Kona took a step towards her but my mother retreated. That seemed to hurt him more than anything else, her not wanting his comfort. “I…baby, I didn’t want to worry you. I wanted to handle this on my own. You’ve been working so hard on your label. I knew if this came out… If this came out, it would bring a firestorm of bad publicity on this family, and paparazzi and tabloid shills lurking in the bushes, not to mention all the social media uproar...” He exhaled, head shaking when she continued to glare at him. “All the shit that came back on Ransom because of me, I didn’t want this to be a repeat. Not for him, not for the little ones, especially not for you. Not for us.”
“You should have told me...”
“I…I know, but…” This time when he moved toward her, my mother didn’t flinch or shy away from him. “There’s something else.”
“What the hell else can there…” The transformation of her features was immediate, like the flick of a light brightening a dark room. I had no idea what went through her mind then. Scenarios that were likely ridiculous. Assumptions that came from the most paranoid, self-conscious part of her psyche. Whatever it was she was thinking, it certainly was nothing good, and my father seemed to realize it, too. Before either of them spoke, he lifted his hands, a small gesture of supplication that did nothing to soothe the storm that raged behind my mother’s eyes.
“Baby, please…”
“More than one.” Her voice was like ice. My father’s silence, and the way he dropped his eyes confirmed her suspicion.
“Who?”
“I…I don’t know her.”
“Oh my God…my…God.” Her protestation was not just about the new revelation, but also Kona’s seeming unwillingness to admit to it—a double betrayal.
“Baby,” he tried, voice soft, low but the paranoia had already taken root in my mother’s mind. She wouldn’t have his touch. She didn’t seem to want him anywhere near her. Without hearing his explanation, she backed away, swatting at his hand when he seemed to reach for her, as he followed her step for step. “It’s not what you think and I’m telling you now before anything gets out. Baby, please…please…”
“No. No I can’t…” Head shaking as though the movement would block out the sound of his voice, my mother tightened her closed eyes and clasped her hands over her ears, but it seemed like she was trying harder to keep herself from falling apart than to close herself off. She had already been cut to the core.
“I would never…I have never been unfaithful to you. Not once.” Mom jerked her gaze at Kona, lips curling, hands trembling and he noticed, reached for her but didn’t seem to have the nerve to touch her. “I don’t know her, this other woman. It’s a lie. I haven’t even met her, I swear. She’s lying. I promise you.”
“You liar.” She’d become quiet in an instant, her hands dropping to her sides. That anger burned beneath her skin, made her limbs go steely calm. I’d only seen her this way once before in my life. When I was a punk kid with anger issues who’d thrown some asshole through a plate glass window for attacking my friend. Mom had marched into the office demanding for the admins to let her see me. When she’d walked into that room she’d managed to keep her anger under control. But the threat she’d leveled at the principle to back off and let me go was something that could shake even the toughest adversary. My father was a warrior and still the steel in my mother’s voice rattled him hard. She defied him with the cool anger brimming in her eyes, challenging him with an insult meant to punch below the belt. “You fucking liar.”
“I am not!” Kona’s voice was deep just then, his own anger slipping from his control with the break in his voice. Still Mom did not waver from the vengeance she seemed to wrap around her like a coat.
“You kept all this from me. For months… Months!” The air in the room seemed to clot with my mother staring down at her hands, as if looking anywhere else would cause her to ignite. Kona watched her closely, his hands at his side, his attention on every twitch she made as though looking for a break in her composure, something he could jump on to get her to release her rage. But that did not come, not when she shook her hands, as though flinging the tremor from her fingers. Not when the look she gave him was vicious and unapologetic. “How can I trust you? How can I ever trust you again? I begged you to tell me. I begged you over and over.”
“I know, but I didn’t want you to find out…”
The second that admission came, I knew Kona regretted it. It was right there in his features—the wince of his eyebrows, the way he tried to touch her, how he still looked stunned when she jerked away from him. “You didn’t want me to find out? What the hell does that mean?”
“Keira, no, that didn’t come out right. I didn’t…”
“Who the fuck are you?” Now she was astonished at the man standing in front of her. A man she thought she loved but didn’t seem able to recognize in the stranger that stood looking down at her.
“I’m your husband.”
“No. You damn well aren’t.”
Mark had told me stories about my parents in college. They were stories that Leann had clarified and given further detail on. The same words seemed to always repeat whenever those college war stories came up: Manic. Obsessive. Dangerous. I’d never believed much of the dirtiest details my cousin and godfather had recalled. The worst ones I generally dismissed as exaggerations.