The Face Behind the Clown Makeup
My daughter brought her first serious boyfriend to our Halloween party, and I thought he was wonderful. But when he washed off his clown makeup, I recognized his face—and immediately wanted my daughter to break up with him.
“Tyler, what’s your mother’s name?” I asked.
“Rebecca. Why?”
My heart sank. Fifteen years earlier, Rebecca had been the woman my husband cheated on me with.
I called my daughter, Emma, into the room.
“You need to break up with him,” I said.
“Mom, why?”
“Because
I know who he is. His mother is Rebecca, the woman your father had an affair with.”
Emma stared at me. “That doesn’t mean Tyler did anything wrong.”
Before I could answer, Tyler appeared in the doorway.
“I think we should talk,” he said.
We sat in the living room, and he admitted he’d discovered who I was two months earlier. He’d recognized me in an old photograph Emma had shown him and eventually learned about our families’ history from his mother.
