Chapter 9 - THE SECRET ROBERT WOULD NOT SAY
Robert saw the paternity line and sat down.
Emily watched his face.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
“You knew.”
Robert looked at her.
Vanessa began crying.
Ashley stood in the doorway upstairs.
No one had heard her come down.
Emily looked from one adult to the other.
“Who is Ashley’s father?”
Vanessa whispered, “Emily…”
“No.”
Emily pointed toward Robert.
“Is he?”
Ashley’s face had gone completely still.
Robert closed his eyes.
“There was a possibility.”
Emily felt the room tilt.
“When?”
“Nineteen years ago.”
Emily was nineteen.
Ashley was eighteen.
The arithmetic hurt before the explanation did.
Robert spoke carefully.
“Your mother and I went through a terrible period after you were born. She had postpartum depression. We were exhausted. We fought constantly.”
Emily’s voice shook.
“So you slept with Vanessa.”
“Once.”
Vanessa looked away.
Robert continued.
“I ended it. Vanessa moved away. She later married Michael Monroe.”
Ashley’s legal father.
The man she had always been told abandoned them when she was six.
“Did Mom know?” Emily asked.
Robert’s silence answered.
Emily felt nauseated.
“She knew.”
“Years later.”
“How?”
“I told her.”
“When?”
“Before she got sick.”
Laura had died from ovarian cancer when Emily was twelve.
Robert rubbed his face.
“She asked me if Ashley could be mine. I said I didn’t know.”
“And you never tested?”
“No.”
Vanessa finally spoke.
“I did.”
Everyone turned toward her.
Ashley stepped forward.
“What?”
Vanessa was crying harder.
“After Robert and I reconnected. Before we married.”
Ashley stared.
“You knew?”
Vanessa nodded.
“You knew he was my father?”
“Yes.”
The sound Ashley made was not quite a sob.
She looked at Robert.
“And you?”
Robert whispered, “Vanessa told me there was a test.”
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
Ashley turned back to her mother.
“You told me Michael was my father.”
“He raised you.”
“He left us.”
“He was still legally your father.”
“That’s not what I asked!”
Vanessa reached for her.
Ashley recoiled.
Emily watched the family rearrange itself in seconds.
Ashley was not her stepsister.
She was her half-sister.
The jealousy suddenly had a deeper root.
But it still did not excuse the theft.
Emily looked at Robert.
“What was in Mom’s letter?”
“I don’t know.”
Ashley laughed through tears.
“Yes, you do.”
Robert turned.
Ashley’s face had transformed.
Not smug now.
Wounded.
“You all knew something about me except me.”
Vanessa whispered, “Ashley, listen—”
“No.”
Ashley grabbed her handbag.
Robert blocked the doorway.
“Where is Laura’s letter?”
Ashley stared at him.
Then smiled bitterly.
“You want the letter now?”
“Yes.”
“You should have wanted the truth nineteen years ago.”
She stepped around him.
Emily said, “Ashley.”
Ashley stopped.
Emily’s voice was steady.
“You framed me.”
Ashley looked back.
“You got a trust.”
“What?”
“You got a father who chose you every day. You got a dead mother everyone worships. You got half a house. And I got a lie.”
Then she left.
Five minutes later, Robert checked the driveway.
Ashley’s car was gone.
May you like
So was Vanessa’s document box from the bedroom closet.
And inside that box had been the original DNA report.
