In The Grace of Liars

"You're never out of my mind. Every thought that I think has something to do with you. I dream of you every night and every day I look for some way to show you how much I love you without telling you out-right. Because before today, before just now, I thought that I couldn't say it out loud. Andi, you color my whole world in a way that no one else ever has. I can't imagine my life without you in it and honestly I don't want to. You're the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep."

As I spoke, Andi's expression slowly changed. The worry lines on her forehead softened, her brows relaxed from their bitter crunch, and her mouth began to show the barest hint of a smile.

"Andi, I love you. I love you and I want to be with you and I want to give this baby the best life it can have. I can't believe you're going to have our baby."

Andi smiled fully and without reservation now. Her eyes were red from crying and her face was flush but her smile lit up the room and set my heart to soaring. How could she be so beautiful even through all those tears?

"Chris?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm scared," she said.

I sat next to her and gathered her up in my arms, squeezing her tightly.

"If you're scared, you're doing better than me. I'm fucking terrified. But it's going to be OK."

I was. I was terrified. But for the first time in as long as I could remember, I knew deep down in my heart and beyond any doubt that finally ... finally everything really was going to be OK.

###

That night Andi and I had a special dinner. We went shopping and bought some nice, thick steaks and sweet potatoes. I cooked for her and we ate by candle light at the island in the kitchen. We couldn't stop smiling at each other throughout dinner and we were both positively giddy. The energy between us took a drastic turn. It wasn't like before -- it wasn't just that sexual magnetism and animal lust that we felt for each other that day on the BMW. It was somehow much more than that -- a wholly spiritual attraction -- a irresistible force that drew us to each other.

I could give you all the beautiful and gory details of our love making that night but I find that the thought of doing so is a bit off-putting to me. It somehow takes away from the intimacy of the experience to share it. It was for us and I think it should stay that way. Let it be enough to say that we made love that night -- a real, true, genuine physical expression of our love for each other. It wasn't just sex. It transcended the instinctual rutting of two people given over to their carnal urges -- it was so much more. We were together with no regrets, no reservations, no shame - and we were making up for lost time.

Blissful. Heavenly. Nirvana.

###

The next day I made the call. To say that Uncle Dave was surprised to hear from me would be an understatement, but overall he seemed happy to hear from me. Even more so he was excited to hear that about that Andi wanted to talk to him, though his demeanor darkened a bit when I mentioned that I wanted to ask him a few things about my mother. Strangely enough, he was local, and so we set up a time to meet at a coffee shop in town.

It was a short trip from the camp but Andi fidgeted the whole way. Her anxiety was palpable.

"We don't have to do this -- we can call it off," I said, doing my best to comfort her.

"No, I'm OK. We both need to talk to him."

"We can reschedule. We can put it off for a few days. I'm sure he would understand."

"I'm sure he would. It's been six years, what's another few days?" Then, after a pause, "No. We can't put it off. It's been too long already."

It was raining when we pulled into the parking lot of the coffee shop. Andi and I ran to the door and slipped in out of the rain but not before getting soaked by the down-pour. We found Uncle Dave right away and walked to his table. He greeted me with a firm handshake and a broad smile before wrapping Andi in a bear hug. I was hesitant to leave them but Andi asked me to get us a cup of coffee. When I returned Andi had tears in her eyes and Uncle Dave was holding her hand across the table.

"I've missed you so much, Andi," he said, squeezing her hand.

"Then why didn't you call? Where have you been all this time?"

"I wanted to sweetheart. I couldn't. When your mother and I divorced... it was ugly."

"So ugly that you couldn't even call me?" she asked, wiping tears from her face.

Dave sighed and looked down at his coffee. "Andi, what did your mother tell you about why we split up?"

"She told me that you cheated on her. Aside from that she wouldn't tell me anything."

Dave sat silent. The turmoil in his mind was evident on his face.

"Is it true?" Andi pressed.

He nodded slowly and glanced briefly in my direction before looking back to Andi. "Yes. That's true."

"Dad, that's not even the point. I can forgive you for that, I just want to know why you disappeared. Why didn't you call me? I didn't get so much as a birthday card from you..."

