SWNOVELS The Charade: Chapter 42
WHEN ELYSE and I walked into Mr. Hastings’s office a few minutes later, I expected to find our mom with Mr. Hastings and Mr. Aarden. Instead, we walked in to find only her sitting on one of the brown leather chairs.
‘Hi girls.’ She stood up and moved to hug us.
I wasn’t exactly sure I wanted to hug this woman who had been ignoring my calls and texts all week, so when she opened her arms for me after hugging Elyse, I just gave her a sort of side hug.
A flash of pain crossed her face after my rejection, but she replaced it with a wary smile. She gestured to a leather sofa against the wall, saying, ‘Go ahead and take a seat.’
I sat next to my sister, set my hands in my lap, and waited expectantly for my mom to explain herself.
‘So,’ she said, drawing in a deep breath. ‘I guess we all probably know why I’m here, so I’ll just get right down to what I have to say to you two.’ Her brown eyes looked sorrowful. ‘And well, I guess it’s pretty obvious to all of us that we probably should have had this conversation a long time ago.’
You think?
I considered saying that out loud and putting up a big stink about how she was about seventeen and a half years too late for this conversation, but since she was actually finally promising answers, I kept my mouth shut.
She smoothed her hands along her black pencil skirt and sighed. ‘I’m not exactly sure how to start this, so I’ll go back to the beginning and hope it explains why I made the choices that I did concerning you two and your biological father.’
‘If you’re going to tell us about how you and Mr. Hastings dated in high school, we already figured that out,’ I told her, wanting to just cut to the chase. I didn’t need a long drawn-out explanation about how they’d been in love at one time and all that crap.
Just give me the details, woman.
‘Okay,’ my mom said, seeming a bit surprised at the mention of her previous relationship with Carter’s dad. ‘Does that mean you also know that before I started dating Joel, there was also a short time when I dated Brendon?’
‘Brendon?’ I furrowed my brow, not knowing who Brendon was or what he might have to do with this story.
‘Oh, um,’ my mom said. ‘You might know of him as Dr. Aarden? He has a son your age named Mack.’
Still frowning, I glanced at Elyse, curious if she understood where our mom was going with this, but she looked just as confused as I felt.
Mom cleared her throat. ‘Okay, so Brendon and I dated for just a short time in high school during the fall of our junior year. It was nothing big, just a few dates here and there that fizzled out before it could get too serious. He went on to date my best friend at the time, Brianna, and I got to know his best friend Joel better during our production of Romeo and Juliet .’
Elyse and I nodded, this information fitting with what Mrs. Simmons had told Elyse.
‘Anyway,’ my mom said. ‘Joel and I dated for the next year and a half and grew quite close during that time. But when we graduated and I had to move back to Israel because my student visa was about to expire, we had no choice but to try to move on.’
‘Did you keep in contact after that?’ Elyse asked, clearly more interested in the details than I was since all I was here for was the moment when she told us he was our long-lost dad.
Mom nodded, seeming encouraged that at least one of her daughters was being pleasant to her. ‘We emailed every week for the first year or so, but after we realized that a long-distance relationship wasn’t going to work out, we decided to just end things for real and tried to move on with people in our same zip code.’
‘That makes sense,’ Elyse said.
Mom continued, ‘I basically lost contact with all of my friends from the academy after that and just went on living life, helping take care of your grandfather and getting my degree. As you know, I was able to move back to New York after graduating and started working toward becoming a citizen. Then about five years after my high school graduation, I received an email announcing a class reunion. Since I thought it might be fun to catch up with everyone from the old days, I got myself a cute dress and drove the few hours to attend.’
I flexed my hands into fists, my heart rate increasing as I realized she was finally getting close to the part of the story I’d been waiting my whole life to hear.
Mom crossed one of her legs over the other as if trying to get comfortable for what she had to say next. ‘The reunion was held at one of the hotels in Eden Falls, so I checked myself into a room there. When it came time for it to start, I headed down to the conference room where it was being held and nervously waited to see if any of my friends had come. My friend Cortney was there.’ Mom met our gazes. ‘I think she actually teaches math at the academy. Her married name is Cortney Simmons.’
‘She’s my Statistics teacher,’ I said.
