Chapter 5: What Jess Knew
Everyone looked at her.
Jess uncrossed her arms.
She stepped forward from the doorway, and in the porch light I could see that she was younger than I'd first thought — and more tired.
There were shadows under her eyes that didn't come from one late night.
"Jess," Ethan said carefully.
"This isn't the time."
"You've been saying that for three months," she said.
"To her, to me, to your mother.
There's never a right time with you." She looked at me directly then, for the first time.
"I didn't know you were still here.
I mean — I knew he was married.
I knew you existed.
But he told me you two had separated.
That you were only living here temporarily while you worked out the paperwork."
The porch was very quiet.
"He told you we had separated," I repeated.
"In September." She held my eyes.
"He showed me a text message.
Said it was from you.
Said you'd agreed to divorce quietly and that you were both just waiting until he found work so you could split the finances properly."
I looked at Ethan.
He was looking at the porch floor.
"Ethan," my father said.
His voice had gone very quiet.
That particular quiet I had only heard twice before in my life — once when my grandfather passed, and once when my father's closest friend was injured overseas.
It was the quiet of a man who was controlling something that wanted very much to come out another way.
"Dad, I can explain—" Ethan started.
"You will not call me that tonight," my father said.
Ethan closed his mouth.
"You showed her a fabricated text message," I said.
The words felt strange in my mouth.
Clinical.
Like I was reading from a report about someone else's life.
"You brought her into your mother's house.
Three doors down from where I was sleeping.
With our son."
"It wasn't like that from the beginning—"
"Then tell me what it was like from the beginning."
He looked up.
His face was doing something I recognized — the expression he wore when he was deciding which version of a story to tell.
I had seen it before over small things.
A dent in the car.
A missed payment.
A forgotten appointment.
I had always let him land on whatever version he chose because it was easier than the argument.
I was done letting him land.
"The truth," I said.
"All of it.
Right now."
He glanced at his mother.
"Don't look at her," I said.
"Look at me."
He looked at me.
"I met Jess in August," he said.
"Right after I lost the job.
I was — I was in a bad place.
I wasn't handling it well.
She was working at the bar where I was spending too much time.
It just—"
"It just happened," I said.
"Camila—"
"I've heard that sentence end so many ways." I shifted Noah higher on my shoulder.
"Keep going."
He told me.
Not everything, I would learn later — but enough for that night.
Enough to confirm what Jess had already told me, which was more honest than anything Ethan had volunteered.
The fake separation text.
The story he'd constructed.
The way his mother had agreed to let Jess stay because, as Diane would eventually admit, she had never thought I was right for her son anyway.
When Ethan finished, the porch was silent for a long moment.
Then my father said, "I need you to hear me clearly."
Ethan looked at him.
"You have a son.
Eleven months old.
He's been in that house with all of this happening around him." Dad's voice stayed level.
"Whatever happens between you and Camila — whatever she decides — my grandson's wellbeing will be protected.
Legally.
Completely.
Do you understand what I mean when I say legally?"
Ethan swallowed.
"Yes."
"I don't think you do yet," Dad said.
"But you will."
He turned to me then.
"Let's get Noah inside.
He needs to be warm."
I nodded.
I didn't look back at Ethan as I walked through the door.
But I heard Jess say, behind me, almost too quietly to catch:
"He told me she didn't want the baby either."
May you like
My hand found the door frame.
I stopped.
