Brian opened his front door and walked through the hallway. He quickly found Amy, sitting quietly on the living room couch, in the dark. Brian didn't know it, but this was where Amy had mostly been since her carefully constructed world began to crash in on her two nights ago. She barely ate, she barely slept, she mostly just sat in a ball on the couch, crying and cursing herself.
The only person she told of what happened was her mother; her kids were staying there and she wanted to make sure they were OK. She hadn't planned on saying anything; given what her mother had gone through she felt like she would be more sympathetic to Brian, but in that moment she needed her Mom.
Helen was shocked at her daughter's confession. Given how she felt about her father and the lingering hatred she still held for what he did, Amy was the last person Helen felt she needed to worry about doing something like this. But as she thought about it, and began to put herself in her daughter's shoes, she started to understand at least.
Amy had always put so much pressure on herself to live up to expectations. This was true even before her father's scandal; until that point she wanted to live up to his expectations. After that, she was determined mostly to prove that she was better than her father, and her mother saw her work so hard to be the best at everything. In the end, you can only do that for so long before you need a way to release the pressure, the stress you put on yourself.
It didn't excuse her daughter's behavior, but Amy was her daughter, her youngest, her baby. Helen knew she needed to be there for her, to be her non-judgmental support. Last night, she told the kids she needed to run a few errands, and left them in the care of a neighbor friend for a few hours. She needed to be there for her daughter, if only for a little bit.
Mostly, Helen just held Amy as she cried and explained the entire awful story. How she had started with Chris, why she couldn't bring herself to stop it, everything regarding Johnny, and finally the last few terrible days. Helen did say much, she just tried to process it all.
Amy finally told her mother what she had been holding in all these years; how she had found her father on that awful day before his scandal came out, and how it killed her to hold that secret for so many years. Her Mom was stunned, but not for a second did she hold her daughter responsible for anything that happened with her husband, and she let Amy know that. She wished her daughter would have told her this sooner; maybe it would have healed her quicker and much of what she was facing could have been avoided.
Ultimately, she gave her daughter the only advice she could think of; Amy needed to be completely honest with Brian, tell him everything and answer all his questions. It was the only way she could hope they would find a way to move past it. Everything had to be out in the open, as painful as it may be.
In truth, Helen didn't have great hope her daughter could save her marriage. Though she had stayed with her husband, for a long time after finding out about his secret life, it was largely a charade. Almost all of her love for her husband had died that awful day she picked up that newspaper. Nothing he could say would have changed it.
She did reunite with him for several years when Amy started college, but that was more about her than him. She was lonely, with all her kids out of the house, and afraid of living out her golden years alone. David seemed like a changed man, so she latched on to him; he was the one other constant in her adult life, besides her kids.
But it had been a mistake, and she realized it almost immediately. David was still up to the same old tricks. He had changed briefly to woo her back, but once he had her again the old David returned. Finally, she had enough and kicked him out, for good.
Her mother's advice and experience was on Amy's mind as Brian opened the door and entered the house. She had no idea how this would play out, but she so badly wanted to fix this.
"Hi, how are you," she said coming to the door to greet him.
"How do you think I am?" he snapped. Forcing himself to calm down, he said, "Let's just get through today, I don't want to ruin the kids' mood."
"Are we going to tell them anything," Amy asked. "Are you staying here tonight?"
"No," Brian replied. "We'll pick them up, and then I'll tell them an emergency surgery came up." It was a believable excuse that had actually happened many times before.
"Are you going to stay with her, again?" Amy asked.
"No, I'll stay at a hotel tonight," Brian answered. At this point, staying with Cat was not the best idea, as much as he wanted to.
"That gets us through tonight, what about tomorrow, and the day after," Amy said. "At some point, you have to talk at me, be able to look at me."
"I know, but I can't yet," Brian said. "One day at a time. Let's go get the kids."
Brian and Amy picked up the kids at her mother's house. Brian noticed her mother giving him a wary, but sympathetic look. 'Well, if anyone can relate it's her, but she's still Amy's mother,' thought Brian.
The kids noticed something was off, for a couple who had spent a whole weekend together their parents seemed very distant toward each other. Plus their father's left hand was bandaged, and he didn't have a great excuse for it; it almost looked like he punched a wall or something similar. Their eyebrows raised more upon their return, when their father announced he had to perform an emergency surgery. But this had happened before, and they figured whatever happened between Mom and Dad would pass.
