Samantha sat in silence for a long moment before she spoke. “When I think about it, every time I mentioned Bradley’s name, you never confirmed or denied a thing.”The wheels turned inside her mind as she spoke, almost in a whisper. “That’s a courtroom technique that Daddy’s talked about many times . . .” she said, her voice trailing off.
A fresh wave of panic and queasiness gripped my stomach. Samantha stared at me with a look that let me know she was slowly sorting out the pieces of the puzzle, connecting them one by one until they slid into place to form the true picture of what had been happening right under her nose. And then, as if things couldn’t possibly get any worse, I heard the back door open and a set of heavy keys clank against the granite countertop where Ed had just tossed them.
“Emily, baby, I’m home,” he yelled out as I heard the door shut behind him. “Mmm, that apple crisp smells delicious. I’m ready to have a little dessert of my own,” he said, lust coating his voice as he walked through the kitchen and into the living room.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and held it for a moment. For that brief second in time everything was dark, quiet, and calm. But when I opened them again, the real world kicked back in.
Ed stood in silence at the edge of the living room, holding a cautious but calm look on his face. Unlike his daughter, he was a very rational and controlled person, so it didn’t surprise me that he was seemingly relaxed. Maybe a small part of him was even relieved that everything was finally out in the open.
Samantha stood up and looked from Ed to me, shaking her head. “She’s who you were buying lingerie for?” she asked, still speaking barely above a whisper, still processing the whole situation.
I sat glued to my seat on the couch as Ed spoke. “Sam, we wanted to tell you, but we had to wait until the timing was right.”
Samantha drew in a deep breath, still shaking her head. “How long has this been going on?”
“I’ve loved Emily for a very long time.”
“How long?” she demanded.
“Since I first met her.”
Samantha took a few steps toward him. “You’ve been fucking my best friend since we were in college?” Her voice was beginning to rise.
“I’m still your father, so watch your language and your tone when you speak to me,” Ed cautioned.
Samantha backed down, but I could see the fire in her eyes. “Okay, Father,” she said with bold sarcasm. “How long have you and Emily been—”
“Emily and I didn’t start seeing each other until after she moved here. After the birthday party.”
I noticed that the entire time that Samantha and Ed had been talking, neither of them had looked in my direction. They were throwing my name around the room as though I weren’t even there. I needed to say something, so I rose from the couch and started to speak. “Samantha, it’s true. We didn’t start seeing each other until after I moved here.That’s why I told you it was complicated.”
Samantha turned her head toward me, her long, sandy blond locks flying through the air. “Oh, shit!” she gasped. “Daddy’s the father, isn’t he?”
Things had been tense and highly uncomfortable up to this point, but now I knew the situation was about to explode.
Samantha huffed and stomped over to where I stood. She came to within a few inches of me and stopped. She looked down at my pregnancy book, then over toward Ed, before casting her eyes back on me. “I believed in you. I loved you. I had faith in you. I defended you!” she said as tears began to stream down her cheeks. “You were the best person I knew, honest and decent and kind, but it was all an act. Eleven years of fucking deceit!”
“I’m so sorry,” I cried. I reached out to touch her but she recoiled and stepped away. I had to explain so she would understand. “Samantha, you’ve got to know that this was hard for me. I’ve loved Ed for so long, but I had to keep it bottled up inside.” I sobbed and panted. “I never meant to hurt you. I love you like a sister.You’re my family.”
“Family, my ass! If we’re family, sisters as you say, why did you screw our father?”
“I’ve never looked at Ed that way. I’ve always loved him. From the very beginning. Lord knows I didn’t want to have these feelings because I knew where they would lead. But I couldn’t help it.” I could taste the salty tears running down into my mouth, but I swallowed them and continued. “I’ve loved, and I’ve lost, and I’ve lived most of my life with an emptiness that I didn’t think would ever be filled. But being with Ed has changed all that.” I took a step toward her. “Samantha, I love your father. I’m finally happy, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”
Samantha looked down to the floor as she spoke. “Of all the people in the world, I would’ve never thought that the two of you would be capable of something like this.” She shook her head, reached over me like I wasn’t even there, and grabbed her handbag off the couch.
“Samantha, wait!” I said in a desperate cry as she walked toward the door.
She didn’t curse or scream. She didn’t throw any objects. She didn’t do any of the things I knew she was capable of, or that I thought she would do. She didn’t even slam the door when she walked out without looking back or saying a single word.
I stood still, like petrified wood. I felt Ed’s strong, protective arms wrap around me, followed by an intensely sharp pain in my lower abdomen. I looked up at him, not wanting to accept what I could feel coming. “Take me to the hospital.”
Chapter 38
Samantha . . .
It Was Really Her All Along
I walked through my door with tears in my eyes. I went over to the couch where Tyler was lying and sat down beside him.
“Sam, what’s wrong?”Tyler asked as he sat up. He was tired and weak, and I could hear the congestion in his voice as he spoke. “Baby, why’re you crying?”
