“Oh, Grant.” His mother pushed to her feet. “This is all my fault.”
“Margot.” His father’s sharp warning was softened by the arm he put around her. His face was a mask of regret. “Grant, you might want to sit down.”
“I’m too keyed up to sit.” Grant crossed his arms as his father tried to get his mother to sit down, but she refused. “Listen, couples separate. It’s not about that. It’s about how it was handled, which was primarily to brush it under the carpet.”
“That wasn’t our intent,” his father said, his arm firmly and protectively around his wife. “Marriage isn’t easy, Grant. Couples go through rough patches—”
His mother stepped out of his father’s grip, cutting him off. “Alex, you don’t need to protect me anymore.”
“This can’t be undone, Margot,” his father warned, and Grant swore his father aged years in the silent seconds that followed.
“I need to do this. I can’t pretend anymore, either.” His mother drew in a deep breath, her sad eyes meeting Grant’s. “Honey, the only way to explain this is to start at the very beginning. I have loved your father since the day I met him our first year of college. He was a lot like you, determined to make his mark on the world. Your father couldn’t wait to graduate and move to Paris to make a name for himself as the brilliant painter he was.”
Grant looked at his father. “You paint?”
“I haven’t picked up a brush since college.”
His mother motioned toward the artwork on the walls. “But as you can see from these paintings, he’s a talented artist.”
“These are Dad’s? Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”
“By the time you were old enough to care, we weren’t exactly in a good place,” his father said regretfully.
Shit. Did he even know his father?
“Now you know where you get your creative abilities,” his mother said. “But your father was so full of himself back then, we butted heads quite a bit, and we were on again, off again as a couple for those four years. Right before we graduated, we found out I was pregnant, and although your father had a hefty inheritance, he wouldn’t gain access to it until he was thirty.”
“I still haven’t touched a penny of that money,” his father said.
His mother smiled. “See how alike you and your father are? Anyway, we talked about going to Paris and finding our way like young couples do, but that would have been irresponsible with a baby on the way. We wanted you to be born into a stable environment, so we came to the island and got married. We planned on going to Paris after we saved enough money to afford an apartment and take proper care of you. And then life happened. Roddy married Gail, and Steve moved to the island and married Shelley, and we built a life here, with our friends. You were thriving, toddling around with our friends’ boys, and as the years passed and our family grew, those dreams of Paris were replaced with dreams of our children’s futures.”
“What does any of this have to do with our issues?” Grant asked.
“I’m getting to that. I just wanted you to understand how we got where we are.” His mother’s expression turned as regretful as his father’s. “While our life seemed too good to be true, I was harboring a painful secret. You were born two weeks earlier than you were due, but you were full term. When I came out of the early motherhood fog of sleepless deprivation, I calculated the dates and realized I’d gotten pregnant during one of the short breaks in our relationship. Your father and I had been together twice during that two-week period, but I was young and hurt because of whatever we’d fought about, and I had also been with a guy I met at a party once during that time, and I never saw him again.”
Grant felt like he’d been gut-punched. He dragged air into his lungs. “I’m not Dad’s son?”
“You are and will always be my son,” his father said adamantly. “Don’t you ever say that again.”
“How do you know? Did you do a paternity test?” Grant asked.
His father held his gaze, speaking through gritted teeth. “I didn’t need a goddamn test to tell me that the son I’d raised for ten years was mine.”
Grant could do little more than stare at them, his thoughts reeling.
“I know this is a lot to take in, but please hear me out, Grant,” his mother said. “Then we’ll answer all of your questions. Even though your father and I were on a break when it happened, I knew it would hurt him if he knew the truth, and I couldn’t bear that, so I kept my secret.” Tears welled in her eyes. “For years I’d wake up determined to tell your father the truth, and then I’d chicken out. The guilt was overwhelming. Suddenly I was a young mother with five kids underfoot, miles away from my own family, working part-time at the resort, and trying to keep up appearances, because there are expectations that go along with being a Silver on Silver Island. There is no getting away from that. It’s who we are, and your father and his family have worked hard to build this life that we all enjoy. Your father and I fought a lot the year before we separated, but that wasn’t his fault. I was overwhelmed, and he was always there to try to help, but I was stretched too thin and was guilt-ridden. I was a mess.”
“You didn’t have to work at the resort. Dad made plenty of money,” Grant said angrily, biting back You didn’t have to keep that secret. He couldn’t blame his mother for sleeping with some guy in her twenties, but now he felt bad for his father, and none of it excused how they’d handled things.
“That’s true, but I had lost my sense of self. I was so young when we got married and had kids. I needed that job for my sanity. But I couldn’t escape the guilt of keeping that secret, and one day I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke down and told your father the truth. It crushed him and me. The lie was too much. We fought more, but not because we didn’t love each other. We fought because we did love each other. We separated a few months later, and, honey, I am the one who needed space and wanted the separation, not your father,” his mother said. “He never wanted to move out. But I needed time to see a therapist and heal. I had kept the secret for so long, I couldn’t look at your father without hating myself. Your father loathed every second apart from you kids, and when we finally worked things out, he wanted to move back in. He begged me to let him move back in, but things were finally good again, and I didn’t want to rock the boat. I was afraid of creating another upheaval for you kids. And as you said, what would happen if things got bad again? I thought I was doing the right thing. I never knew how unhappy it made you.”
Grant gritted his teeth against his thickening throat and shifted his attention to his father. “You took all the blame.”
“I love your mother, and I will protect her until the day I die. I failed her once, because I hadn’t realized she was so unhappy, and clearly I’ve done the same as a father, at least where you’re concerned.”
“If you were so unhappy without us, why didn’t you ever want us to spend the night at your house?” Grant asked. “Did you need your nights free for something or someone else?”
“Grant,” his mother chided him.