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Lauren closed her eyes. “Mom—”
Oh crappity crap. Mack felt a wash of horror as she stared at her mother. “Wait. Are you saying Grams didn’t know? I thought you already told her!”
Her mother looked like a ghost. “When would I have told her?”
“On the phone or something! I heard you talking.”
“About travel plans. Not about—anything else. I was waiting to do it face-to-face.”
Her grandmother hadn’t known?
“But why did she bring him to the ferry then?”
This whole situation was starting to drive her insane. It was worse than the Shakespeare play she’d studied, where characters dressed up as different people.
Her grandmother hadn’t moved. Tea dripped off the cabinets. “What were you waiting to tell me? That Scott is Mack’s father? Where would you ever get an idea like that, Mack?”
Mack said nothing. From now on she was keeping her mouth shut.
First the funeral, now this.
She was never talking again.
Instead she grabbed a cloth and kept her head down as she mopped up tea and retrieved shards of china.
“Scott, I must apologize for my granddaughter.” Nancy sounded faint. “I have no idea why she’d say a thing like that. It’s ridiculous.”
Scott stirred. “Does Lauren have other kids?”
Nancy looked perplexed. “Only Mack.”
“In that case, Mack is my daughter.”
Her grandmother was clutching the back of a chair and staring at Scott. “All this time you knew and didn’t tell me? Why?”
“It was Lauren’s decision.”
“But if it’s true that Mack is your daughter, that would mean you and Lauren—”
“Don’t say it!” Mack interrupted. “We get the picture.” She saw her grandmother lift her hand to her throat and felt a flash of alarm.
What now?
She stood up slowly and approached her grandmother as she would someone was poised to jump off a ledge. “Grams—”
“But this is Laure
n we’re talking about. If it were Jenna, I could understand it because she was always a wild one, but Lauren—” Nancy shook her head, bemused. “That’s not the daughter I know!” She looked at Scott and he returned her gaze without flinching.
“Then I guess we know a different person.”
Scott, Mack thought, seemed like the only sane person in the room.
Nancy turned her head to look at Lauren. “But you married Ed, and—why would you keep something like that from me?”
Mack rolled her eyes. “Mom is like a big well of secrets—she’s like MI5 or the CIA or something.”
“Mackenzie.” Her mother’s voice sounded strangled. “Go to your room. You shouldn’t be listening to this discussion.”
