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I cut her off. “I don’t care. Have a good day.”
Moving my thumb, I was just about to hang up when her voice stopped me.
“Wait!” Her sharp voice filled the car.
“What?” I asked, aggravated now that my day had been ruined by her impromptu phone call.
“If you don’t care, then why have you sent him money every month for years?”
Confusion filled me. “I haven’t sent him a single cent ever. You must be mistaken.”
There was a shuffling of papers on the other end of the line. “I have a monthly payment of a thousand euros paid from the account of one Alexei Peterson dating back fifteen years… does that name sound familiar?”
No, no, no, no. My brain seemed to turn into mush as it struggled to keep up with the revelation that this random woman had dropped on me.
“I have to go…” I mumbled.
“You should really come see him he only has a couple of—”
I hung up the call.
The car was silent as the rain that had threatened to fall all afternoon finally made its appearance, tap dancing across the hood as I tried not to throw up.
We sat for a long time, I wasn’t sure how long, but Tobey’s voice is what seemed to finally break me out of my stupor. “Aunt Ciara? Is one of the grandpas sick?”
Tobey had no idea about my life in Ireland before coming to live with the Peterson twins—in his mind I only had them as my dads.
“No, love,” I finally managed, putting on my blinker again and pulling out into the street. “They’re fine.”
“Then what was that woman saying?”
“I don’t know,” I said, tamping down on the internal panic that was threatening to spew out of my mouth at any moment. “But I’m going to find out.”
“Ciara?” Aurelia’s voice called from the kitchen as Tobey and I filed into the dads’ house.
I ignored her and hurried down the hallway to where the home office was. If there was any information about what that nurse had told me, it would be there.
That was where Aurelia found me ten minutes later, tearing through the files in Alexei’s desk.
“What are you doing, Ciara?” she asked, rolling into the room in order to stop me.
“Looking for something that disproves what this crazy woman on the phone just told me,” I said without looking at her.
“Crazy woman? What crazy woman—Ciara stop.” Aurelia reached out to stop my hands, but I slapped her away.
“The one who called to tell me that there have been thousand euro payments to my father for fifteen years.”
I watched her expression, looking for the surprise that I felt when I learned that special tidbit of information… but it never came.
Aurelia’s blue eyes were bright with emotion as she pursed her lips and looked away from me.
“You knew?” I asked, feeling faint as I stumbled to my feet. “Tell me why.”
“We should wait for the dads to get home so we can talk as a fam—”
“Tell. Me.”
Aurelia nibbled nervously on her lower lip before she turned and rolled over to the wall where a framed family picture of all of us was hanging. Tugging on it she pulled it down to reveal a wall safe.