Brian went to a hotel and gathered his thoughts. Amy was right; he knew he couldn't keep putting this off. He had to talk to her and face their problems. But did he really want to face them? Wouldn't it be better to end it now, to rip the band aid off so to speak? Not for the first time that night, he thought of Cat and the last two nights. It would be so easy to run away from his problems and be with her.
But he owed it to his kids to figure this out. He didn't want to give up on his marriage just yet. He thought of Liz, and what she was probably thinking at this point; she told him she thought many times of ending it, but stayed with it until she knew what she wanted. Brian needed to give it time and figure that out for himself.
On Monday at work, he saw Cat; it was almost impossible not to run into her at some point. They both didn't want to let on to their colleagues what had happened this weekend, and late in the afternoon Cat found the time to visit Brian in his office when no one else was around.
"Is everything OK," she asked him with concern.
"Yes...no...I don't know," he replied. "I still can't really face things yet. I stayed at a hotel last night, but I need to go home; my kids are not blind, I can only tell them I have surgeries so many nights."
Cat wished there was something she could do to ease his pain. Problem was, she knew what could accomplish that, but it was a bad idea right now. As much as she wanted him, as much as she felt herself developing strong feelings for him, she would be taking advantage of him if she did that anymore.
"I'm here, if you need to talk," she said, rubbing his arm. Though she meant it as a friend, the contact sent a bolt of electricity through both of them, as they remembered the events of the weekend.
"Thanks, but I need to get home, maybe another time," Brian replied. He couldn't go down that road right now; it wouldn't be fair to anyone.
So Brian went home, and attempted to begin the healing process. He spent the night with his family, and when his kids went to bed, he used the guest room. He had to be at work early anyway, before his kids needed to get up for school; they likely wouldn't notice.
But the Harris children noticed things were not good between their parents, and it concerned them. Word had not gotten out about the specifics of Amy's affair with Josh; the Andersons decided to focus on healing their son, and had no desire to broadcast his pain in public to get back at Amy.
But there were enough whispers among the parents of classmates about troubles in the Harris marriage, and specifically that Amy had been having an affair. Several of the neighbors had heard the commotion that Friday night, and put two and two together.
These whispers got back to the kids, and they confronted their mother. Amy at first tried to explain, and then finally told them what happened. While leaving out specifics, she let her kids know that she had messed up repeatedly, and hurt their father. When Brian returned that night, he was faced with three crying, angry kids who hated their mother at the moment.
He was upset that Amy told them without him; he had wanted to be there to help ease their pain. In the moment, that became his sole emotion, and he began to yell at Amy, without really thinking about the fact that his kids could hear them.
Part of the reason he was so upset was that he got a sobering piece of news the other day. The DNA tests were back, and it was conclusive that Chris was Johnny's biological father. He was still coming to terms with what this meant. As he looked at Johnny, he could now see the resemblance to Chris, and he cursed himself for being so blind to it all these years.
And in his darkest moments, he wondered if this would forever change his relationship with Johnny. Could he get past this and still be his father? But every time he saw Johnny smile at him, he was able to push these feelings aside. Johnny needed him; all his children needed him in this moment. He couldn't take it out on them, for better or worse they were his kids. Fatherhood meant so much more than a donation of sperm, Brian realized.
But it only made him focus his anger on his wife, for putting him in the position where he had to explain all of this to their son one day. And in this moment Amy had given him the perfect outlet to vent.
"How could you just tell them like that, without me," Brian shouted at his wife. "Haven't you done enough to ruin this family!"
"I'm sorry, they heard rumors, I didn't know what to do," Amy cried. "I couldn't lie to them anymore. Don't worry, they hate me not you!"
After a while, Brian stopped yelling at his wife and went to look after his kids. They were full of questions: Were they getting divorced? Why did Mom do it? What's going to happen to us?
Brian didn't have any good answers to their questions, but told them no decisions had been made about divorce. He was trying to work through things with their mother. He urged them not to take it out on her; that she had screwed up but she needed their support. At this moment, the kids would have none of it, their mother had ruined their lives as far as they were concerned.
