But then, last weekend happened.
It was a regular Saturday evening. I was doing my laundry while watching some show on TV when Lily suddenly came in the room carrying a small pink flip phone. It took me a second to realize that this was that same cell phone she received when she was only six.
“It was inside one of the boxes that we kept in the closet,” she mumbled.
“Hey, I totally forgot about it!” I responded.
“Yeah, me too,” came another reply. But judging by her face, I realized right away that something was definitely wrong.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” I asked, laying the clothes aside.
Lily gulped hard. “Mom… there’s a video…”
“What video?”
“Dad sent it to me the day before the fishing trip and warned me not to show it to you. I was just six years old when all that happened. He told me to keep it secret and show it to you after ten years.”
She could barely hold that phone. I opened the video and Ryan’s face appeared on the screen. It seemed to me that he was seated in our garage.
“Anna…” he began in a low tone. Hearing his familiar voice erased seven years of absence almost instantly. However, hearing what he was going to say next was a real shock to me.
He explained he wasn’t taking the kids fishing. He was taking them to their birth mother, Andrea. Permanently. I became physically ill, feeling the contents of my stomach trying to force its way back up my throat. Ryan stated that he believed the children needed to spend some time getting to know their mother again since he was losing control completely and said sorry for everything. Then he turned to Lily and said that he loves her before the video cut to black.
And I simply sat there in front of the black screen without being able to breathe properly. It had been seven years spent mourning their death while asking myself endless questions, all just so I can discover that it was one big lie.
In the morning, Lily and I headed towards the address of Ryan’s ex-wife, Andrea.
She let us into the house, and before she could say a word, the photos of Ryan, Andrea, Jack, and Caleb – all smiling and alive – completed her story for her. It nearly took me down to my knees. I spent seven years mourning the deaths of children who had been very much alive. I didn’t know if I should scream, vomit, or pass out.
Finally, I looked at Andrea, and I managed to force out one question, “Why?”
Andrea’s eyes welled with tears. What happened next wasn’t anything that would have crossed my mind. Ryan had been diagnosed with stage-four, terminal cancer several months prior to disappearing, and he made sure that no one knew about it. According to Andrea, he freaked out when he thought that he was dying and he was desperate to make sure that his sons were with their biological mother before he died. He thought it was the right thing to do.
I sat there in utter and total shock. On one hand, I could somewhat comprehend the fear he had for himself because he knew he was going to die. On the other hand, I was furious! He did not trust me enough to be honest with me. He decided to make his own decision that would destroy several lives by making me believe that my family was dead and by raising Lily without her father and brothers.
Andrea eventually led us to a small cemetery where Ryan was buried underneath a small tombstone. It turned out that he died shortly after disappearing with the boys. There in front of Ryan’s grave, I experienced a completely new grief—not my old grief, but a totally different kind. The grief that came from finding out the horrible truth.
Back at the house, Andrea told me that Jack and Caleb were now studying abroad. They’re not children anymore, they’re grown men. They passed around a couple of photos and both of them are so alike to Ryan that it hurts. On the way out of the door, she gave me an envelope with a letter Ryan had written to me just before his death. I haven’t opened it yet.
The whole way to Ohio, Lily just stared at the picture of her brothers. At some point, she finally posed the question we’ve been wondering about. “Will I be able to meet them someday?”
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