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I smirked. “Yeah, I gotta work on that.” I got to my feet and held my hand out to him. “Let’s go back in.”
Just as he was reaching for my hand, the phone rang.
“Hang on,” I said, reaching for my phone. I noted it was Doug, the PI, calling.
“Give me a second,” I said to Casey before walking a little ways away to answer the phone.
“Yeah?” I answered.
“Hey yourself,” Doug said. “What happened when you checked out the place? I never heard back from you.”
“That’s because there was nothing to report,” I replied. “The kid’s dead. The picture is probably fake, and someone is messing with me.”
“No, the picture isn’t doctored,” he retorted immediately.
I frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.” He sounded confident. “It was one of the first things I checked. I sent it to one of my guys to make sure, and the photo hasn’t been edited.”
“Then how…” My mind raced. Could it be that Toby had a twin brother? One who looked exactly like him, down to the birthmark?
Or was I wrong?
Was Toby alive?
27
CHARLOTTE
The silence was so tense that I could feel it rippling through the atmosphere around me.
The hospital waiting room was relatively quiet at this time of day, the only noises coming from some nurses bustling around and the light din of conversation.
The eerie piercing quiet was discomfiting, and I could practically feel every second that ticked away.
My mother sat three seats over from me, and for anyone else, that could be a coincidence. But not for my mother. Her back was ramrod straight, and she was staring intently at the wall right in front of her. Her stance told me everything I needed to know. She was so beyond mad at me that she simply wanted me to no longer exist. That was why she was now giving me the silent treatment.
And it was up to me to break the damned tension because I couldn’t just leave it like that. “Mom—” I started.
“Don’t talk to me.” Her voice was still trembling with her rage as she turned to me sharply. “Not after what you just did to your sister.”
Despite the guilt that stabbed my chest at the reminder, I pushed on. My mom had to listen to me because, this time, I wasn’t just fighting on my behalf. I was also thinking about the child yet to be born. I wanted the child to have a relationship with them, and I knew my dad would want that too. I would give my mom some space if I thought it would work to cool her anger, but I knew from experience that it wouldn’t.
I was also thinking about Zane and how he’d risked everything for Kelly, even after finding out his wife had cruelly betrayed him. He hadn’t told my parents what we knew. Because I knew he could have, especially with my parents calling him every name under the book on the way here. But he’d simply stayed quiet, helping my dad and taking the insults with a grace I didn’t expect from him.
Was it any wonder that I was in love with him?
And if he was willing to face that much for me, then I could only do the same for him.
“Well, we’ll have to talk at some point,” I told my mother firmly. “And it isn’t like there’s anything else to do while we’re here.”
She ignored me and continued staring straight ahead. I took a minute to take a deep breath, trying to calm the voices in my head. I always hated when my mother gave me the silent treatment. It made me feel like she hated me or something, and normally, I would give in to anything she wanted just to get rid of that feeling. My mother only reserved it as a form of punishment for when I did something atrocious because she knew how much I hated it.
But at some point, I had to acknowledge that I was a grown-up now, and it was time for me to start risking my parents’ hatred and disapproval. This was too important not to.
“Mom, there are things you don’t understand about Zane,” I started. “You realize that, right? Because the stories we came up with were based on assumptions and not reality.”
She whipped around to me with her eyes ablaze. “I can’t believe that right now, while your father is possibly on his deathbed, you’re trying to get me to sympathize with the devil.”
