The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(113)

My mind kind of zoned out just then, and I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of me. "Why would I do that?" I asked her.

"Because you've been angry long enough. And I believe it's having an adverse effect on you. Now it's time to forgive."

"Forgive? After everything he did?"

My mom exhaled loudly. "He didn't do anything to you, sweetie. He loves you. He misses you. It was unfair of you to cut him out of your life like you did. No matter how bad of a husband he was to me, he's still your father. And he was always very good at being that."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. From my mother of all people! She was actually taking his side. What was the matter with her? Did she have no self-respect at all?

"Mom," I began, determined to convince her of my motivations – obviously without revealing all of my motivations. "He hurt you. And by hurting you, he hurt me. And that's reason enough to keep him from my life."

"Jen," my mom said warningly, "I don't think that's a healthy attitude. You have to let go of your anger. You don't want to end up like Julia, do you?"

"What?" I immediately responded. Since when did Julia find her way into this conversation? This was a discussion about me, my mother, and my father. Not about my father's first wife's daughter. How did she even factor in? "What does Julia have to do with it?" I asked in a snotty voice.

"Well, you know how she is," my mom explained gently. "She's bitter, and overprotective of her daughter, and, well, for the most part . . . angry and unhappy because she never learned to let go. Do you really want to end up like that? Because that's what happens when you hang on to resentment."

Wait a minute, I thought. Julia is angry and unhappy? About what? And who does she have to resent? I mean, I know she's never really liked me, but I always assumed it was because I was the half sister. The unwanted sibling from her father's new wife. I couldn't really blame her for that. If my dad had a child with this next wife of his, I would probably have a hard time taking a liking to him or her, too. And it would be even worse in this case, because his new wife is the last woman he cheated with when he was still married to my mother. And...

Oh ...my...God.

My foot suddenly slammed on the brakes, and I pulled the car over to the side of the road. I struggled to take deep breaths. How could I have missed it all this time? How could I have not put all the pieces together? Especially when they had been there all along, lying right in front of me.

"Jen?" my mom's voice came through the line. "Are you all right?"

I ignored her question. My mind was stuck on a completely different path. "Mom," I began in a wobbly voice.

"Yes?"

"Did Dad cheat on Julia's mom, too?"

"Yes," she said, as if it were obvious. "I thought you knew that."

"No!" I nearly cried. "How could I have known that? No one ever told me. How would I know?"

My mom laughed weakly at my delayed realization. "Why else do you think Julia was so mean to you as a child? And she really never liked me either until after the divorce."

"You mean he cheated on her... with you?" I shrieked.

I took my mom's silence as a yes. And actually, I much preferred the silent response. I was speechless. It felt like a curtain had just been lifted, revealing a room in my house that I didn't even know was there to begin with. And it was full of new and interesting things to explore and play with... and analyze!

"But if you were the one he cheated with, why would she want anything to do with us now? She hangs out with you all the time!"

My mom chuckled softly to herself. "Ever heard the phrase 'Misery loves company'? She clung to me after my divorce was final. I think she felt like we were finally on the same page. She's a very wounded little girl under all her thick layers. I'm glad I could be there for her."

"So that's why she hangs out with you instead of Dad?" I asked skeptically.

"Honey," my mom began in a gentle tone, "Julia hasn't spoken to Dad in ten years."

"What?" My voice strained as I tried to condense ten years of memories into one fleeting moment of thought.

"I assumed you knew. I just don't want your relationship with Dad to turn out the same way."

I nodded weakly and stared at the license plate of the car parked in front of me. "Okay," I surrendered softly. "Maybe I'll give him a call."

After all, I had already let go of so many things this week. What was one more?

I hung up the phone and pulled my SUV back onto the road. Everything was becoming clearer now. The reason Julia was so overprotective of her own daughter suddenly made perfect sense. She was trying to shield Hannah from a world that she had never learned to forgive... just like me.

And suddenly I realized that Julia and I had more in common than I thought. But I was desperate for the decisions I had made in the past week, and even the past two minutes, to be what finally set me apart from her.

The biggest of which was about to start right now.

As I pulled up in front of Karen Howard's house, I could feel the butterflies start to multiply in my stomach. This was it. The very last one. The last million-dollar mansion that I would step into. The last suspicious wife I would attempt to console. And, in a few days, the last cheating husband I would allow to kiss me.