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Eventually, the meal came to an end and Joshua insisted on picking up the tab. A nice gesture, but unnecessary. Awkwardness returned.
Joshua frowned as he slid his credit card back into his billfold. “I need to talk to you about something important,” he said. “Something I didn’t want to say over the phone. But not here.”
“More important than the fact our father has returned from the dead?”
Jake expected at least a smile for his snarky question. But Joshua was serious. “Perhaps. How ’bout we walk while we talk?”
With his mind spinning, Jake followed his brother through the restaurant and outside onto the sidewalk. The air was crisp, though not unpleasant. It was early November. A few businesses had already begun to decorate for the holidays, getting a jump on the busiest season of the year.
For fifteen Decembers, Christmas had been a painful season for Jake, presumably for the rest of his family, too. It was a reminder of all he had lost. The memories of happy times with the Lowell family of five gathered around the tree had faded beyond repair. In the golden years of Jake’s childhood, there had been spectacular gifts: ponies, guitars, racing bikes. Everything a kid could want.
And then it was all gone. Even worse, other families, innocent families, had been hurt. Jake and his siblings and his mother had been innocent, too, but no one had wanted to believe that. They were vilified, scorned. Hated.
Jake hunched his shoulders in his jacket and matched his brother’s stride as they set off down the street. He didn’t want to think about the bad times, but the memories clung to him like cobwebs. There was no peace to be had in Falling Brook.
Even so, it felt good to get some exercise. For three blocks, Joshua didn’t say a word. Jake tried to wait him out, but his patience evaporated quickly. “Why are you being so mysterious?”
Joshua halted suddenly, beneath the soft illumination of a streetlight. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“What? Am I dying?”
“This isn’t funny.”
“How am I supposed to know that? You haven’t said anything yet.”
Josh leaned against the light pole, his features betraying tension and exhaustion. For a man in love, he didn’t look all that carefree.
He shrugged. “When that article came out back in the spring, the story omitted one very big bombshell.”
“Oh?” Jake shoved his hands in his pockets, trying not to react to the gravity in his brother’s voice.
“Sophie had DNA evidence proving that I had fathered a child.”
“Hell, Joshua. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“At first, she wouldn’t reveal her source, but when she and I got closer, she finally admitted that Zane Patterson had given her the DNA analysis.”
Jake was more than shocked—he was suspicious. “Zane Patterson from prep school? He was a year behind Oliver, right? What would he have to do with any of this?”
“Zane received the report from an anonymous source. He was still angry about everything his family lost when Dad disappeared with the money. So Zane saw this as a chance to stick it to me and Black Crescent. Only Sophie decided not to include Zane’s info in the article.”
“But surely, you’ve had time to prove it’s a hoax. That’s been, what? Six months ago? It’s bogus, right?”
Joshua shook his head slowly, his jaw tight. “The report wasn’t fabricated. It was the real deal. Somewhere out there is a four-year-old girl who shares my DNA. So I discreetly began investigating any woman from my past who might have matched the timing of this pregnancy. The list wasn’t that big. I came up with nothing.”
“So it is a fake report then.” Jake was starting to feel as if he had walked into an alternate universe. Joshua wasn’t making sense.
His twin straightened, giving Jake a look that made his stomach clench and his skin crawl with an atavistic recognition of danger.
Joshua’s expression finally softened, revealing the oddest mix of sympathy and determination. “The report is legit, Jake. But I’m not the kid’s father. You are.”
Nikki Reardon glanced at her watch. In half an hour she would have to pick up her daughter, Emma, from Mom’s Day Out at a local church in their tiny town of Poplar Ridge, New Jersey. Emma loved her twice-a-week preschool and had made several sweet friends.
The classes had also given Nikki some valuable alone time. Between her job as assistant manager at the diner four days a week, caring for her daughter and dealing with her mother’s needs, it was hard not to feel stretched thin. When Nikki worked the overnight shift, her mother came and stayed.
It wasn’t the best arrangement in the world, but it sufficed for now. Sometimes Nikki felt guilty about using her mother for a babysitter so much of the time, but she also believed that being with Emma gave her mom a healthy focus in a life that was empty.
Nikki’s attention returned to her iPad, where she was reading a story that brought up too many bad memories. A few days ago she’d discovered that Vernon Lowell wasn’t dead. Today’s front-page article claimed he’d been found hiding out in the Bahamas. After a speedy extradition, Vernon now waited in federal custody for his trial.
