“Since before Trey was born.” Mitch’s gaze focuses on him directly, and Braden sees it now, sees what he didn’t notice before because he was so damn trusting and never looked for it. Trey looks exactly like Mitch and Jo’s son, Jimmy. Jimmy looks exactly like Mitch.
Mitch raises his voice to be heard above the music. “Trey is my son. Maybe you already guessed that.”
Braden stops in the middle of a phrase, an unresolved chord hanging in the air between them. It seems to him that he and Mitch are in the eye of a storm, in an eerie and deceptive calm with destruction swirling all around them.
“And I suppose you want to get to know your son, now that we’ve got him past night feedings and diapers.”
“Time to have this out in the open. Better for everybody.”
“Really? I don’t see how this can possibly be good for anybody.”
“What I don’t understand,” Mitch says, “is how you never saw it. The boys could be brothers.”
“I wasn’t looking for it. It never occurred to me that I couldn’t trust my wife, especially with my sister’s husband. What the hell, Mitch?”
Mitch opens yet another beer. “Look, I’m not proud of any of this. But I will say this much. Lilian is dead right about you.”
“In what way, exactly?”
“You don’t see her. You don’t notice anything that’s not connected to that cello. She’s a hell of a woman, and you don’t deserve her.”
Braden’s body has become a sounding board for accusations and self-recriminations, all of it escalating toward rage.
“You’ve been fucking my wife and you’re blaming me for it? Are you going to blame Jo, too?”
“Jo is an admirable woman, but she’s so goddamn self-sufficient. Lilian, now, Lilian needs me.”
Lilian is all need, Braden thinks. Needs he hasn’t ever been able to meet. He can see, now, with terrible clarity, how she and Mitch would fit together. A strong man who wants to take care of a woman, a woman who wants to be taken care of. A fleeting sympathy for both of them, a tortured understanding, collides with an awareness of collateral damage.
Jo will be devastated. All of the kids will be marked by this. Jimmy. Allie. Trey.
“I’ve been trying to get her to marry me since Trey was born,” Mitch says. “We made a point of not being seen together or letting the boys be in the same place at the same time. I told myself it was for the best, but I still love her, Braden. I’m tired of a long-distance relationship, and yes, I want to get to know my son.”
“Are you asking for my blessing? Some old-school transaction where I, what, give her to you? She’s my wife, Mitch. And Trey is my son in every way that counts. You don’t even know him! And Lilian’s not on board with your plan. She told me if I give up the cello, we stay together. So that’s what I’m going to do. Lilian and I—and you—all of us will do the right thing. You stop the thing with Lil. Jo and the kids never need to know any of this.”
“So we just go on and pretend it never happened?” Mitch laughs harshly and without humor. “How anybody can look at that boy and not know he’s mine, I can never understand. It’s going to all come out sooner or later. God. What a mess. You sure you don’t want a beer?”
He’s flushed and slurring, shifting from apologetic to belligerent. “This isn’t over, but I’ve said what I came to say. I’ll go home and let you think about it.”
“You’re drunk. It’s snowing. You can’t drive back tonight.”
“I’m fine.” He heads for the door, his footsteps weaving . . .
And there the memory ends.
Braden sits by the fire, attuning himself to Lilian’s betrayal, the knowing that Trey, his golden-haired, sunny boy, wasn’t really his. The memory doesn’t feel new; rather, he has an odd sensation that it’s always been right there, just outside the focus of his attention.
But it won’t be that way for Jo, for Allie.
Does he say something? The only other two people on the planet who knew this secret are dead. Nothing would be served by Allie knowing that Trey was only her half brother, by Jo knowing that her beloved deceased husband was unfaithful for years.
Unless, as Jean says, he should trust them to be strong enough to hold the truth.