Silent Fall

shock. "Are you sure?"
    "Your grandmother wrote about when your father found out. It was at the hospital. Your mother confessed that she’d had an affair. I guess she’d been unhappy for a long time, since right after Jake was born. Your father had turned away from her. Your grandmother actually felt sorry for your mother, but she couldn’t be disloyal to her son, so she didn’t say anything."
    "Who is he? Who’s my real father?"
    "Your grandmother wrote that she didn’t know, but I didn’t finish the book. It might come out later."
    "Then you should keep reading," he said tersely. "I’m going for a walk."
    She watched him leave with a heavy heart, wishing she could ease his pain, but he needed time to come to grips with what she’d just told him, if that was even possible. For thirty years he’d known exactly who he was, and now it turned out he was someone completely different.
    * * *
    His father was not his father ! He couldn’t believe it, but Catherine’s words kept going around in his head. If it was true, why hadn’t Richard ever told him? Or had he?
    All their fights, all their yelling matches had ended in the same way, his father screaming, " You’re a worthless piece of shit. You’re no son of mine ."
    Dylan had never taken the words literally, but now he realized that his father’s hate came from a place that was real. His mother had had an affair with another man. His father couldn’t live with that. He had to kick her out.
    Had he also killed her?
    Dylan wouldn’t put it past him. He’d seen firsthand the depth of his father’s rage, the explosive violence of his temper. His mother had seen it, too. Had his father been abusing her all along? Was that why she had turned to someone else?
    And she’d kept it a secret for seven long years.
    He stood at the rail, staring out at the water, at the island calling him home. Was that where it had happened? It was the only place his mother had ever gone without her husband. It had to have been there. That was why she’d looked forward to the summers. The island was her safe harbor. Maybe where she’d found love. Although he was cynical enough to believe that it might not have been love; it might have just been sex to cover up the loneliness.
    Taking a deep breath, he waited for the anger to come, the pain, the hurt, but all he really felt was confusion and, oddly, relief.
    He wasn’t related to Richard Sanders. He didn’t share his blood. He wasn’t his son. Thank God for that.
    As the reality sank in he saw everything more clearly, including what was happening now. His father had finally found a way to get rid of him. He’d probably been thinking about it for years, but he couldn’t just come out and kill the boy he’d raised and claimed to be his son. He had to find a clever way to make his life miserable. Perhaps seeing his friend the senator go to jail had given Richard an idea. He could make his son suffer the same fate. And to take him down, Richard could use the very woman who had given Dylan his biggest story to date.
    He wished that he could turn the ferry around. He wanted to go home. He wanted to face the old man and speak the truth. He wanted to forever break the ties between them. His father would probably tell him he should be grateful that he’d raised him, put a roof over his head, food in his belly, clothes on his back. But Dylan knew that Richard Sanders hadn’t done any of those things for him; he’d done them to save his reputation. He’d made sure that no one would ever know that his wife had slept with another man. He’d sent her away to punish her, and he’d tortured Dylan to punish him for the very fact of his birth.
    So the question remained -- why hadn’t his mother tried to save him? She must have known what fate awaited him. Had she simply hoped that his father would do the right thing and raise another man’s child? She couldn’t have been that big a fool.
    And what about his real father? Did he know about Dylan? And if he did, why hadn’t he come forward?
    Was the man someone his father knew? A friend of the family? The mailman, the butcher, the next-door neighbor?
    Dylan rolled his neck around on his shoulders, wishing he could do more than speculate. He wanted to take action. He wanted to shake the truth out of someone.
    "Dylan?"
    Catherine’s voice was hesitant, unsure. He