Then he asked, in a voice that had gone thin and strange, “Did Daniel tell you?”
And there it was again. Daniel. Casual. Familiar. A name that had been in your mouth last night for entirely different reasons. The shame of it flooded you so fiercely you had to sit back down.
“Yes,” you said. “He told me.”
Michael made a sound you had never heard from him before. Part dread, part calculation.
“Why were you with him?”
You could have lied. God knows the universe had provided enough of them already. You could have said he came by. You could have said he stopped to talk. You could have spared yourself that final layer of humiliation.
Instead, perhaps because honesty was the only clean thing left in the room, you said, “Because I met him last night. And I brought him home.”
The silence that followed felt like falling down an elevator shaft.
When Michael finally spoke, his voice was barely recognizable. “What?”
“You heard me.”
He did not speak for several seconds. You could hear his breathing. Somewhere in the background, one of your grandchildren laughed at something. The sound was so innocent it felt like a crime scene had opened in a nursery.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
You almost snapped that he did not own that phrase today. But you were too tired already.
“It was a coincidence,” you said. “A monstrous, disgusting coincidence. He recognized your father in a photo this morning.”
Michael swore under his breath.
“What exactly did you think would happen?” you asked. “That you could live two full lives forever and the universe would never get bored enough to make them collide?”
“Mom, I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”
“Congratulations,” you said coldly. “For once, neither did I.”
The shame between you was now so large it had ceased to be personal. It had become architectural, a structure the two of you were standing inside without doors.
He said, “Does Laura know?”
“No. But tell me why on earth I should be the one carrying that secret for you.”
“Because if you tell her like this, it’ll destroy everything.”
You almost admired the audacity. Even now, with every wall splitting open, his first instinct was management. Containment. Optics.
“It already destroyed everything,” you said.
“Mom, please. Let me handle it.”
“You’ve had a year to handle it.”
“I was trying.”
“No. You were delaying. There’s a difference.”
