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Sorry? Angie didn’t know this woman at all. “Daddy never knew? Never suspected?”
“If he did, I didn’t know it.”
“Mia, I demand an explanation right now.”
Uncle Jefferson. She’d nearly forgotten he was in the room.
“Yes, I owe you both that much.” She sat down on the bed and took Angie’s hand in her own. She rubbed it lightly. “I found out I was pregnant after you were arrested. With all your trouble with the law, I assumed you were guilty.”
“After everything we shared, how could you know me so little? Do you really think I could kill someone?”
“No.” Maria shook her head. “But I knew you’d go to prison for a long time anyway. I figured you’d had a hand in it. After all, it wasn’t the first time you’d been at the scene of a crime. There was no way around it. You had a record. I needed to make sure my baby—our baby—had a chance at the life and the name she deserved. So I seduced Wayne, and a month later, told him the child was his.”
Angie’s head spun. She widened her eyes, as if toothpicks held her lids up, to keep them open.
Jefferson plunked down onto the other bed. “Oh, Mia.”
“I’m not proud of it. But he adored your daughter, Jeff. She was his favorite. She wanted for nothing while he was alive.”
“Oh, Mia, you don’t understand.” His head sank to his hands.
Maria gripped Angie’s hand tighter.
“What? What are you not telling me?”
“I only pleaded guilty because I thought you’d betrayed me. I’d been ready to fight. To fight for us. To do anything to get out of the mess I’d gotten myself into and go straight for you. I was going to get a job, make my own way, prove to my grandfather that I wasn’t the fuck up he thought I was. I was ready to prove it to you. For us. Mia…why?”
Angie gulped back bile. Was this really happening? Images of the words swirled around her head in black-and-gray letters.
“You were the love of my life,” Jeff said, his voice wavering. “All this time, I had a child. A child I never knew.”
Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.
Had she said the words out loud? She wasn’t sure.
“Mama?”
“Yes, Angie?”
“Harper and Catie?”
“They’re your father’s. Er…Wayne’s. I never strayed during our marriage. Not once.”
“And I—”
“Jeff is your biological father. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way. Or to find out at all—”
“You planned to keep this child from me forever?” Jeff’s voice had deepened, tinted with more anger, almost rage. “Didn’t you think I had the right to know I had a child?”
“And didn’t you think I had the right to know who my real father was?” Angie demanded. She tried to sit up, but her vision blurred.
Maria’s weight sank down farther into the bed, as though she wanted to melt into it, to melt away and never return. “Angie, you had a real father. A real father who adored you.”
She tried opening her eyes again. Bad idea. “Would he have adored me so much if he’d known the truth?”
“I don’t know. But what does it matter?”
“What does it matter? Are you serious?”
