Ugly Love: A Novel

Six years earlier

We quietly walk to an empty waiting area. My father sits first, and I reluctantly sit across from him.

I wait for his confession, but he doesn’t know I don’t need it. I know about his relationship with Lisa.

I know how long it’s been going on.

“Your mother and I . . .” He’s looking at the floor.

He can’t even make eye contact with me.

“We decided to separate when you were sixteen. However, with as much as I traveled, it made financial sense for us to wait until you graduated before filing for divorce, so that’s what we decided to do.”

Sixteen?

She got sick when I was sixteen.

“We had been split up for almost a year when I met Lisa.”

He’s looking at me now. He’s being honest.

“When she found out she was sick, it was the right thing to do, Miles. She was your mother, and I wasn’t going to leave her when she needed me the most.”

My chest hurts.

“I know you’ve put two and two together,” he says. “I know you’ve done the math. I know you’ve been hating me, thinking I was having an affair while she was sick, and I hated allowing you to think that.”

“Then why did you?” I ask him. “Why did you let me think that?”

He looks at the floor again. “I don’t know,” he says. “I thought maybe there was a chance that you didn’t realize I’d been dating Lisa for longer than I let on, so I thought bringing it up would do more harm than good. I didn’t like the thought of you knowing my marriage with your mother had failed. I didn’t want you to think she died unhappy.”

“She didn’t,” I reassure him. “You were there for her, Dad. We both were.”

He appreciates that I say this, because he knows it’s true.

My mother was happy with her life.

Happy with me.

It makes me wonder if she’d be disappointed now, seeing how things have turned out.

“She would be proud of you, Miles,” he says to me. “With how you’ve handled yourself.”

I hug him.

I needed to hear that more than I knew.