chapter Seven

Claire's POV

I didn't go back to my apartment; the moment those doors closed behind Peter, I was already walking to my car, heels in my hand, cold pavement biting my feet, my whole body moving on one single thought.  “My father. I have to see my father.”

The whole drive, my head spun with memories. My father, standing in the kitchen, telling me that a lie was the one thing he could never forgive. My father, grounding me for a whole week when I was nine because I said I'd finished my homework when I hadn't. 

The quiet, careful, honest man who made me give back a pen I'd borrowed from a classmate without asking, who sat me down and said, “Claire, your word is the only thing you truly own.” 

He was my hero, the whole reason I became the woman I am. And now Peter's voice kept cutting through all of it. “ Your father. The great reporter, he wrote a story, and it caused  my mother’s death.”

I pressed my foot harder on the gas. I needed to see his face,  I needed him to look me in the eyes and tell me it wasn't true and say Peter was wrong. I pulled up to the old house and sat in the car for one long minute, my hands trembling on the wheel. Then I got out and walked to the door.

The moment I stepped inside, the smell of home hit me, that warm, familiar smell I'd known my whole life, and my chest ached. My mother was at the dining table, setting out plates, a soft cardigan wrapped around her shoulders. She looked up, and her whole face opened into a smile.

"Claire? Baby, what are you doing here? You didn't call!" She hurried over and pulled me into her arms, and for one brief second I let myself sink into it, my cheek against her shoulder, my eyes closing. She smelled like home.

"Where's Dad?" I asked into her hair.

"Right here."

I turned, my father stood in the doorway behind me, sleeves rolled up, glasses pushed up on his head, the way he always did after work. He smiled when he saw me, that tired, gentle smile I'd trusted my whole life.

"Look who's come to visit her old parents," he said.

My heart melted and broke at the same time. I didn't know whether to run to him or run out the door. We sat down to supper; nobody said anything important. We passed dishes, asked small questions, laughed at a story of my mother's about the neighbor's dog. I ate without tasting a single bite. Every laugh felt like glass in my mouth.

When the plates were cleared, I set my fork down and asked.

"Dad." My voice came out quiet, steady, like I was balancing something fragile. "I need to know something. Something that happened while I was away at university." I made myself look straight at him. "What happened with the Stargard family? What did you do?"

The room went silent my mother's hand froze on her cup. My father didn't move at all, and in that silence, the worst answer already started to come, long before either of them said a word. 

"Claire…" my father began.

"Is it true?" I cut in, and now my voice shook. "Peter told me tonight, he told me you wrote a story about his mother that you said she cheated and she died because of it." My eyes burned. "Is it true? Did you do that?"

"Daddy, please. Tell me he's lying. Tell me you didn't." My father opened his mouth, then he closed it. He looked at my mother, and my mother looked away, and neither of them could hold my eyes.

"Sweetheart," my mother whispered, "it was such a long time ago. You were still in school, we didn't want to…"

"Did you do it?" I asked again, louder, and the sound of my own voice scraped my throat. My father's shoulders dropped, he took off his glasses and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes, and when he finally spoke, it wasn't an answer. It was a confession missing its courage.

"I regret it," he said. "Every day, Claire. I regret what I did, more than you will ever know."

"Regret what?" A tear dropped, I couldn't help it. "Say it. Say what you did."

"I regret it," he said again. Just that. Nothing else.

"Dad…"  The same words, over and over, soft and broken, like a door swinging shut in my face. My mother reached for me. 

"Claire, please, sit down, let us explain…"

"Explain what?" I pulled my arm away. "You had years, you had three whole years to explain. You let me love a boy whose mother your husband put in the ground, and you never said one word to me. Not one."

They had no answer for that. They just sat there, my hero and my home, both of them suddenly small and strangers at their own table. I stood up so fast my chair scraped across the floor and grabbed my bag, my hands shaking, tears hot on my cheeks.

"Claire, don't leave like this…"

I walked out the door, and their voice echoed as I hesitantly walked to the porch for a moment, my breath fogging in the cold, my whole life rewritten in a single night. The man who taught me never to lie had built my entire world on one.

I got in the car and gripped the wheel until my knuckles went white. I couldn't fix this at that table. I couldn't fix it with tears. But I could do the one thing they never did, find out what really happened.

"I'll do it myself," I whispered to no one. "I don't care what it costs or who it hurts. I'm going to find the truth about what happened, and I'm going to find it my own way."