The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(45)

"You're awfully quiet," my dad remarked at my silence.

I simply shrugged.

He pulled the car up to the curb, and his eyes quickly scanned the passenger pickup area for a familiar face. "We're a little early," he said, checking his watch.

I continued to stare out the window, afraid to acknowledge his existence.

"You know," my dad began after a moment of silence. "Sometimes there are things we want to tell somebody but it's difficult to do so."

I didn't respond. I could feel tears stinging the back sides of my eyelids. I quickly blinked them away.

So my dad kept talking. "And then sometimes there are things we want to tell people but probably shouldn't."

I suddenly spun around to face him, my face filled with questions that would never be answered. Did he know? Had he seen me? As I replayed that dreadful night over and over again in my head I could have sworn I had escaped up the stairway unseen. I had made sure of it. But is it possible he could have heard me?

"What do you mean?" I asked, trying to hide the curiosity in my voice and cling to a more casual, aloof tone.

My dad seemed to be thinking carefully about his next words, weighing all the options like a mental thesaurus search. "What I mean is, sometimes there are things that are better left unsaid."

"Why?" I shot back, almost defensively.

He reached out to gently touch my face, but I instinctively flinched. My dad tried to play it off with a lighthearted chuckle as he removed his hand and rested it on the gearshift. "Different reasons," he said with a half shrug, as if he didn't really care one way or the other if I was listening. "Mostly if you know that the truth will hurt someone."

I reached up and gently tugged at my bottom lip, trying to digest everything he was telling me, but at the same time trying to figure out if there was a hidden motive behind it. And to be honest, it was far too much for my twelve-year-old brain to compute.

Then my dad turned his entire body toward me and looked me directly in the eye. "Especially if it's someone you love," he added in a critical tone.

I quickly looked away, wanting desperately to read his mind, dissect his thoughts, search through his memories like a card catalog index. But there was no time. I looked up to see my mother exiting the terminal and hurrying over to the car. Without another word I immediately unbuckled my seat belt and climbed into the backseat.

My dad faced forward again, as if nothing had happened. As if we had merely been discussing last night's episode of Doogie Howser, M.D. and now that conversation was over.

But that conversation was far from over in my head. In fact, it was repeating incessantly. Trying to locate clues, key words, anything that stuck out as unusual. But unfortunately, nothing did. And I couldn't help but think that it all just seemed like a random piece of fatherly advice arriving at a very inopportune time.

The backdoor of our minivan slid open and my mother's round and cheerful face leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. Then she opened the front door and settled into the passenger seat, reaching back and resting her hand affectionately on my knee.

"So? How was everything while I was gone?" she asked brightly. Blissfully. Innocently. Completely unsuspecting. And it was like a knife in my chest.

I smiled back. "Fine."

At that moment, the confusion faded away. Everything that had just come out of my father's mouth suddenly made perfect sense to me. Why would I purposely hurt someone I loved? Or more important, someone who loved me... unconditionally?

The answer was: I wouldn't.

That's when I made the choice. That I would never utter a word of this to anyone. Not to my mom, not to my dad, not to Julia... not even to Sophie, my best friend. And in fact, the more I never spoke of it, the easier it was to effectively convince myself that it hadn't actually happened. And the more I convinced myself, the easier it was to never truly deal with it. Never have to process it. Never have to give it that second thought my mind was begging to give it. This way I could go on with my life. Talk about boys with Sophie, complain about not having a phone in my room, feel delightfully naughty in putting on lipstick and eye shadow when I knew my mom would disapprove.

But what I didn't realize as I made that conscious decision to lock the secret away in a vault that had no combination was that my life wouldn't go on like that. It wouldn't be as naively simple as I had hoped.

Sure, I could talk about boys and makeup and phones in my room. But I would never feel the words that were coming out of my mouth. I would never relish in the innocence of being a child-turned-teenager. And when I would grow up and turn fifteen, and sixteen and seventeen, I would date boys, I would kiss boys, I would even share my body with them. But I would never love them. I would never be vulnerable to them. At least not the way I wanted to love them and be vulnerable to them. Not the way Sophie did.

And thus began my life of make-believe.

When my mom got home from Chicago after visiting my grandparents, I was able to use her as a shield. As long as she was around I would never have to be alone in a room with my father. I would never have to sit in silence with him while fighting the temptation to ask the burning question that wouldn't leave me alone. Why?

Why would you kiss another woman when you have Mom? Why would you wait until she was out of town to do it? Why don't you love her the way you're supposed to?

All these questions would eventually boil down to one essential, unsolvable puzzle: Why do people cheat?