Mom nodded. ‘So I hung out with Cortney for a little while and asked her to give me an update on all of the latest Eden Falls gossip. She told me that both Joel and Brendon were planning to come and that they were both single, if I was interested in reviving an old fling.’ She shook her head and cleared her throat. ‘I’ll admit that the idea of rekindling something with Joel did spark some interest in me since here we were, both single and available, but when he showed up, I soon realized that nothing would be happening there because while he was friendly and courteous, he was not open to flirting with me like old times.’
‘So you and Joel—Mr. Hastings—’ I corrected myself. ‘—didn’t rekindle anything that night?’ I asked, feeling more confused than ever.
Mom shook her head. ‘I later found out that he’d been trying to get back with the woman that he’s actually married to now, and so he wasn’t interested in going down memory lane with me.’
I frowned for a moment as I tried to make sense of what she was saying. If she hadn’t hooked up with Mr. Hastings that night, then why was she telling us about her high school reunion in the first place?
Why even talk about Mr. Hastings at all?
And since I was tired of beating around the bush, I blurted out, ‘So is Mr. Hastings our dad or not?’
‘What?’ Mom put a hand to her chest. ‘No. Of course not.’ She shook her head. ‘Is that what you thought?’
‘Well, yeah,’ I said, like it should have been obvious. I gestured at the room around us. ‘We’re in his office right now and you did come here to talk to him. Isn’t that why we’re here?’
‘No, honey.’ Mom leaned forward and put her hand on my knee. ‘Joel Hastings is not your father. I don’t know what led you to believe that he was, but it’s not him.’
It wasn’t?
Mr. Hastings wasn’t my dad?
Carter’s dad wasn’t my dad?
It took a moment for the words to sink in, but when they did, I suddenly felt lightheaded.
Carter’s dad wasn’t my dad.
Which meant that Carter wasn’t my brother.
We weren’t related.
Which meant that Carter and I could actually be together.
I hadn’t fallen in love with my brother.
I needed to tell him. I needed to tell him that our worst nightmare had just been a huge misunderstanding.
I was about to stand up to go and tell him the good news when Elyse brought me back to the present by asking our mom, ‘So if Mr. Hastings isn’t our dad, then who is? Is it another guy from the reunion? Billy?’ Elyse looked at me for confirmation that she was remembering the name Dr. Aarden had given us correctly. ‘Is it a guy named Billy Monaco?’
I didn’t know what I expected my mom to do when she heard Elyse’s question, but I certainly hadn’t expected for her to laugh. Laugh so hysterically that I worried about her sanity.
‘You thought Billy Monaco was your father?’ she asked.
Elyse and I looked at each other, not seeing how this was funny.
‘Who else would it be?’ Elyse asked.
Mom sobered up and after drawing in a calming breath, she said, ‘Okay, so I…’ She smoothed her hands along her skirt again, like her palms were suddenly sweaty. ‘I’m not sure how you even know who Billy Monaco is, but let me first assure you that no, he’s definitely not your father. He was hanging around Joel during the reunion because he was trying to sell Joel some kind of business idea and thought it was his chance to do so. But well, I guess I’ll just come out and say it. Your father is Brendon.’ She cleared her throat and looked at both Elyse and me carefully. ‘Dr. Aarden is your father.’
What?
‘H-how?’ I asked, pulling my head back.
‘How?’ Mom asked, her voice rising an octave—like she thought I was expecting her to explain the birds and the bees again.
I shook my head. ‘How could Mack’s dad be our dad? Wasn’t he married to Mack’s mom at the time?’
Mom’s features darkened. ‘Brendon and Brianna were not married at the time, no.’
‘But Mack is older than us,’ I said as if it proved that his parents had been together.
‘Yes, he is.’ Mom looked down at the carpeted floor for a moment. ‘Like I said earlier, at the time of the reunion, Brendon was single. He and Brianna had been together ever since high school and were very serious, but then just a couple of weeks before the reunion, Brianna broke up with him out of the blue and told him she didn’t want to see or talk to him anymore. She basically just cut things off with him cold turkey without any warning signs or any real explanation for why she had a sudden change of heart.’
‘Did he know she was pregnant with Mack?’ Elyse asked.
‘He didn’t.’
‘Did she know she was pregnant with Mack?’ I asked.
Mom shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. He was actually born a couple of months prematurely because of some complications, so I don’t think she knew about the pregnancy yet herself.’
Interesting.
‘Anyway,’ Mom continued. ‘Brendon wasn’t exactly in the best headspace the night of the reunion after having his heart broken a couple of weeks before. And I was pretty bummed that Joel wasn’t interested in rekindling anything with me. So we both kind of commiserated together and ended up getting wrapped up in our own little bubble that night.’
