaves against the ss window from the bay breeze outside– it all falls away as I meet my son’s eyes. “Your mother loved you so, so much. You were her pride and joy. You were everything to her, Sutton, and I want you to know that, or, if you already knew, be reminded of it. Because it’s important that you understand, amongst everything else I’m going to say, that she loved you. You were easily the best part of her life.”


    One of Sutton’s nostrils lifts and he tips his head to the side, but he says nothing. Avery ces her hand on his knee, eyes on me, and squeezes a little.


    “Okay,” he says, his form of meeting me halfway. I nod my head, appreciating the single word, of the lifeline, of any reaction whatsoever.


    “I lied. All those years ago, I lied about Mom to protect your image of her, and I don’t know…” I trail off, scratching at the side of my jaw as I consider things differently now, for maybe the first time. “I thought if I made myself the bad guy, I could save you from knowing her the way I did, from ruining all your childhood memories. But maybe now I wonder if I was lying for myself. To preserve my own ego, afraid to let the world atrge know the type of woman I loved, or ashamed, maybe to let the world know the way she loved me in return.”


    Sutton’s brows pull together and he shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”


    My eyes veer to a silent Avery, her hand still gripping Sutton’s knee. She nods, telling me to keep going, tipping her cheek to his shoulder in quiet support of us both.


    “All those years ago, that night your mom passed away, I rewrote it all for the media and paid a few people to go along with my story.” Out loud, now, yearster without heightened emotion and a young child’s vision of his mother on the line, it sounds so stupid. Like such a bad choice. Nausea stings my senses. “And so much of the truth aligned that… I didn’t have to do much for everyone to roll with it.”


    Sutton huffs an impatient exhale, as if I should rattle off the truth of his whole life as fast as I can because my mere presence is so intolerable. “Extend me a moment of patience,” I say to him, invisibly reigning in the asional anger that catches hold of me when I’m catching the brunt of Sutton’s attitude. “Forgive me that discussing the day my wife was murdered may take me a few moments.” I try desperately not to snarl, but at this precise moment, I don’t see Sutton as someone in the dark, I see him as an impatient and irrational person who can do better for his father.


    Avery’s tongue slides along the supple curve of her bottom lip as she leans forward, pressing her hand into the mirrored table between us. “I forgot the wine.” She stands, her jumpsuit which had bunched at her hips from sitting, whooshes down, the soft probably expensive fabric unraveling with ease. Avery bends at the waist, kissing Sutton at his hairline before dropping quiet, private words into his ear. He nods and murmurs a rough “yes” to her, then focuses squarely on me.


    I already really liked Avery Bet, but seeing the way she brings my son ease almost immediately makes my chest tighten. “Continue,” Sutton says, softly adding, “please.”


    I hold his eyes, the ones that look so much like hers, the eyes that remind me that Margot, though gone, was absolutely the best thing to happen to me. She gave me him.


    “Your mother was the love of my life. But the love of her life was attention.” I swallow thickly against a prickly knot of emotion already rising up in my throat. I’ve only just begun and I’m already feeling exhausted. Avery returns, passing me a ss of wine before collecting hers off the table and passing another to Sutton.


    “Desired,” she corrects softly before taking a slow and passively seductive sip of wine. “I think it was more apt when you said desired.”


    I shrug, because she’s right and yet, to me, those words are interchangeable when ites to Margot. “I would agree that desired is far more romantic, and I’m not trying to shift the narrative of what I said to you to what I’m telling Sutton. But the truth was, Margot just… it was never enough.” I need a sip of wine because my throat is starting to split, raw and rough from how tense I’ve be. Sutton and Avery do the same, and after a moment, I continue. “No matter how much attention or affection I gave, she was never sated. And the partying, she just—we had you and she was good or, I don’t know–better?” I shake my head as I think back to those nights that Margot had wine despite the fact that she learned she was pregnant. Or when she slept with another man while pregnant with Sutton. Those were less egregious offenses than normal, and at the time, I was grateful for less.


    “She loved attention, and she could never find the bottom to her needs. I tried to be okay with it at one point, just because it was easier than being upset all the time.”


    Sutton just stares at me, nkly, holding his wine motionlessly as Avery stares up at him. My eyes slide to her, and she looks at me for a moment before slipping her hand from Sutt’s knee to his thigh. She pats him, just once, lightly, I can’t even hear it. But he rolls his lips together, and in a hoarse whisper he asks, “Are you saying she cheated on you?”


    I scratch the back of my head, finding it hot, and my neck, too. She has such a calming way with him, and I truly didn’t expect this talk to go this way. He’s listening. He’s understanding. He isn’t yelling or walking away. And that’s Avery.