"Your mother."

"What about her?" she asked.

"It was her choice," he said.

"Bullshit. You could have fought her for visitation. Cheating isn't a reason to keep a parent away from their child."

"Andi, up until you were eighteen, I was paying almost half of my salary in child support to your mother." he said, rubbing his fingertips hard against his forehead.

"Appropriate considering you weren't there to help with anything else."

Dave flinched as she spoke, but continued. "When we divorced your mother gave me an ultimatum. I could either go away and never try to contact you or her again and make child support payments, or I could push for visitation rights but if I did she would seek spousal support payments on top of that."

"So this was about money? You left because you didn't want to pay alimony?" she asked, her words edged with contempt.

"No, Andi, I left because I couldn't pay spousal support. What she was asking for -- and what my lawyer told me the court would likely award her was nearly seventy five percent of my income."

Andi sat silently, processing the information she was getting.

"Sweetheart I wouldn't have been able to feed myself, and your mother knew it. She wanted me gone from her life. She wanted me out. She wanted to make sure that she never saw me again."

"Why would she do that to me?" Andi asked through her tears.

"She was hurt. She wasn't thinking about you. She was trying to hurt me, and she did."

Dave moved his chair closer to Andi and put his arm around her. "I'm so sorry, Andi. It wasn't fair to you and it wasn't fair to me but there was nothing I could do. The courts don't look kindly on infidelity... I just didn't have any way to fight her."

Andi sobbed into his shoulder. "I've missed you, Dad. I've missed you so much."

"I've missed you too sweetheart."

Andi clung to her father for several minutes after that. They held each other, neither speaking but both seemed to savor the long overdue embrace. Eventually, she sat straight in her chair and began to compose herself, suddenly conscious of the public setting. Dave also seemed to wipe away a tear -- I hadn't noticed him crying earlier. I almost felt as if I were intruding on a private moment and hesitated to speak even thought I had questions of my own. Thankfully Uncle Dave spoke first.

"Chris, I was surprised you were the one to call me," he said.

"Why's that?" I asked.

Dave gave me an apprehensive look before his face relaxed, as if a sudden realization dawned on him. He sat back in his chair and took a deep breath before speaking.

"You don't know anything about what happened to your mother do you? Neither of you know anything about it..."

"Well, that's actually why I wanted to talk to you. All I've ever been told was that she was in a drunk driving accident. I didn't start to really question things until I found her car at the camp."

Dave nodded. "I always wondered how they would explain it. It should have occurred to me that they just wouldn't explain anything. That family has always loved keeping secrets."

"What can you tell me about the night my mother died? Do you know who she was with?" I asked.

Dave sipped his coffee and quickly nodded. "Yes, I do," he said.

As soon as he spoke, the two puzzle pieces came together in my head.

"It was you, wasn't it? You're the man that my mother was seeing. You're the one she was talking about in her diary. You were there that night."

"Yes, I was."

Andi piped up now, her eyes wide and her tone shrill, "You were cheating on Mom with Aunt Terri?"

Dave said nothing, just nodded.

"No wonder she hated you! Dad! Her sister?"

"Hold on, Andi," Dave said, holding up a cautionary hand, "You don't know the whole story. Neither of you do."

"Well please explain," she said.

"Understand, both of you, we weren't proud of what we were doing. We both knew it was wrong," he took another sip of his coffee and another deep breath before continuing. "Andi, I loved your mother, I really did. I tried for years to get things back on track in our marriage. When you were young, things were good. We didn't have a whole lot of money but we did OK and we spent a lot of time together. We had a great marriage. Over time things changed. When you're with someone for so many years you get complacent -- you start taking your partner for granted. We drifted apart. To avoid putting too fine a point on it, I'll just say that the marriage became unsatisfying to both of us on different levels." Dave cleared his throat and shifted before continuing. "Andi, I promise you I tried. I begged your mother to come to marriage counseling with me. I tried courting her again, taking her on dates, flowers, the whole nine yards... It just didn't work. She reached a point where she decided that any work that she had to put into the marriage was a waste of her time."

