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It had to be a reporter. Who else?
“This is…” He cleared his throat. “Well, this is your father.”
I dropped the receiver to the floor like it was on fire.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Sara, listen to me.” Dale reached across the table and took my hand. It was clammy and trembling but I didn’t pull it away.
“I’m listening.” I was listening. But my eyes were on the door. Every time the little bell over it rang I jumped.
“I know this man says he’s your father,” Dale began.
I rolled my eyes. This again? When the man on the other end of the phone said he was my father, the image of the stepbeast, the only father I’d ever known, rose up to tower over me. My father, my real, biological father, was dead. That’s what my mother always told me.
“Dale, come on.” I met his eyes briefly over the scones we’d ordered. I loved Cuppa Joe’s hot chocolate. Dale was drinking coffee—black. “He passed every test I could think of. He knew the hospital I was born in. He knew my mother’s maiden name. He knew her middle name. He knew my middle name.”
“All things he could have looked up in public record,” he reminded me. I glared at him. “Look, I’m not trying to be the bad guy here. Really, I’m not. But this guy shows up the day after your picture is in the paper connected to me? Everyone knows rock stars are millionaires, right?”
I regretted telling him about my conversation with Josh. But I always told him everything.
“How did he know about my birthmark?” I had tears in my eyes imagining my father—my real father—holding me as a tiny baby, kissing the dark question-mark on my right shoulder. “Everything he says rings true. He’s from Florida. That’s where my mother’s family is. He knew everything about her I could think of to ask, at least from when she was younger. He even knew my grandmother’s middle name. Even I had to look that up!”
“Well, don’t you think that’s a little strange?”
“Now he knows too much instead of not enough?” I had been holding back tears but now they slipped down my face.
“Sweetheart.” Dale wiped my tears. “I love you. I’m here for you, no matter what. It’s me. Dale.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I just…”He sighed. “I should probably just shut up.”
“No, say it.”
“It just seems like a pretty weird coincidence that he happened to be in New York, saw your name in the paper, wondered if you might be the same Sara Wilson and decided to try to find you. And how did he find you, considering we had a whole city full of reporters who were trying and they failed?”
“You know, I told you.” I sighed. “He said he tried finding me but I wasn’t listed. So he looked up you—and found out John taught at Rutgers. He said after that it was easy because so much of John’s information was public. He called up USC in California where he worked before you moved here. He talked to some professor… Lane Murdoch?”
“Yeah he and my dad were friends.”
“So when he called Rutgers looking for John, he found out about faculty housing and knew that was a dead end. He tried calling the university and asking for John. He got John’s assistant, Carol.”
“And then?”
“Then he pretended to be this Lane Murdoch fellow, said he would be in NY on a layover for just a few hours and wanted to see him. Could he possibly have his home number?”
“And she gave it to him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know!” I exclaimed. “He said… he said he charmed her into it.”
“Exactly,” Dale replied. “And what did he say when you first talked to him on the phone? Who did he tell your dad he was?”
I hesitated. “Dave… from the print shop.”