‘And then you slept together?’ I asked, knowing that my mom was trying to find a delicate way to put it.
Mom nodded. ‘Yes. I had a little more to drink that night than I usually did, and so when everyone was leaving, I suggested we take things upstairs to my room and then…’ Her cheeks colored, obviously embarrassed to admit all of this to her daughters. ‘Even though Brendon and I hadn’t dated for long in high school, and we’d ended up dating each other’s best friends for far longer, we always did have great chemistry. There was always a little spark brimming under the surface between us.’
‘So you had sex and you got pregnant, and then what?’ I asked, impatient for her to get to the part where she didn’t tell us who our dad was for the last seventeen years.
‘Ava,’ Elyse chided me for my bluntness.
But I just shrugged and said, ‘I’m just trying to hurry things along.’
Mom swallowed. ‘Okay, so yes, that’s basically what happened.’ She readjusted her legs, crossing the left over the right this time. ‘Anyway, I went home the next day and didn’t hear from Brendon for several weeks. We hadn’t necessarily planned on dating since I lived in Ridgewater and he had just been drafted to the NBA. I didn’t think anything was up until about a month after the reunion when I realized that my period was late. I tried not to panic, since I was on the pill and was usually pretty good about remembering to take it. But then a few more days passed and my period still hadn’t shown up. I took a pregnancy test and found out I was expecting.
‘I was pretty scared since I was a single woman and knew how my dad would react when he found out. He’d been supplementing my income when I first moved to the U.S., so I didn’t exactly have the greatest job to provide for me and a baby when he cut me off. But I knew it had to be Brendon’s baby because he was the only person I’d slept with since my previous boyfriend six months before. I figured that while it would probably be a pretty awkward conversation to have, he’d step up to the plate and at least help me co-parent, even if we weren’t going to get married or anything like that.”
My mom paused for a moment, and it was then that I noticed a shift in her demeanor. Up to this point, she’d been able to tell her history in a very matter-of-fact manner, but now there was something different in her eyes. An anxiety or fear as she relived the memory from what I now realized must have been a pretty scary time in her life.
And I suddenly felt really bad for how I’d been so rude to her so far tonight.
She’d only been a few years older than I was now. And I knew that it couldn’t have been easy to raise Elyse and me alone. Couldn’t have been easy telling her strict father that she’d gotten pregnant without a husband, and eventually being shunned because his black and white beliefs didn’t make room for what he saw as a huge mistake—a huge sin—on her part.
Suddenly, she looked so alone in that chair across from us all by herself, and I couldn’t bear to let her tell the rest of her story while thinking I hated her.
I reached over and tugged on her hand and made room for her to sit on the couch between Elyse and me. We wrapped our arms around her as she continued to tell us a story that must have been so hard for her to live through that it had taken her our whole lives to tell us about.
‘Sorry, girls,’ she whispered as she was nestled between us, kissing us both on the heads. ‘Sorry it’s taken me so long to tell you this.’
I rubbed her arm and leaned my head against her shoulder, tears brimming in my own eyes. ‘It’s okay.’
And suddenly, it was okay. Because even though not knowing who my dad was for all these years had been painful for me, at least I’d had my mom. At least she and Elyse had always been there for me.
No one had been there for my mother.
Mom let out a shaky breath. ‘It took me a while to get up the nerve to call Brendon and tell him everything. I was probably eight weeks along when I finally dialed his number. I was so nervous that when he first answered the phone, I just skipped through all the small talk and basically blurted out that I was pregnant and it was his, and that I didn’t want to have an abortion if he was even thinking about suggesting it.
‘He was quiet for a long time after that, and I was worried he may have actually hung up on me, but then he finally said okay and that we would figure this out. He then told me that he had gotten back with Brianna and they were planning to get married since they were expecting a baby as well.’
My mom chewed on her bottom lip, then she solemnly said, ‘And then he told me that Brianna had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and it was why she’d broken up with him before, because she was freaking out about everything and not knowing how to undergo treatments while she was pregnant.’
‘I’d heard she was sick,’ I whispered, remembering what Cambrielle and Scarlett had told me about Mack’s mom and how the tumor had come back.
Mom nodded. ‘Anyway, we didn’t really make any plans for how he would be involved with my baby since his whole life had basically just exploded on him the week before. Me being pregnant would just add even more to his already heavy plate.’
