My father leaned over. "That's Ethel's live location?"
I nodded. Said nothing.
My mother was already grabbing her purse. "Let's go. Right now."
"I want to see for myself what kind of man could turn someone like Ethel Pruitt into this."
My father didn't say a word. He snatched the car keys off the counter and headed for the door.
Mom and I followed, piling into his car.
The entire ride, my mother couldn't stop talking.
"And to think I actually believed she loved you. Turns out she's been bringing men into your home while she cooks your dinner."
"Fifty-some years I've been alive, and I have never seen anything this disgusting."
"If she'd fallen out of love and asked for a divorce, fine. I'd be furious, but at least I'd respect her for being honest."
"But no. She played you for a fool. Strung you along like you were some kind of joke."
"If I catch her shacked up with another man today, I will tear them both apart with my bare hands."
Her eyes were rimmed red with fury.
When Ethel had first pursued me, my mother had been against it. She thought the Pruitt family's background wasn't good enough. It was Ethel who knelt outside our front door for three days and three nights, forehead split and bleeding from bowing against the stone, before my mother finally relented.
My father drove in silence. I caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. His brows were knotted tight, his jaw locked. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself.
About twenty minutes in, I glanced at my phone. The green dot had stopped moving.
"Faster, Dad."
He pressed the accelerator without a word, and we pulled up near Ethel's location moments later.
The first thing I saw was her car, parked in front of a villa.
I threw my door open and headed straight for the building.
What I didn't notice was the reaction behind me.
In the car, both my parents were staring at the villa. The color had drained from their faces at the exact same instant.
Before I'd taken ten steps, my father was out of the car and blocking my path.
"Donnie. Are you sure Ethel brought that man here?"
Something in his expression stopped me cold. It wasn't anger. It wasn't skepticism. It was something I couldn't name.
"What's wrong, Dad? Do you know this place?"
His mouth opened. No sound came out.
Then my mother caught up. She took one look at the villa, swallowed hard, and when she turned to me, her face was ashen.
"Donnie, let's go home."