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She looks into my eyes. “You say that now, but you don’t know what I’ve done.”
I can’t think of anything she could do that would make me hate her, but she seems convinced and bites on her bottom lip, fear shining in her eyes.
“We’re g—gonna have to tell her, Julianne,” Dad says, sounding resigned.
I think I’ve gone beyond the point of confusion now. So much has happened that I don’t understand, my brain has given up trying to process it.
“Shall we sit down?” Mom suggests, nodding to the living room, and although I think she’s buying time, I nod my head. Dad will probably be better off in a chair… and looking at her, I think Mom will, too.
I grab Dad’s stick, handing it to him, then lead the way, waiting for them to follow, and I take a seat on the couch, letting them get settled in their chairs, before I turn to look at Mom. She’s playing with the hem of her blouse, rubbing it between her thumbs and fingers, and it’s impossible not to notice her hands are still shaking.
Whatever this is, it’s bad.
“This is all my fault,” she says.
“What is?”
“Everything that’s happened to you. I should have told you…”
“Told me what?”
“Who your real father is.”
Okay… I want to wake up now. I’ve had enough of this nightmare. I clench my right fist, letting my nails dig into my hand until I feel it hurt, and I know I’m not dreaming.
“M—My real father?” I look at my dad, or at least at the man I’ve always called ‘Dad’.
“I’m not your natural father,” he says in a perfectly clear voice, not stammering at all.
“Then who is?”
“Ken Bevan.”
“W—What?”
“Ken Bevan is your father,” Mom says, like it needs to be said twice.
“But how? I mean… the man I met today was in his sixties.”
She nods her head. “He was sixteen years older than me.”
“Sixteen years?”
“Yeah. I met him when I was twenty-five.” So he’d have been forty-one…
“How did you meet?” I ask.
“I’d just started working for a big law firm in Boston, and he came to us on behalf of his company to ask for advice.”
“His company?”
She glances at my dad and then turns to me again, sucking in a breath. “Ken Bevan was the CFO at Theodore Bennett Associates.”
“Oh, my God…”
She nods her head. “Ken came to see my boss, looking for someone to investigate a possible fraud inside TBA. I was quite junior at the time, but we met and he seemed to take a liking to me, and insisted that I should be hired to work on the case. I wasn’t complaining. Professionally, it was quite an honor for someone of my age to be given so much responsibility. Personally, he wasted no time in charming me into thinking I was in love with him, and we started dating.”
“Did you find anything wrong? Did you discover who was committing the fraud?”
