The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,54

up. Just shut up. I wasn’t mad at her. I needed to eat.

“What are you talking about?”

I fought the urge to run from the room. “Well, you know. That year . . . that year, Davy and I figured it out. We knew.”

Mom watched me for a moment. “What exactly did you and Davy think you figured out?”

Why had I opened my poisonous, hateful mouth? Here was my mother sweetly cooking for me, and how did I repay her? “You know, that Dad was . . .” It seemed callous to say he was “cheating on you” or “sleeping around.” I scrambled for the words. Mom waited, her face open, as if she honestly didn’t know what I was struggling to say. “That he was . . . unfaithful.”

“Oh, no.” A horrible sound came from her mouth, and her face drained of color. “No, no, no. You thought that? All these years?”

She put a hand out for the tiled island as if she needed support. Her face was anguished. “No, Camden. It was me.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

“I was the one who was unfaithful,” she said. “I’m the one who had the affair.”

The lemon smell intensified. A whirring sound filled my head as events, snippets of conversations, and snapshots realigned themselves in my head.

Oh.

“I didn’t forgive anything. He forgave it all, Camden. All. Oh, I hate that you thought badly of him. Davy, too? This is really what you thought? All this time?”

I wanted to ask so many things, but our family had never been much for divulging. We stood several minutes, facing each other.

I knew my mother was never more comfortable than when on a horse.

“Do you still want to ride?” I asked.

Chapter Sixteen

CANTATA AND BISCUIT STROLLED IN THE SUNSHINE. THE periwinkle sky, the pear tree petals sprinkling down on us, and the pastel blossoms made me feel as if we moved inside a Monet canvas.

I waited for my mother to speak first. While she collected herself, the horses clopped along, Biscuit’s rocking walk massaging my lower back.

The memory of the contempt in Gabriella’s eyes nipped at me.

When we came to the creek, we let out the reins so the horses could drink. I’d been judging my mother for putting up with Dad’s cheating. Surprise and shame filled me as I realized I didn’t have the same disdain for my father, now that I knew the true story. Talk about a double standard.

Something Bobby had once said returned to me. Knowing nothing about my parents’ true history, he’d asked, “How come when a woman abandons a marriage, everyone says, ‘Oh, good for her,’ and it’s seen as this liberating act of independence, but when a man leaves a marriage, he’s nothing but a cad?” He’d repeated this question more than once, whenever we watched a movie or a play in which either spouse left a marriage. Had he been thinking of himself? Already wanting to leave?

My mother let Cantata walk out into the creek. Caroline’s Cantata. Dad’s last Olympic ride. It was hard for me to look at that horse and not flash back to Dad’s accident. I remembered sitting in the mud cradling the mare’s head—those panicked eyes, the foam from her nose. I shook myself. A little puffiness in her left front leg was the only remnant of her own injury.

Caroline’s Cantata. My father had named that horse after the infidelity.

Cantata put her nose under the water, then tossed her head, sending small splashes dancing across the stream’s surface. Biscuit and I stood on the shore, watching.

Mom combed through Cantata’s mane at her withers and finally spoke. “Your father and I had changed as people. We’d grown up, we’d evolved, really, as people do, as people should. We had problems, but instead of dealing with them, I took the easy route and became convinced that the marriage itself was bad.” She squinted through the sunlight. “I was wrong.”

Biscuit ambled down the slope to stand in the water, too, as if he wanted to be closer to hear Mom’s soft voice over the lapping of the water.

“We needed a change. I fell in love with another person because I needed a catalyst.” She made a face at some expected disdain from me, but what she’d said made sense. “I can explain it now, but at the time, of course, I had no idea what I was doing. But now I know that when someone’s in need of big change, the most common thing to do