Now he looked at me and spoke, "Chris when your father died, your mom was devastated. She mourned him for years. She closed up -- shut the world out so that she could work out the pain that she was going through. Mentally and emotionally she was broken and eventually that started taking its toll on her health. He meant everything to her and one day he was just gone. There was a huge vacuum in her life that he used to fill. Eventually, she tried to get her equilibrium back -- some balance. She and I had been friends for years and had something of a past and so it was natural that when she needed to talk, or needed a shoulder to cry on, she started calling me.

"After a while, it turned in to more than just talking. Things progressed and before we knew it... well we were having a full blown affair. For both of us it was a breath of fresh air. I felt like I had something to live for again, and she started to feel like she could be OK on her own."

"So how did Mom find out?" Andi asked.

"Terri and I planned on spending a weekend together at the camp. She made up a story about going on a business trip and I made up a story about playing a weekend gig out of state. That led to the mistake that ended up being the final clue that your mother needed to catch on to what was going on. She already suspected that I was having an affair. I was so excited that weekend to see Terri that in my rush to get out the door, I left my guitar at home."

I was riveted, listening to Uncle Dave's story. These questions had been festering in my mind for so many weeks now and I was finally finding out what happened. "Please, go on." I said, urging my Uncle to continue.

"Well, we met at the camp. We had a glass of wine and then..." Dave paused and shifted in his seat, clearly unsure of how much information he should give, "well we were happy to see each other."

Andi and I both nodded in understanding. "So we were, uh... indisposed when Janice and Marjorie walked into the cabin."

Andi was sitting at the edge of her seat as her father spoke. "She caught you in bed?!" Andi exclaimed -- too loudly. Several of the coffee shop patrons turned and looked briefly before returning to their coffee.

"Yes. We were in bed." Uncle Dave stared out the window as he spoke and I thought he might be reliving the story as he spoke. His eyes focused on nothing in particular and his tone became distant. "Janice started yelling and then Marjorie got in on it. I tried to calm the situation down, but as you can imagine that was a losing proposition. Terri was upset. She was startled by the interruption and her heart started beating irregularly. By the time Marjorie and Janice figured out what was going on, I was prying open her medicine bottle and trying to get a pill in her mouth. She grabbed my arm and looked in my eyes," Dave's voice began to crack and tears pooled in his eyes. "She asked me to drive her to the hospital."

Dave wiped his eyes and sniffed, then continued. "I put her in the car and started driving. I was driving fast. Too fast. I was so scared that she was going to slip away from me right there in the car -- all I could think about was getting to the hospital as fast as I could. I was holding her hand in the car and I told her to keep squeezing my hand, just hang on to me." Openly crying now, Uncle Dave continued, "And then her hand went limp."

Andi handed him a napkin from underneath her coffee cup. He accepted it and dried his eyes.

"She died right then and there in the car. Cardiac arrest. Her heart just gave up."

I listened in silence, hearing the words and absorbing them but at the same time, numb and detached.

"I knew that there was still time if I could get her to the hospital fast enough. We were two miles away still when I passed under a yellow light. Someone was coming from the intersecting street. I guess they thought the light would turn green by the time they got to it. It doesn't matter. They hit us broadside. T-boned us on the passengers side of the car. When Janice and Marjorie eventually caught up, they saw the accident and how bad it was. They assumed that the accident is what killed her.

"I tried to tell them otherwise but of course by that time they had it in their minds that I was at fault for everything. When the police got there, they gave me a breathalyzer test. Since I had a glass of wine not too long before it all happened, I blew one hundredth of a point over the limit."

Dave looked at Andi. "They put me in jail. They tried to convict me of vehicular manslaughter and negligent homicide. I was acquitted after an autopsy showed the cause of death to be cardiac arrest but the acquittal came after the divorce. It's another reason that the courts weren't too gentle with me when it came to custody. Your mom and Aunt Janice have never stopped blaming me for her death."

