Page 103 of Not a Word

Holden seemed to be shrinking into himself. He dropped slowly into a chair, shoulders hunched, head down, the phone still in his hand, McCabe watching the whole time.

“Holden?”

“So Dad was seeing her for years?” he asked. “Never broke it off? She had a baby—she had me—and you faked birth records or something?”

“It’s not like that. I’ll explain it all. I will. I promise. You sound . . . you sound far away. Holden? Are you on speaker?”

Holden exchanged glances with McCabe.

“Holden! Is someone there with you?”

“I have to go,” he said, ending the call, letting the phone slip from his hand to the floor. He put his head in his hands and began to weep.

Thirty-Five

Reece

Diana followed Gage into the house, but I stayed on the front step a moment, gathering my thoughts, wondering what to do next. What I really wanted to do was tell Diana and Gage to each pack a bag, load up the car, and just drive. Head to Montreal or keep on going to the east coast. Diana had family in Halifax. I wanted to put some distance between ourselves and Yorkton Hill and all that had happened here.

In short, I wanted to run away.

I didn’t get to consider the idea for long. My phone rang.

Mom.

I picked up. “Yeah.”

“You told him,” she said accusingly.

“Told who what?”

“Holden. He knows. You were going to let me tell him. How could you do that?”

“Mom, I swear, I didn’t—”

“He had a photo album. Pictures of him, but calling him Tom. Where’d you find that? Why would you give him—”

“Mom!” I shouted. “I didn’t tell him.”

A moment’s quiet. Then Mom said, “That policewoman. It had to be her. Oh god. That means she knows too.”

I thought back to something she’d said seconds earlier. “Who’s Tom?”

“Tom is Holden.”

Christ, I thought, feeling almost lightheaded. What new bombshell was she about to drop?

Mom explained. “Back when we got Leah to be our surrogate, she said if Holden had been her child, she’d have named him Thomas. She wanted us to name him Thomas, but the name had no special meaning to your father or me. I think it was Leah’s dad’s name, but Holden was named after your father’s favorite uncle.”

“How could he have found some photo album?”

Mom was thinking. “He had the phone on speaker. She must have been there. She must have found the album in Leah’s house.”

“McCabe?”

“God, what must he have told her?”

I didn’t know that Holden had anything of note to tell McCabe. It struck me Holden was the one who’d been in the dark, who’d been deprived of information, so what could he possibly tell McCabe that the rest of us, or at least my mother, didn’t already know?