‘But we were still his babies,’ Elyse said, a hint of bitterness in her tone. ‘Just as much his as Mack is.’
‘I know.’ Mom patted Elyse’s knee. ‘I know.’ She drew in another shaky breath as if gearing up for the next part of her story. ‘After our initial phone call, I didn’t get back in touch with him for a couple of weeks. I wanted to give him time to breathe and get used to the idea. When I was about ten weeks along, I went to the doctor to make sure everything was fine with the pregnancy. I’d had some spotting, so they did an ultrasound. That was when we found out I wasn’t having just one baby, but two.’
‘So now Mr. Aarden had three babies on the way. And a fiancée with a terminal illness,’ I said, thinking I had an idea of where this story may be going.
Mom nodded. ‘I waited a few days to call Brendon and tell him the exciting and terrifying news. But he didn’t answer my calls. I figured he was probably just overwhelmed with the cancer treatments for Brianna and the two babies he knew about. After another week of unanswered calls, I left him a message explaining that we were expecting twins instead of the one baby, and that I hoped he’d get back to me when he could.
‘When I didn’t hear anything for another week, I decided to give Joel a call to see if he knew what was going on and how I could get in contact with Brendon. He told me that Brendon had been checked into the hospital for a little while because he was in a really bad place and his family was worried about him being a danger to himself. I could tell that Joel was trying not to say that me having twins was responsible for any of Brendon’s troubles, but I knew that it was. And…’ Mom pressed her lips together. With a shrug, she said, ‘It was getting pretty obvious that Brendon was in no place to help me or my babies out, so after hanging up with Joel, I decided to text Brendon that I’d had a miscarriage and that he didn’t need to worry about my babies after all.
‘He got out of the hospital a week later and called me after getting my message. He told me he was sorry for my loss. He said he knew it was probably really hard on me, but I could tell he was relieved to have one less fire to deal with during that time.’
‘So you just had us on your own and cut off all contact with your past because you couldn’t let anyone find out the truth?’ Elyse guessed.
‘I didn’t know what else to do. I’d claimed you two had died before you were born.’ She held her hands out at her sides in a helpless gesture. ‘And yeah, the first few years sucked. They were so hard. But then…’ She reached her arms around our shoulders and pulled us against her. ‘Then things got easier. You two were more self-sufficient and…I guess I just loved you so much and thought you were both so perfect that I didn’t want to take a chance of telling Brendon the truth. I didn’t want to risk having him reject you all over again. I just couldn’t do it.’
‘You think he’d have turned us away if you’d told him?’ I lifted my head from her shoulder and studied her face. ‘We heard he was in here with you and Mr. Hastings earlier. Is he not going to accept us?’
I knew he was in the middle of another crisis right now. His wife’s health was as bad or worse than it had been all those years before.
But my mom said, ‘No, you don’t need to worry about that. I talked to him, and while he was pretty shocked on Monday when you walked into his house looking for answers, he does want to be a part of your life.’
We were quiet for a little while, all lost in our own thoughts. But after a minute or two, Elyse said, ‘I do have one more question for you, Mom.’ She lifted her head from our mom’s shoulder and pulled away so she could look at her better. ‘If you were so determined to cut off everyone from your past to protect your secret, why did you send Ava and me to school here? Didn’t you know it was super likely that we’d run into someone from your past who would put two and two together?’
‘I knew it was a possibility.’ Mom nodded slowly. ‘And while it scared me to death to know that my secret might come to light and there could be a lot of repercussions because of it, I knew you deserved to know the truth. I really didn’t like keeping such a huge secret from you two.’ She looked at Elyse and then at me. ‘And though I knew it would probably come out sooner than later, I had no idea how everyone would take it. Obviously, I did freak out a little when Brendon called me Monday night to tell me that my two beautiful daughters had shown up at his house to ask him questions about their dad. But I knew that it was for the best and that everyone deserved to know the truth.’
‘So he called you and not Mr. Hastings?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘He said he should have known you were his from the moment you stepped into his house because you looked so much like his sister, and the chances of me getting pregnant with twins twice was super slim. But since he’d believed my miscarriage story, he didn’t put two and two together until he found out how old you were.’
‘Well, I guess I’m glad you were daring enough to send us here for school,’ I said.
My mom nodded and pulled Elyse and me against her sides again. ‘I’m glad I did, too.’