Page 120 of The Storm

“I’m sorry,” Dad says. “I truly am. It was never supposed to come to this.”

I watch as if in slow motion as Nick opens the folder. The article I squeezed into a fist the other night is on top. There’s something cruelly poetic about the fact that he gets to learn the truth the same way I did.

The words are burned into my brain.

The title in all caps.

TWO TODDLERS SWAPPED AT BIRTH

Then the rest of the article. Really only three paragraphs altogether. Concise and to the point.

Two toddlers accidentally swapped at birth should stay with the families who raised them and not be returned to their biological parents, a court-appointed expert said on Wednesday.

The mistake came to light when one of the couples split and the father demanded a DNA test to challenge the mother’s demand for child support payments, which revealed that neither was the boy’s biological parent.

The court-appointed child welfare expert’s recommendation was not to break the strong family bonds both boys had already formed with the parents who raised them.

I watch him put the pieces together. I watch the shock and the devastation and the hundred other emotions on his face.

I watch him watch me.

I watch his shields go up with three words.

“Did you know?”

And then I watch his trust shatter when I give a single nod.

I’m not sure what hurt the most.

The way I saw him break in front of me from the truth and somehow still holding himself together because he felt he had no other choice. The way I watched him build up every wall around his heart right in front of me. The way there was nothing but ice in his voice when he told me to get out.

In lifethere are always what-ifs. The alternative scenarios that linger in your mind. The different reality you construct in your head when the present starts to suffocate you.

Paths not taken.

Words left unsaid.

Moments when a single choice might have turned your life in a different direction. What-ifs that are built from missed chances and near misses. Occasional lucky breaks. It’s the voice in your head that says somewhere, in another universe, things turned out differently for you.

It’s an alternate reality where somebody said yes instead of no. Left five minutes earlier. Turned right instead of left. Walked instead of taking the bus. Spoke up instead of clamping their mouth shut. A multiverse of choices that all lead to different outcomes.

In the end, you’ll never know. You don’t get to travel the path not taken. You don’t get the chance to voice those unsaid words ever again.

You just get to watch from the sidelines as your life implodes.

No second chance.

No mercy.

Kaboom.

PART 2

THIRTY-SEVEN

INDY

I’ve gotteninto this habit of doing the wrong thing.