I looked at him, my red eyes matching his as I began to sob even harder. “They lied to me. They tricked me. They deceived me,” I cried as I leaned forward, resting my head in my hands.
“Sam, baby, what’re you talking about? Who lied to you?”Tyler asked through his own sniffles.
At that moment, I realized that the cold medicine, soup, and juice I had gotten for him were still sitting in the trunk of my car. I’d left an hour ago in search of relief for my man, but what I found instead was chaos. “I left your medicine in the car,” I said as tears rolled into my mouth.
Tyler looked at me with alarm. “Forget the medicine. Tell me what happened.”
I gasped between sobs as I told Tyler what I had just witnessed at Emily’s house. I told him how I saw the pregnancy book on her couch, and how my father walked through her back door so casually, as if they lived together. I told him about the affair they’d been having, the lies they’d told, secrets they’d kept, and games they’d played. “They did it all while smiling in my face, pretending we were a loving family,” I said with outrage. “The fourteen-thousand-dollar bracelet, the lingerie. It was all him and her. I defended Emily and even cursed out Bradley—twice!”
“Damn,”Tyler said, slowly shaking his head.
“Can you believe what they did?”
Tyler looked at me with bewilderment. “Wow, this is one that I, um . . . I don’t even know what to say.”
The fact that Tyler was so shocked that he couldn’t get words out made me cry even harder. I was numb when I walked out of Emily’s house. Emotions coursed through my body that I didn’t know where to place, while my mind fought to rationalize what I had just seen. My father and my best friend. Lovers! It was something I’d never imagined, not even in my wildest, most bizarre dreams. I was confused, angry, and hurt.
Now, as I sat on my couch with Tyler holding my hand, I thought about the friend who had been there for me through thick and thin, who had always encouraged me to make good choices and do the right things. Then I thought about my father, the man who had always been there for me, too, and who had taught me the importance of respect, honor, and forthrightn
ess. I couldn’t believe they were the same two people who had lied and deceived me at the highest level.
I grew angry all over again as I thought about my so-called best friend. Emily had led me to believe that Bradley was the conniving, deceitful one, when it was really her all along. Then, in a flash, my mind returned to that day in Neiman. I dropped Tyler’s hand, jumped up from the couch, and started pacing the room as I spoke. “I can’t believe her!” I screamed. “All this time Emily’s been having an affair with my father and lying about it. And him . . . he listened to me talk about Emily and Bradley getting back together and he was fucking her the whole time!”
“Sam, I know you’re upset. But try to calm down,”Tyler urged as he walked toward me.
My hair was all over the place, I was sweating like it was a hundred degrees, and my face was so hot and red it burned almost as badly as my teary eyes. I was hysterical, but I didn’t care.
“Baby, please calm down,”Tyler said in a soothing voice.
I ignored him. “Emily had the balls to sit on my bed while I told her how I caught my father buying lingerie for his mistress, all the while knowing that he was buying it for her! She let me go on and on about how I suspected that he was having an affair, and she even had the nerve to question me about it, pretending to be surprised,” I huffed. “That’s some low-down, cunning, deceitful shit I’d expect from my mother. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why they’ve always gotten along so well . . . two fucking peas in a pod!” I screamed as tears raced down my cheeks.
I would’ve never put Emily and my mother in the same category, but there they sat, side by side. I felt like I’d been carved out by a knife and left hollow. My tears stopped falling and the numbness I felt when I left Emily’s house returned.
When I opened my eyes the next morning they felt as though they were still shut. My lids had turned into puffy folds of swollen skin from all the tears I had shed last night, and I could barely see the morning sun that was shining into my bedroom.
“Here, drink this,” Tyler said as he handed me a cup of orange juice.
“Where’d you . . .”
He blew his nose with a tissue. “I got it out of the bags you left in your car last night,” he said as he coughed and blew his nose again.
It was the first time in my entire life that I’d cried myself to sleep. After I rehashed everything with Tyler, he’d calmed me down enough for me to take a shower and crawl into bed. But as I lay under my warm comforter, all I could think about was my so-called best friend and my father. Each time I tried to fall asleep my mind hit me with a new vision, them hugged up together when he gave her the expensive Tiffany bracelet, her modeling the lingerie he’d bought her, him listening with a straight face as I told him about how happy Emily had been after the weekend she’d supposedly spent with Bradley when she went to Atlanta for her teacher’s conference. They’d both played me for a fool.
Beep, beep, beep, my phone rang.Tyler looked at me and sighed. “You need to answer that, you know it’s your father again.”
He’d called three times last night, but left only one message, which I immediately deleted. I reached for my phone and looked at the caller ID. DADDY appeared across the screen. I let it roll into voice mail again, just like all of his other calls. A minute later I heard the familiar buzz signal that a message had been left. I punched in my code to retrieve it, then deleted it without even listening to what his lying mouth had to say.
“Sam, don’t you think you should at least talk to him?” Tyler asked as he lifted the comforter and crawled into bed beside me. “I know you’re hurt, but you love them both, and despite how things went down, they love you, too. Baby, everybody makes mistakes.”
