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“Today at the funeral,” Kate began. “It became apparent to me that you’ve pieced together the rest of my story.”
Pepper nodded. “Is Logan really the child you were talking about on Sunday?”
Kate’s dark eyes, the same as her own, looked at her for a moment before sadly nodding. “Yes. Your brother is half Chamberlain, genetically. But,” she added, “he is nothing like that miserable family.”
“Stop it, Mama,” Pepper snapped. She was sick of her mother hating on the Chamberlains. It was bad enough she’d let her mother poison her entire outlook on the family, but now that she knew better, she didn’t want to listen to it anymore.
“You’ve got issues with Norman, obviously, but stop lumping the whole family into the same bucket. If Logan is a Chamberlain, you’re insulting him every time you say it, and he doesn’t even know it. When he finds out the truth, how will all the awful things you say about them affect him? Will he think you hate him because he’s part Chamberlain?”
Kate’s mouth dropped open. “Of course I don’t hate my son. That’s a horrible thing to say.”
“Well, that’s what you’re insinuating and you’re wrong. Grant is a good person. So is Blake. I don’t know the whole family, but it feels like you taught us to hate them our whole lives for no real reason.”
“That’s not true, I had several reasons. For one thing, I had to raise Logan to hate that family or he would get too close to the truth. What if he and Blake hung out together and someone noticed a resemblance like you did? Or worse, what if he wanted to date one of the Chamberlain girls? I couldn’t have this turn into a V. C. Andrews book.”
“And me?”
“And you had to stay away so you wouldn’t make the same mistakes I made. Whether or not those boys are as heartless as their father, they still have his sex drive. You can’t tell me that they haven’t made their rounds through this town. I thought it was better for you, healthier for you, to stay out of all that. I know they’re charming men, with those big blue eyes and strong hands. They smile and say soft words and you feel your knees give out beneath you. But they don’t mean any of it.”
“When Norman rejected me,” Kate continued, “I wasn’t just upset, I was broken. I had no self-esteem. I was convinced that I was ugly and fat and no one would ever love me. I didn’t even believe your father cared for me for a while. I thought he felt sorry for me. I didn’t want you to ever feel that way about yourself. You’re beautiful and talented and smart. I didn’t want their manipulative lies to destroy your self-confidence.”
“Speaking of Daddy and lies”—Pepper wanted to get off the current subject as quickly as possible—“what did you tell Daddy? Did you just seduce him and trick him into thinking Logan was his son?”
“No, of course not. You must really think badly of me after all this to say such a thing. Your father knows Logan isn’t his son. He’s always known.”
Pepper’s jaw dropped. Just when she thought she knew what was going on, she got hit with another bomb. Did that mean her father had lied to her, too? “What?”
“Your father had been in love with me since the eleventh grade. We’d gone out from time to time, but I didn’t let myself fall for him when I thought I could have Norman. He was away at college most of the time, but when he came home, he only had eyes for me. I want you to understand that it wasn’t some casual fling, Pepper. Norman and I wrote letters and talked on the phone while he was gone. We stole away to secluded corners of the lake with a picnic and made love in a field. I gave him my virginity because I thought he loved me. I was certain that once he graduated law school and came back to Rosewood that he would ask me to marry him. And then everything fell apart.”
“And you ran to Daddy once Norman was out of the picture for good?”
Her mother pressed her lips into a flat line of displeasure. “No. It wasn’t like that at all. Your father had always been a presence in my life. He was just there to help, to talk to. He was my best friend and that was all I saw in him because I was blinded by my love for Norman. I didn’t realize the depths of his feelings for me at first. After my fight with Norman, I ran to Vince in tears and confessed everything. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
Kate shook her head as the memories of the moment replayed in her mind. “Vince held me in his arms and said that I was strong and I would get through this. He got down on one knee, right there at the gas station where he was working, and asked me to marry him. I thought he was crazy, but he told me that he loved me and wanted to do this for me. He insisted we could be happy together and that we would raise that child, and any other children that came along, as our own. No one ever needed to know any different.”
Pepper didn’t know what to say. In the last two weeks, her life had totally turned upside down. She’d hated the Chamberlains for so long. Now the waters were muddy, her own version of reality shifting the more she learned.
“I thought Norman loved me, but I learned what real love was when I agreed to marry your father. We eloped the next day. When your brother was born, Daddy held Logan in his arms and cried just the same way he did when you were born. Logan was his son; there was never any question of it for him. In that moment, I knew I’d made the right choice. We never had much, but it didn’t matter, because your father is a good man, probably a better man than I deserved. You and Logan couldn’t have asked for a better father. And as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t lie to you because Daddy is Logan’s father. He’s the one who taught him how to ride a bike and throw a ball; how to be a man and how to treat a lady.”
Pepper understood. Her father was an amazing man and she was a daddy’s girl at heart. She had never once had doubts about Logan’s paternity because their father had never given them any reason to doubt it. “Has Norman ever acknowledged in any way that Logan is his son? I mean, he obviously knows.”
Kate nodded. “Just once. I did my best to avoid him, especially when I had Logan with me. But one day, we were all at the Fourth of July picnic at the park. You were only a few months old at the time, and Logan was a rambunctious little boy, running all over the place. I had a hard time keeping up with both of you. At one point, I lost sight of Logan and I started to panic. A few minutes later, Norman walked up, holding Logan’s hand and he was covered in mud.
“Norman passed him off to me with the closest thing to a smile I’d seen from him in years. He told me he’d found Logan in a puddle with another little boy. He said that beneath all that dirt, he was a handsome child and that it must run in the family. Then he turned and walked off.”
Pepper couldn’t believe the man’s audacity. “What did you do?”
“I was shaken by the whole encounter, so I used my muddy child as an excuse to go home and I never went back. I was just so thrown off guard and Daddy had to work, so I was there alone. It was just easier to leave.”
“And he never spoke of or hinted about Logan’s paternity ever again?”
“That was it. It certainly made for an awkward parent conference when Logan broke Blake’s nose after school. I’m responsible for that, raising him to dislike the whole family, but I never expected him to get into a fight. It could’ve been so much worse. The one thing I can say is that Norman refused to make a big deal out of it. He could’ve gotten Logan suspended, but he talked the principal out of it. He said boys were boys, and once he got Logan and Blake to agree to stay away from one another, it was over and done.”
“What a saint,” Pepper muttered.
“No one is perfect, especially me. But I did what I had to do. I think both of my children have turned out well, in spite of everything.”
It was true. They had both grown up in a loving home. They might not have had all the latest and greatest clothes and toys, but they were happy and well-adjusted. Pepper credited her parents for that. They worked very hard to keep the roof over their heads and food in their bellies. But that didn’t change the truth. Logan still needed to know that the arrogant lawyer he competed with was actually his biological father. “We did. But you’ve got to tell Logan, Mama.”
