Caleb is Henry's father.
(Now, read carefully.)
As recently as a year ago, Caleb gave me a choice. Sleep with him, regularly, or he would tell. He wanted everyone to know. He needed to stake his claim in my life because they were forcing him out. He is just like his brother was. Depraved and unholy.
It mirrored a decade ago when I was forced to sleep with Caleb on a regular basis, only I minded that less than you might think. Cole had ideas, you see. Ideas and plans and needs that make average, normal people cringe and cry. Scream. If they were a movie you would have turned it off and poured scalding water into your ears to cleanse your brain. Only he went too far.
He always did.
We suspected Henry was not Cole's biological son and for the sakes of everyone involved and everyone we knew and for his own absolution we decided to keep it a secret. Forever. Cole didn't want his friends to know how truly awful he could be.
But he's dead now and this doesn't have to be a secret anymore. I just became so good at keeping it. I kept it from the boys, fearing their judgment, kept it from the children and from Cole's parents. Besides, it was a suspicion, not a fact, right? That blew up in my face the spring Cole died (the week before his death, if you can believe that), when we had testing done to see, once and for all because there was an outside chance that Henry belonged to Jacob, too.
Because while Cole was torturing himself by letting Caleb have me, I was torturing all of us by going to Jacob.
I already told you about all that.
Jacob wasn't Henry's father by almost a hundred percent. Caleb, however, was. Cole was crushed, Jacob too, and I have spent a long time trying to pretend that this is not the truth. That maybe it was a dream and I'm not the monster. It doesn't matter if I was forced and then coerced. I'm still the only one standing in the glare of these headlights with my shame for all to see, a deer caught running all over the woods when she should have kept to her own tiny, perfect glade.
Outwardly, I continued to keep the secret. From my boys, of all people. They all wondered, and they speculated and hit on the truth a long time ago, discussing it out of my range and choosing to wait me out, knowing I would tell them when I was ready. I ask for an inch and they give me a mile. And Ben knew because Caleb had once enlisted him in the Big Plan to take me away from Jake (which blew up in Caleb's face, now didn't it?). So the news I had been so scared to give turned out to be a wash, and Caleb loses all his power over me in one giant breath.
The only thing he wants is time. Wow. If I could control time I'd be the center of the universe, now wouldn't I? He wants to spend time with both children. He wants to be a part of things, with assurances that down the road I won't take the kids from him and he won't try to take them from me. Henry knows and Henry is okay with it. He says it makes him even more a part of his dad, right? I smiled through my tears and said yes, it does. He doesn't understand. This will take time.
In retrospect, I married the wrong brother and everyone knew it. Only you're never going to pick the smooth, calculating and ice-cold one if you have a choice. You'll pick the passionate one, the romantic. The painter with the guitar who lives by his wits and loves until the day he dies. I loved Cole. All he wanted was his perfect little family with the pretty blonde wife to tuck into his arms, a girl, a boy and a house within which to grow the love we made. Only his predilections prevented that and I covered that cost and have since ruined three (four? five? six? twenty?) people and then some just by being me.
I'll take the blame because there's no one else left to do it.
I never said I was perfect. I am so far from perfect. I just hope you get it now. That you'll lay off a little and understand why when Caleb goes away, he never truly goes away. This is why. I could be awful. I could take all of Ben's lawyer power and I could make Caleb go away but he is also the victim here. He got caught up in something sick and twisted and he's been hurt by it too. It's left him wanting to love me and kill me at the same time. It's left him with rage and bitterness and guilt and it's left him with an obsession of possessing the one thing I won't let him have. His brother's family.
I can't help that. I'm not in love with Caleb. It doesn't work that way. Someday he'll get it. In the meantime, I just have to be careful. But finally there's a whole line of people with flashlights, leading me through the woods, pointing the way back to the meadow, back to familiarity. Back to safety.
Back to where I belong. Right here. Waiting for Ben to finish his work and come home to me. Because at the end of the day the distracted but painfully focused artist who plays guitar and keeps the romance bottled up until just the right moment, the unbridled temper tamed with stoic helplessness and true love is the one I want and I'm not giving that up to go be Satan's bride.
Ever.
