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The rest of the ride was spent debating the influence of a bunch of different bands on rock and roll, and of course, they agreed on next to none of that. She couldn’t always tell if he was being serious or if it just gave him a thrill to disagree with her. Either way, she found herself longing for the conversation to go on forever. But it couldn’t. There was real life to deal with.
“That’s the driveway there,” Cleo said, pointing to a narrow driveway with a wall on either side. “I can’t really see the house too well.”
“I wonder if that’s intentional. All these high shrubs and overgrown trees. Maybe he’s hiding something in there. Bodies, maybe.”
“He’s not a serial killer.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Statistics.” She leaned forward in her seat to try to get a better look. “It’s highly unlikely.”
“But not impossible.”
“Are you rooting for Ronnie’s biological father to be a serial killer?”
“It would make things interesting. But no. I’m trying to brace myself in case he is. We have a long history in our family of making tragic things funny. It’s how we cope.”
“I get it,” she said, her eyes still focused on the mostly shrouded house. “But I really want all of this to be a non-issue. We shadow this guy, get a sample of his DNA without him knowing, confirm he’s Ronnie’s father, and move on. He offers no threat to anyone, personal or business relationships, and we disappear without him knowing a thing.”
“What if Ronnie wants to know him?”
“Well, then we’ll be more equipped to help decide if that’s proper.”
“Proper?” Nick asked, sounding shocked. “If it’s her father and she wants to know him, you think someone should stand in the way of that?”
“I think we’re all programmed to believe genetic relationships to people magically create some sort of connections. And it’s crap.”
“Well, technically, it does.”
“But you don’t have to live and die by it. Best case scenario, Clark and Mariena hooked up and conceived Ronnie. He’s been nothing to her for all these years. Why would he start to matter now?”
“People want to know where they come from. Who they look like. It’s human nature to want to feel like who you are makes sense.”
“It is easier in absolutely every logistical possibility if this guy fades into obscurity and never has anything to do with Ronnie. Why make it messy when it doesn’t have to be?”
“Life is messy. You can’t just cut out the pieces you don’t think serve you.”
“Of course you can,” Cleo argued, feeling a pang of defensiveness. “You get one life. It’s relatively short. Why invite things in that all past performance tells you will be terrible?”
“Don’t get me wrong, boundaries are good. You have to be able to keep yourself safe. But sometimes the good stuff is the chaotic stuff.”
“I don’t subscribe to that,” Cleo said, her back stiffening. “You have to look at things for what they are, and even when it’s hard, you’ve got to keep it at bay.”
“What exactly are we talking about here? I’m sensing some undertone. Is this about Ronnie? About you and me? Or about your family?”
“It’s about Ronnie,” she asserted.
“Because I understand that for you, it was easy to cut your family out. Ronnie might find—”
“Easy? Did I give you the impression that anything that’s gone on with my family was easy for me? If I did, I’ve misled you.”
“Easy was the wrong word. I didn’t mean that.”
“But you were implying that Ronnie has a heart and empathy, so therefore, if she wants some kind of relationship with this stranger, Clark, you’d completely understand. But me, the robot, walked away from my whole family without hesitation.”
“That’s not what I was saying.”
“I didn’t walk away from them.” She felt a wave of emotion sweep her mind, and the lump in her throat grew large enough to choke on. “You don’t know how it all went down.”