Andi and I both stayed silent when he finished, trying to take it all in; Trying to process the massive deluge of information that Uncle Dave had dumped on us. Dave wiped his eyes again and cleaned his face, apparently done with his crying for the moment.

"So you see -- I assumed that you knew all that, Chris, or at least some of it. That's why I was so surprised to hear from you. I thought for sure that you hated me and blamed me for your mom. In a way, I'm kind of glad they didn't tell you any of that because at least it gave me a chance to tell you what really happened. But I promise you, Chris... I loved your mom. She was very dear to me and I miss her every day."

"Me too," I said, quietly.

"I know. I'm sorry things happened the way they did," he said.

"Uncle Dave?" I asked.

"Yeah," he replied.

"Something you said... I have a question."

"Ask me anything you want, Chris. You've waited too long to get your answers."

"You said that you and my mother were friends before my father died."

"Yes," he said.

"But then you said you had, 'something of a past'."

"Mhm."

"What did you mean by that?" I asked.

Uncle Dave shifted in his chair again and looked at me with a pained expression as he spoke, "Chris, I'm not sure we should go into that. You two already have a lot to digest."

"You said I could ask you anything," I reminded him.

"I did say that." Dave cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with what he was preparing to say. "You two are grown adults now so I guess I don't have to sugar coat this, I'll just say it. Janice and Terri, in their younger days were pretty wild. They... well, when one of them would date a guy they would sometimes... uh... share him."

Andi made a disgusted face. "Uhg, Dad," she whined.

"I'm sorry Andi, I don't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"And so they... shared you?" I asked in a weak voice, hardly believing that I was talking to my uncle about my mother's sex life.

"Well, no. Not at first. See, after your mom and dad got married they wanted to start having kids right away. They both decided that they were done partying and wanted to settle down and start a stable, responsible life together. Janice and I married at about the same time and we were all great friends -- we were all very close. After a while of trying to get pregnant without success, they started getting tests done on your mom. They tested her over and over again and every time they tested, things came back OK. Eventually the doctors decided that the problem couldn't be your mom. After testing your dad, they determined that she wasn't getting pregnant because he wasn't producing any viable sperm."

My stomach was flopping around my insides like a fish out of water and I knew that the color had run completely from my face as I glanced quickly at Andi. She could have been my reflection as her expression matched exactly what I was feeling on the inside.

"Since, in the past, they had shared lovers it wasn't much of a stretch when Terri asked Janice if I could step in. Your father knew how desperately your mother wanted a child and he trusted me implicitly. There was no animosity between us at all but an understanding that once your mom was pregnant, he would be your father in every way except biologically. And I can tell you that man loved you as much as any father has ever loved his child."

Andi's face was green and she held her stomach with one hand as she spoke. She looked as if she was going to throw up. "Dad, are you saying that Chris is my... brother?"

"Are you saying that you're my father?" I asked almost at the same time.

"One at a time, guys," he said as he looked at Andi. "Andi, in a way, yes." Turning to me he said, "Chris, I am now and always will be your uncle. Your father died. The fact that I was a part of your conception is a biological technicality. That's it. I'll always be here for you if I can ever help you with anything -- but your dad is gone."

"I'm going to be sick," Andi said.

Dave squeezed her hand, "I'm sorry Andi. I know it's a lot to take in."

Andi was shaking, her hands trembling as she stared down at the table and raked her fingers through her hair. "You have no idea. I have to go. Chris we have to go. Take me home. We have to go," she said, grabbing her purse from the back of her chair and standing. Andi, not waiting for me turned and headed for the door.

"Andrea, wait! When will I hear from you again?" Uncle Dave asked as she strode away.

"Soon, Dad. I'll call you," she said without turning to face him again.

Dave looked at me as the door swung shut behind her. "I had no idea she would take the news that hard."

I was numb as I answered but I had to do my best to cover for her until we figured out how to deal with this new twist. "She's just dealing with a few things right now. She'll be OK. Thank you for your honesty Uncle Dave. I appreciate that you took the time to talk to me. To us."

"Chris, I couldn't stand to lose her again. Please talk to her. I'm not sure what it was that upset her so much... I know it's a lot."