Page 126 of Not a Word

I caught her eye and mouthed the word Speaker.

Gage could be heard faintly until she moved the phone away from her ear, tapped the speaker icon, and held the phone out so the two of us could hear his end of the call.

“—with Holden,” Gage said.

Background noise suggested they were in a car. Holden’s Honda, most likely.

“Where?”

“We’re going to Grandma’s.”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Did Holden pick you up?”

“Yeah.”

Diana asked him to put his phone on speaker too. There was a pause, and then Gage said, “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Holden?”

“Hey, man. Hey, Diana.”

Diana said nothing. I said, “What’s Gage doing with you?”

“I needed to talk to somebody.”

I wanted to remind him he had people at Sharnwood who could provide that service, at a more professional level, but held my tongue.

“What about Alicia?” I asked. “I thought she was your go-to these days for that.”

A moment’s silence, and then, “She wasn’t available.”

“Why are you going to see your grandmother?” Diana asked Gage.

Gage said. “Uncle Holden has some things he wants to say to her. And he wasn’t nuts about this idea, but I thought maybe you should be there too.”

That might be the smartest thing Gage had said in a long time. If Holden was planning to confront our mother about what she had kept from him all these years, about how he wasn’t her biological son, that could go very wrong.

Holden said, his tone accusatory, “How long have you known, Reece?”

“A couple of hours.”

“Liar.”

“No,” I said firmly. “Mom told me today. This thing with Leah Kennard, it brought everything out into the open. She was going to tell you.”

“Yeah, well, I found out another way,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the sounds of driving. “Dad must’ve given Leah Kennard all these photos of me. She had an album. You know why? Because I’m her son! I’m her fucking son! And Mom—how can I even call her that?—kept me from knowing! Dad had been having an affair for years.”

“No,” I said. “Dad didn’t have an affair with her, I mean, not in the beginning. It was a surrogacy thing. They hired Leah. Mom couldn’t get pregnant.”

“So where the hell did you come from then?” Holden asked. “Maybe you’re adopted. Maybe you’re not related to anybody in the family.”

He said it like I deserved to be an outcast.

“I was a fluke,” I said. “Look, let’s not do this on the phone. And bring Gage home. This doesn’t involve him.”

This time, it was Gage who responded. “Uncle Holden’s been setting me straight on this family. Stuff you guys don’t even know.”

“Like?” Diana asked. She beat me to that one.