“I don’t want to talk about him or her. I just want to put them out of my mind right now.”
“Sam, you need to call him back . . .”
My voice was hoarse from all my crying, but it was strong enough to speak the words my heart meant. “I’m putting both of them out of my mind.”
Chapter 39
Emily . . .
I Don’t Know
I listened to Ed as he left Samantha another message, telling her the sad news we had just received an hour ago.Then he called Ms. Gerti and repeated the same heartbreaking details he’d left for his daughter in a voice message that she was unlikely to retrieve. I knew my friend.
I watched Ed closely as he spoke to Ms. Gerti in a whisper, his posture slumping a bit. He looked out the window of my hospital room and breathed a heavy sigh as he ended the call. The only other time I’d ever seen him look so tired was the day he helped me move. But even then he didn’t look the way he did now because on that day, his fatigue had been born of a hope-filled promise for a long-awaited love. The weary exhaustion that covered his eyes this morning was steeped in a hurt and sadness that was hard to put into words.
“You’re up.” Ed smiled as he came over from the window and sat on the edge of my bed, careful to avoid my IV drip.
“Did you manage to get any sleep?” I asked, looking into his bloodshot eyes.
He hunched his shoulders and smiled, which told me he hadn’t. “How do you feel?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Last night had been the worst night of my life. I remembered my ten-year-old self, and how sad I’d been when I stood over my father’s casket as he was lowered into the ground. Then I thought about the heart-wrenching pain I felt when I looked into my mother’s quiet face one last time before the funeral director closed her coffin, separating our worlds.Those losses had been nearly unbearable, but I managed to go on because although I knew my parents would never walk this earth again, my faith gave me comfort that we would be together one day in paradise, and in the meantime, their spirits would still live with me.
But the loss that engulfed me today was different. It still walked around. Still breathed air. Still lived life.Yet it felt as dead as the two people I had loved and buried.
When Samantha came over to my house last night, I knew right away that there was going to be trouble. I knew the minute she saw my pregnancy book that the truth would slowly come to light. I knew she would discover all the secrets I’d been keeping as soon as Ed came walking through my back door. And I knew the instant she and I locked eyes and exchanged heated words that things would never be the same. But what I didn’t know, what I was still unsure of as I lay in my blue and white hospital gown, was what would happen next.
After Samantha turned on her heels and walked out my door, I wondered if the back of her head would be the last image I saw of the best friend who I had loved, and yet betrayed.
“I don’t know how I feel,” I repeated to Ed.
“Try to get some rest, you’ve been through so much.”
I looked into Ed’s steadfast eyes and saw his anguish and pain. He was frantic when we parked in front of the emergency room entrance last night. After we got settled into my room it became a game of watch and wait. Our baby was still holding on. He called Samantha and left her a message, but she didn’t call back.The medicine they gave me helped me to rest a little, but Ed paced the floor all night with worry. Then an hour ago, the monitor I’d been hooked up to went flat. Our baby was gone.
I had been thinking about my loss, but now I thought about his, too. He’d lost two children in one night, one who he had loved for over thirty years and another who he had loved for just a few short weeks.
I raised my hand to his cheek and looked into his eyes, letting him know that I felt his heartbreak, too. “I’m so sorry, Ed,” I whispered.
He kissed my hand and rubbed my empty stomach as a small tear trickled down the side of his face. “Don’t be sorry.We still have each other, and I know that everything’s gonna be all right.”
Chapter 40
Samantha . . .
A Long Way to Go
Seven months later
Time heals all wounds.
I had always believed that saying, and now more than ever, I
desperately wanted it to be true. It was two weeks from my wedding day, and as I stood in the bridal shop for my final fitting, with Gerti by my side, I couldn’t help but think about Emily. This was the first big occasion in my adult life that I was going to experience without her.
Fall had turned into winter, winter rolled into spring, and spring quickly crept into summer. But the changing seasons hadn’t mended a friendship and love that had been ripped apart. In the weeks that followed my discovery of Emily and my father’s affair, there were so many days that I wanted to sit down with both of them and just ask, why? I wished they had been straight up with me from the beginning. Yes, I would have no doubt been pissed and shocked, but at least I would’ve known the truth and we would have all been honest with each other.
As I stood patiently while the seamstress pinned my gown around my waist, I tried to keep my mind focused on my wedding day. But it was hard to concentrate on anything other than the emptiness I felt knowing that Emily and my father wouldn’t be there to share the special day with me.
“You look so pretty, Sam.” Gerti smiled. “Sure would be nice to have Emily in your wedding.You know you need to call her.”
I knew that Gerti was right. I missed Emily. My heart had ached for her when I found out about the loss of her baby. No one should have to suffer that kind of pain. After Gerti told me the news, I mailed Emily a card, but that was as far as my olive branch had reached. She called me several times, and e-mailed and texted me, too. But I avoided her messages because I didn’t know what to say other than angry words. There were several occasions when I had wanted to pick up the phone and talk to her, but every time I thought about how my friend had smiled in my face while secretly sleeping with my father, I felt sick to my stomach.
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