    “She was never faithful to me, but I thought it was something I could navigate and handle… ordingly,” I reply, adding, “I’d do it all the same, for what it’s worth. I’ve never loved anyone the way I loved her.”


    Avery sips her wine then rests her cheek against Sutton’s shoulder again. He nces down at her, then up at me. “What happened that night? If what I read online, in the papers, if that was coercion, if that was a lie, whatever. Then… what happened?”


    I finish my wine, because I don’t want to hold the ss. I set it on the table and cradle my temples with the heels of my palm, just for a moment, just to steady myself. It’s not a singr ss of wine getting to me. It’s remembering this specific night, again, for the second time in one day after putting it out of my mind for years. For survival.


    “We’d taken you to the beach for fireworks. It was the 4th of July and you were dying to go to the marina. Afterward, we came home, swam, and ate some ice cream.”


    “I remember,” Sutton says, and those two words dust my eyes in mist. I swallow.


    “You went to bed around, I don’t know, nine o’clock,” I remind him, knowing that he won’t remember or have heard any of what’s going toe next. “She wanted to go out. At first, she wanted me to call the nanny so we could go downtown together, to the bar.”


    “Was she an alcoholic?” he asks, his voice steady, his chest rising and falling as if he’s just taken a run. Avery presses her palm to the center of his sternum. She brings her ss up, and he does the same, and together, they take a drink.


    When his eyes settle on me again, I answer him. “Yes.” I nce at Avery and back to Sutton. “I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay home. As soon as she knew I wouldn’te, she left. Without me with her, I knew where she was going and exactly who she wanted to go see.” This is the part that I regret. Sometimes I wonder, if I had left her for the things she did to me, would she have changed? Could I have saved her? Was it my responsibility to save her and did I fail us both? The thoughts I have. It took me years to really get to sleep at night.


    “What do you mean?” he asks, and the confusion on his face, though painful, is more tolerable than what I know ising next.


    “She was seeing him.” Four words that only Ford had heard me say until now.


    “Barry Allen?” Sutton asks, saying his name aloud to me for the first time ever. I’m sure he’s spoken it tons of times, but it’s the first time I’m hearing him acknowledge that he has without a doubt read all about what happened.


    I nod. “Yes. I had first met him in Los Angeles. Then he and his wife moved to San Francisco and it waspletely random that Barry and Margot bumped into each other. Then we went on a double date.” Nothing is blurry about this at all, but it feels malevolent to rehash details that make no difference now. The story can be told without every stone being unturned. “It’s fuzzy here,” I lie, forgoing the details of how Margot simply asked Barry for his number right there in front of me and Josie, because she wanted it at the perfume counter, but had forgot. That’s how she was. When she wanted something, she made it a game. Teased, med the booze, seduced, all of it. I always took her back, despite not believing any of her bullshit, because I loved her so fucking much.


    “But they started seeing each other, your mom and Barry. She didn’t hide it. She never really bothered hiding it. She’d say she was gonna go have some fun, and she’de back hours, sometimes dayster.”


    Sutton shakes his head. “I don’t remember that. I don’t remember her like that.”


    “You wouldn’t,” I say calmly, sinking back into the chair. “This is nice,” I look at Avery, and she smiles. “Thank you, I had it reupholsteredst fall.”


    “I suspected.”


    “Hey,” Sutton snaps, impatient. Avery, though, she’s the one who engaged in side conversation and I see what she’s doing. She’s pacing him, making Sutton sit with his impatience and wait. It’s control, soft and invisible, and I’m not even sure she knows she has it, or is doing it. But it’s sexy as hell.


    “You wouldn’t remember her like that because you had no idea, Sutton. You were coddled and shielded, purposely. She was very good at being a mother, she was great at being great for you.” He didn’t know howplex she was because he never got the opportunity. And he’ll never know what he’s missing out on, and neither will she.


    Sutton sucks in a breath, pausing for a moment in thought before saying, “I remember the smell. When she kissed me at night. The smell of alcohol on her breath.”


    A burning, aching, all-consuming knot of pain clogs my throat, and my body yearns to go to my child, to pull him into my arms and console him for the pain I allowed him to experience.


    I knew she was an alcoholic. I didn’t want it to be true, but I knew that it was.


    “I’m so sorry, son. I’ve failed you in so many ways. And all I can say is that at the time, I thought I was preserving something for you. A normal childhood with your mother there but… I realize now I was so addicted to her that I kept her there. Hurting you. Damaging you. I should have made her leave. I should have done a lot of things differently.”


    “But you didn’t,” Sutton says, nearly stopping my heart. Almost making me sick. His voice is even keel, and his face is too.


