Chapter 13 - Liam Stopped Defending His Father for Me
For months, Liam kept protecting Ethan.
“Dad was helping someone.”
“Dad didn’t know the bridge would close.”
“Dad thought you had the SUV.”
All technically possible.
All things I used to say.
Then one night he asked:
“Why did Dad say we were safe if the government said leave?”
I sat beside him.
“I don’t know exactly what Dad believed.”
“Was he wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say sorry?”
That question hurt.
“To me, yes.”
“To us?”
I stopped.
Not yet.
Ethan had apologized generally.
I’m sorry everything happened the way it did.
Not the same.
I encouraged him through the parenting coordinator to speak directly to the children in age-appropriate terms.
He resisted.
“I’m not telling a seven-year-old I abandoned him.”
Nobody asked him to.
The therapist helped him find honest language.
At the next session, Ethan told Liam:
“I made a bad decision during the flood. I believed Mom could handle getting you out, and I put something else first when I should have been with you.”
Liam stared at him.
“What something?”
Ethan hesitated.
“My business.”
Not Vanessa.
Not the affair.
Business was enough for a child.
“Were you scared?”
“Yes.”
“For us?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you come?”
Ethan cried.
“I thought your mom would fix it.”
Liam looked toward me.
Then back at him.
“That’s not her job all the time.”
I nearly broke.
Seven years old.
One sentence.
The entire marriage.
Ethan nodded.
“No.”
He wiped his face.
May you like
“It isn’t.”
That was the first apology I believed he meant.
