Little White Lies by Allan Deya (the reading list book .TXT) 📕

afraid that if I did I would lose him, so I kept it to myself; and 6 months later Mat and I became parents.

He was the best partner a woman could ever ask for; he was a devoted father, a loving husband, a good man- and I committed myself fully to the relationship.”

“So what you are saying is that I am not biologically related to Bill and Clare?” Delaine asked.

Melanie turned to face them and there were tears in her eyes. “I am the worst type of human being there is.” She said. “I had it all and more; your father gave me everything, he never let me want for anything- not physically or emotionally. He gave me everything.”

She sobbed for a few minutes and when she looked up the emotions on her face were raw; so raw that even William in his rage and Clara in her grief could not miss to see them. “Dan called me when you were hardly a year old. He said he was having problems at home; he told me he just needed someone to talk to. Besides he would like to find out how his daughter was doing.

I should have known, no- that is not entirely true, I knew exactly what would happen but I went anyway. I had all this feelings for him that I did not know what to with and I wanted to find out whether there was any way I could… deal with them.

I met him in the evenings, when your dad thought I was away at book clubs or gallery openings. I rambled on and on about you; what you were up to, how you were doing, the bond between Mat and you. But even then I could tell that he was not interested, not in the least.

I should have run right then, having known what he wanted from me, but I didn’t. I guess it felt great to know that someone other than my husband found me attractive enough to want to be with. One thing led to another and we ended up in bed together again.

That was you William and this time when I told him he didn’t disappear. He told me he had let another man raise his daughter as his own and that it would not happen again. He stayed around for 5 months after we found out, but when my belly started bulging he suddenly decided that his marriage was worth another shot.

But your dad was there and thank God for that. I had wanted to tell him the ugly truth immediately Dan said he would be a father to you; to both of you, but he had said that it would be prudent to wait. ‘My wife will get a lot more out of the divorce if it came out that I had been unfaithful.’ He'd explained to me and fool that I was, I’d bought it hook line and sinker.

So once more Mathew took on a burden that was not his. And for many nights after that I went to bed in tears and woke up in even more. My marriage to your dad deteriorated after you were born William; I hated myself for what I was doing to him but I knew that I could never bring myself to tell him the truth.

That would have destroyed him and left you without a father and I just could not let that happen. Looking at Mathew with the 2 of you at the park, at the movies, at home no one could tell he was not your biological father; he had so much love in his heart for you that it broke my heart.

I did not deserve a man like him, but you had done nothing wrong, and I could not bear the thought of having you suffer for my mistake so I kept that little white lie to myself. And every day that went by I fell deeper in love with your dad; he was to me a magical creature that was sent here to bless the life of some deserving lady but somehow lost his sense of direction and ended up with me.

But for all that I just could not let him love me; I would not allow him to think that he did because I knew that this day would eventually come. The day when he would discover my betrayal and I knew your father, you cannot love someone as much as I cared for him without knowing them; and I knew that when that day came he would walk away and not look back.

I walled myself inside a cocoon within my marriage. To everyone else we seemed the perfect couple but we knew what was going on in the house. When your daddy started coming home later and leaving earlier I thought, well good for him; he has found someone to share his heart with.

I knew leaving was not an option; not for this type of man- he would take my coldness and my abuse but he would stay for the sake of his kids. But the day he spent the night out without having told me I flipped.” Melanie chuckled like she had just remembered something funny.

“Imagine that, me: the woman whose frustrated husband was raising 2 kids not his own was mad that her husband might be having an affair. And I pulled the most stupid move of my life. I showed up at Dan’s new townhouse and demanded that he meet me outside. He tried to turn me down but I threatened to expose our affair to the world.

He did come, out and we did have our night of passion and I returned home that morning fully intending to tell your dad the sordid details of our little secret; but he wasn’t there. I was in a rage; I broke things around the house and I ripped paintings off the wall and I burnt the letters and cards that he had ever sent me.

I screamed at the world and I called all the women in his life, the ones I thought he could be having an affair with to demand to speak with him but none of them had see him since he left the office the previous night. So I called up Dan again and went to his office; I figured if he wanted to play that game then we both could.

By the time I got home that evening I was calmer but he still wasn’t there. Then it hit me that he probably had run off with his new girlfriend and that broke me. I know I had no right to feel betrayed by his actions, I could lay no claim to his affections; I had tried so hard for so long to get him to take his emotions elsewhere but when I thought he did…”

“I remember that day.” Delaine said from her seat. “I came home from school and the house was a mess and you were crying and hurling things. I can’t remember everything you said but I do remember you shaking me and saying it was all our fault. You wanted to do the same to William but the nanny, she took us away.”

“I..I’m sorry.” Was all Melanie could manage in reply.

“I thought I had dreamt it, that it was all just a bad nightmare from my childhood.” Delaine said standing. “How could you? How could you do that to me, to us, and then blame us for the consequences. You were supposed to be our mother, you should have…”

“Deli,” Clara called, “Let her finish, I would like to know how daddy came to forgive you and how I came to be.”

“It wasn’t until the 3rd night, after I had gone through the full cycle that I received word of your dad. I had been mad and destructive, I had been sad and vengeful and I was currently sliding into depression when the phone rang. I remember thinking to myself, if only I had one more chance with him, I would make him the happiest man in the world.

I prayed and I pleaded with God to give him back to me. When the phone rang I snatched it up as I had been doing since he disappeared wishing that it was his voice at the other end. Even if it was just to tell me that he would not be coming back to me, I did not care; I just wanted to hear his voice.

But it wasn’t him; it was your aunt Jaimie. ‘Look I know this is going to sound crazy but it's all I’ve got- there’s a guy here in a coma. He has no identification on him and no phone but he had a few numbers in his pocket when I found him, yours is one of them; he has angel wing tattoos on his back.’

I rushed to the hospital and found him there; he was in a bad way.” As she said that she clutched her heart, the memories of the state she had found him in coming back to haunt her. “He was hooked up to all this machines and there was hardly an inch on his body that was not bruised or broken. He looked so weak then, so helpless and I felt like a complete moron for ever having doubted him.

Aunty Jaimie was there; she had been since she had pulled him from the car wreck and driven him to St. Luke’s. I saw the worry on her face and for just a second thought that she must have been a lover; later when I found out that she was a complete stranger I couldn’t help but fall for the complete stranger who had worried about my husband as much as I did.

She refused to go home until Mat was moved from the Intensive Care Unit to the High Dependency Unit almost 3 days later. And even after that she passed by every day to check on him. That is how come your daddy and her are such good friends, why I would have believed she was the one that he was seeing behind my back- this family literally owes it's memories to her.

He stayed in that comatose condition for 2 months and when he came to the doctors insisted on keeping him another month for observation. When finally they released him, it was with the direct instruction that he not engage in any strenuous activities for at least 5 months.

That of course was not what the college faculty wanted to hear; they had sponsored him as sportsman cum artiste not as a glorified bookworm, so they pulled his scholarship. They had already signed the yearly stipend away and the house was paid for, so they gave us till the end of the year to vacate.

I quit my job to take care of your dad and we got into a lot of arguments about that.” She remembered with a fond smile. “Especially after we found out I was pregnant again. He tried to get me to stop pampering him, but I couldn’t, all I could think of was how close I had come to losing him without ever having told him how I really felt.

I swore to myself that as soon as things were back to normal I would endeavor to show him just how much he meant to me. But that was never to be. Dan’s wife had landed herself a younger man and was threatening to leave him for a leaner less utilized body and he came to me for help. He came