Emily blinked, startled. «What do you mean? You haven’t even told them the date yet.»
«I don’t need to,» he said, turning away. «They won’t come. That’s just how it is.»
«But, Michael,» she pressed, «this is your wedding, too. Don’t you want your family there? Your mom, your dad, anyone?»
He shook his head, jaw tight. «It’s not possible. They’re busy. Let’s just leave it at that.»
The explanation was thin, barely more than air. Emily felt frustration rise in her chest.
It wasn’t that his parents couldn’t come. Life had obstacles; everyone understood that. It was the way he shut down the conversation, refusing to offer even the smallest detail, as if the subject itself were forbidden.
She tried to smile, to let it go. But later that night, lying awake beside him, she couldn’t. Michael had given her every reason to trust him, yet this silence gnawed at her.
Weddings were about union, two families coming together, not just two people signing papers. Why was he so determined to keep his side in the shadows?
Emily told herself not to push. He would open up when he was ready. Still, as the days passed, the questions lingered.
Why had she never met his family? Why did he never call them, never mention their names? What was he hiding behind that calm, steady face?
The doubts were quiet at first, easy to drown out in the rhythm of daily life. But like water seeping through cracks in a wall, they kept returning, soft yet insistent. For the first time since they had moved in together, Emily wondered if she truly knew the man she planned to marry.
The idea had been simmering in Emily’s mind ever since that night when Michael, with eyes turned away, insisted his parents would not attend the wedding. He hadn’t given her a reason, only a wall of silence. The more he refused to explain, the more her curiosity burned.
A week later, Michael mentioned he had to go on a short business trip. It wasn’t unusual. His job occasionally sent him to other Ohio towns for administrative work. He asked if she wanted to come along, but Emily shook her head, claiming she had reports to finish and little desire to wander alone while he sat in meetings.
Michael accepted her answer easily, kissed her forehead the next morning, and left before dawn with a small overnight bag. Emily watched the taxi pull away from their apartment building, her heart thudding in her chest. She had already made her decision.
That evening, while tidying the apartment, she found the confirmation she had been looking for. Inside the glove compartment of Michael’s car, where he sometimes left insurance papers and old mail, there was a folded envelope addressed to Carol Harris in Youngstown.
Emily stared at the name. She remembered Michael once saying his mother’s first name, quickly, as though by accident. Carol. It had to be her.
She held the envelope for a long time, debating. It felt like trespassing, like crossing a line she had promised herself never to cross. But there it was: the address he had hidden, the link to the family he refused to talk about. She slipped the paper into her purse.
The next morning, Emily packed a small bag and told her parents she would be running errands outside Cleveland. Then she got into her car and set the GPS to Youngstown.
The highway stretched long and flat before her, the winter sun pale and cold against the windshield. As the miles rolled by, the scenery shifted from the bustle of Cleveland’s outer suburbs to the quieter, grayer edges of Ohio’s Rust Belt.
Empty warehouses with broken windows loomed along the road. Old factories, once the heartbeat of steel production, now sat abandoned, their smokestacks pointing like jagged fingers at the sky.
Closer to Youngstown, the decline was impossible to miss. Rows of houses sagged against one another, porches caving in, windows boarded. Some streets looked as though life had bled out of them years ago, leaving only shells behind.
A liquor store stood on the corner, its neon sign buzzing faintly even in daylight. Across from it, a half-shuttered diner leaned beneath a faded awning. Emily gripped the wheel tighter.
She had grown up in a stable, middle-class neighborhood where lawns were mowed and neighbors waved at each other across driveways. Here, silence hung heavy in the air, broken only by the occasional bark of a stray dog or the thud of music spilling from a passing car.
Her GPS directed her off the main road and into a narrow residential street. Potholes lined the cracked asphalt. Yards were overgrown, fences splintered and falling apart.
In front of one house, a rusted pickup truck sat on blocks, its tires missing. Laundry flapped stiffly on a line, the cloth so worn it was almost colorless. Emily slowed down, heart pounding.
This was the world Michael had left behind, the world he had never wanted her to see. She thought about his refusal to drink, his avoidance of family talk, his insistence that his parents wouldn’t come to the wedding. In this landscape, his silence began to make sense.
Emily parked her car near a corner store with a sagging roof and a hand-painted sign. For a moment, she just sat there, staring at the address on the paper, unsure if she had the courage to knock on the door once she found it. Her stomach twisted with guilt. She loved Michael, she trusted him, but she couldn’t build a marriage on shadows.
