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“Oh, I see. I hope I’m not stirring the pot.”
“Not at all. I asked you. But don’t start the story yet. Jack’s daughters are anxious to meet you, and I know they will want to hear your stories. Come in and have a seat.”
“Oh, how lovely!” The women exclaimed en masse how beautiful the table was.
The tiered sandwich platter invited nibbling, and Beverly had to restrain herself from grabbing a sandwich. To maintain her weight, she was in a constant state of semistarvation. Unlike Pam, she loathed the gym and rarely even walked for exercise. It was just easier to fast her way to thinness.
Chaos at the back glass doors, which appeared to lead to an outdoor room, got their attention next as two beautiful women and a man, obviously related, came into the house.
“Here’s the rest of my family,” Pam said, careful not to introduce Ryan as a brother/cousin. “Everyone, have a seat and let’s eat. Beverly is going to tell us about meeting Jack.”
A wave of awe passed over the group hearing that she’d met their father.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Lisa said.
“It was all good,” Beverly said, biting into a scrumptious sandwich. It took all of her self-control not to moan as she chewed. “At least the meeting part was. I could tell he felt betrayed though, that his relationship with the man he’d thought was his father was not good. He didn’t go into detail, but it was clear. But he wanted to find out what I knew about our birth father, who had died shortly after my birth and before Jack’s.
“My mother claimed that Bertram Albert was a wonderful man. We know he was a philanderer.”
Lisa and Pam looked at each other and flared their nostrils.
“How did your meeting with Jack come about?” Pam asked, trying to get her back on track.
“After he got my letter, he contacted me right away. We met at the café in Smithtown. I haven’t been in the city in years. He never mentioned that he lived in Babylon! We’re fifteen minutes away from each other.
“We got together another time, and then suddenly I didn’t hear from him, and my husband found the obit.”
Then she started to cry, her daughters comforting her. Pam and the others waited patiently for her to compose herself.
“That was it until the girls here started doing their DNA and all that malarky about the baby skeleton hit the news.”
Holding their breath, no one said a word while she yammered on
“It got our attention. We secretly hope we’ll be called about one of our relatives. They are all a bunch of reprobates.”
“Mom, that’s not very nice,” Rene said, laughing.
“It’s true. It turns out that my mother, the woman who had the affair with Bertram Albert, was, how do you say politely, a woman of ill repute. By the way, is Jack’s mother still alive?”
“Oh yes. She’s alive and active. If you want to meet her, we’ll have to arrange something for when she’s in town again.”
“Oh, is she still in Manhattan? When I met Jack, he told me about the mansion.”
“She’s in Rehoboth Beach now,” Pam said.
“I wonder how she knew Bertram,” Beverly said.
No one said a word. They’d have to ask Bernice, and that might open a can of worms because what if Bernice didn’t know Jack knew about his father? Was it fair to expect an elderly woman to open up to a stranger? And what if it upset her? Pam was all about keeping the peace, about protecting her loved ones. It would be cruel to allow the Johnsons to put her through the third degree. And Ryan knew the truth. Jack had had a horrible confrontation with Bernice after he discovered his father wasn’t Harold Smith. They never spoke again unless it was absolutely necessary. Pam was just about ready to say something when Ryan spoke up.
“I have to disagree about questioning Bernice. She’s in her eighties. Is it really fair to probe into her private life to satisfy your curiosity?”
He worded it like he was talking to Pam, but she knew what he meant and played along with it.
“You have a good point. It’s not fair. Jack might have kept his knowledge a secret from her, and it might be detrimental to start questioning her.”
“I bet she knew,” Beverly said, ignoring Ryan. “Something told me Jack was steaming about it although he didn’t come out and say anything. He was more about getting to know us, I think. I was sorry my mother had died by the time I met him.”
“But how did it come about that you found out about Jack? I know that it’s easy to find the children a woman gives birth to, but this time it was the father.”