    “I didn’t.”


    “You did what you thought was right,” he says, surprising me.


    I pull my head up from where it was hanging between my shoulders. “I did.”


    “So just… exin to me what that was.” He doesn’t sound angry and–I nce at Avery’s hand, still resting on Sutton’s thigh. Her ring shines beneath the lights, and so do her eyes.


    “At the time, I just, I missed your mother so much that the idea of you hating her or knowing who she really was, it made me sick. I thought you thinking of me as a cheating asshole was easier to stomach, and potentially repairable. But the idea of you knowing the truth about your mom after you’d just lost her, I just, I couldn’t bear it.” I shake my head, and split a nce between the two of them before fishing the USB drive from my pocket. Sliding it across the small mirrored table, I sit back and nod to it. “I have kept in touch with Josie Allen, who keeps in touch with Barry, through letters. She sends me his letters when she believes it could benefit us, and they’re there, digitally.”


    Sutton just shakes his head, wordlessly. Avery’s brows pull together as she curls her legs beneath her on the couch. “What happened that night? With Barry? Why did he kill her?”


    I look at the USB drive, because letters from Barry to Josie in the year after he killed Margot is how I learned what I know now. And those letters are on that drive.


    “He thought that Margot was going to leave me to be with him. He’d nned on leaving Josie, too,” I tell Avery and Sutton, though my eyes stay on the small, rectangr device on the table. “That night she told him that she’d changed her mind. She didn’t want to leave me, because she didn’t want to leave you.”


    Sutton finishes his wine and slides the ss onto the table,ing to rest at the edge of the couch cushion. Avery does the same. “Wait so, she actually was going to leave you?”


    I blink down at the USB, seeing the handwritten and photocopied words all over again in my mind, feeling the pain radiate from my chest all over again.


    Margot cheated a ton. Until Barry, though, she never wanted to leave me. “Seeing those letters, to this day, I don’t know if she only told Barry she wanted to be with him to buy some breathing room or if she meant it. All I know is that either way, she changed her mind because of you. She didn’t want to lose you, Sutton.”


    Silence fills in the room around us, and I sink into it,fortably, waiting for my son to process. I’ve put it all out there, and this talk has gone as well as it could, thanks to Avery. “You can have that and read every letter that Josie has sent me of his. I’m no longer trying to hide any of it from you.”


    He shakes his head. “The papers said you were a womanizer. That you cheated on her constantly, that Barry killed her because you were sleeping with Josie. You mean to tell me, you selected that narrative, for everyone who reads the papers or knew you to think that you were a man who cheated on your wife and got her, essentially, murdered because of it? I’m supposed to believe you fell on some sword for me?”


    Avery attempts to drop her arm around him, but he gets to his feet, so I do the same.


    “Sutton,” Avery says softly, “he’s not?—”


    “Is there anyone who can corroborate your story?” my son asks me. For a moment, I rey the evening, and then reconsider his question.


    “Do you think I woulde into your home and lie to you?” I ask him, my heart shattering into a million pieces when he pauses before he replies.


    Avery steps between us, a palm into each of our chests. “Let’s just calm down, okay?”


    “I’m calm,” Sutton retorts. “But forgive me if I need a moment to calibrate to the concept that I’ve had it wrong my whole life,” he says just as the grandfather clock chimes. It’s nine o’clock. I have a meeting tomorrow. I’ve said what I had to say.


    “You can contact Josie Allen. You can go through those letters,” I say of the USB drive sitting idly by. “You can ask your uncle.”


    I don’t bother seeking a goodbye handshake or hug, because that would be a fool’s errand. Instead, I take my wine ss to the sink, finding them in the kitchen when I turn around.


    “I wanted your memory of her to remain intact, and you missed her so much that I thought if you knew the truth, it would destroy you. It was easier for me to be the viin out of pure selfishness. My heart was broken and so was yours–I couldn’t handle you knowing the truth about her after all of that, at such a young age. I’m sorry. I am. Ford said all along I should have just told you but as I’ve said, I don’t think I was ready for the world to know how broken I was, how much she hurt me, what I tolerated. I was ashamed and I just wanted my only son toe out of the darkness as well as he could.” I look at Avery, finding a single tear gliding down her cheek. “Thank you for facilitating this evening.”


    I look up at my son, taller than me, smarter and stronger than me, too. “If you have any questions, I’m here. Thank you for listening.”


    I slip past them, out the back door, into the night, sucking down as much fresh, cool air as possible. That was hard, but it’s done, and we’re all going to be better off for it, that much I know for sure.


    I don’t want to be alone tonight, but over the years, I’ve learned that no matter who I’m with, since Margot has been dead, I’ve always been alone.