Taking a deep breath, she started the engine again and drove deeper into the neighborhood. Each turn seemed to lead her further into abandonment, as though time had forgotten this part of Ohio. Houses leaned like weary old men.
A child’s tricycle, rusted and broken, lay overturned in a yard choked with weeds. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled, long and mournful. The closer she came to the address, the more Emily felt the weight of what she was about to uncover.
This was no longer about curiosity. It was about truth. The truth behind the man she loved, the truth he was too afraid or ashamed to share.
Finally, she saw the number painted crookedly on a cracked mailbox. Harris. Her chest tightened. She pulled the car to the curb and turned off the ignition.
For a long moment, she didn’t move. The house before her sagged under its own weight, the porch littered with beer cans, the curtains yellowed and stiff. Emily closed her eyes, inhaled once, then opened the car door.
The cold air bit her cheeks as she stepped out, the sound of her boots crunching against gravel far too loud in the empty street. Whatever secrets Michael had buried here, she was about to face them, alone.
Emily stood before the sagging house, the number on the mailbox barely legible beneath layers of rust and peeling paint. Her breath fogged in the cold air as she climbed the creaking porch steps. The smell hit her first: stale beer, sour liquor, and something acrid that clung to the boards. For a moment, she almost turned back.
She knocked. At first, there was no response, only the muffled drone of a television from somewhere inside. She tried again, louder this time. A voice barked from within, low and irritable. The door cracked open to reveal a woman who looked older than her years.
Carol Harris’s hair was matted, her face blotched and tired, her eyes rimmed red. A faded bathrobe hung from her thin shoulders, stained with food and liquor. She squinted at Emily suspiciously, gripping the doorframe as if to steady herself.
«What? If you’re from the electric company, I told you I don’t have it. You can shut it off, see if I care. No TV, no fridge, doesn’t matter.» Her words slurred slightly, a bottle of cheap vodka dangling from one hand.
Emily froze, heart racing. «I’m looking for Carol Harris,» she said carefully.
«You found her.» Carol’s gaze sharpened, scanning Emily from head to toe. The robe shifted as she crossed her arms. «Who are you and what do you want?»
Emily opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, a young voice rang out from deeper inside. «Mom, leave her alone. She’s not the power company.»
A girl appeared in the hallway, a thin figure, maybe 12 years old, with dark blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. Her eyes were startlingly green, sharp and unflinching. She carried herself with a defiance that seemed far too old for her age.
«Go back to your room, Lily,» Carol snapped, her words coated with bitterness.
But Lily didn’t move. Instead, she squared her shoulders and glared at her mother. «You’re just going to try to take her money like you always do.»
«Shut your mouth.» Carol lunged toward her, swaying on her feet. The vodka bottle sloshed.
Lily darted back a step, her voice rising. «You sold my jacket for booze. You sold the new boots Michael bought me. You’d sell the phone too if I let you. That’s why he doesn’t come here anymore.» The words hung heavy in the air.
Emily felt her stomach drop. Michael’s name, spoken with such anger, such raw hurt.
Carol’s face twisted, equal parts shame and rage. «Don’t you talk about your brother like you know him. You don’t know what he’s done for this family. You don’t know what I’ve had to do.»
Lily’s hands clenched at her sides, her small chest rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths. «You’ve done nothing but drink. Daniel’s gone, and Michael hates this place because of you. And when I grow up, I’m leaving too.»
Her voice cracked, but her eyes didn’t waver. Emily stood frozen in the doorway, her mind spinning. She had come searching for answers, and here they were, ugly, raw, spilling out in front of her.
Carol turned back to Emily, suddenly remembering the stranger on her porch. Her expression hardened. «You, whoever you are, you don’t belong here. Get off my property.»
Emily’s pulse thundered in her ears. Part of her wanted to obey, to run back to the safety of her car and forget she had ever come. But then she looked at Lily, at those fierce green eyes filled with a mix of courage and desperation. The girl’s gaze lingered on her, silently pleading, though her lips said nothing.
«I’m sorry,» Emily whispered, stepping back onto the porch. «I didn’t mean to intrude.»
Carol slammed the door shut, the sound reverberating through the brittle walls. Silence followed, heavy and suffocating.
Emily stood there a moment longer, her breath visible in the fading light, her heart pounding as though it might break free of her chest. Through the thin curtains of a cracked window, she caught a glimpse of Lily retreating down the hall, her shoulders tense, her small frame hunched against the chaos that filled the house.
