“I’m a private investigator,” he informed her, and that answered her next question of how he would have found the phone number he’d been talking to Landon on. It was listed under Kodi’s name. It had been first added to the plan for Kodi and was under her name, but later her little sister had gotten on her own, Jalen decided to use it as a house phone.
“I feel horrible,” he said. “Your sister, Landon, right? She was so excited to be talking to me, and it turns out that I’m not even her father.”
“Landon is going to be upset, but like most kids, she’s resilient. In time, I know she’ll get over it,” Jalen told him before taking a sip of her tea. “I am curious why you didn’t reach out to me instead of continuing the conversation with her, regardless of whether you thought it was Kodi.”
“Custody records are difficult to unseal. I didn’t have your information. So, when I couldn’t get it, and after doing the math, I realized that by law, I didn’t need your consent to reach out to Varah, eh Kodi, because she’s of the age that by law this decision could be made by her. I did, however, request that we meet, and she didn’t want that to happen. Or, well, Landon didn’t.”
“She has it in her head that I wouldn’t want her meeting her father, and she’s honestly sort of right,” Jalen told him. She saw no reason to lie to this man.
“Is there a particular reason?” he asked. “If I’m not overstepping.”
“I remember the type of men that my mother used to deal with. I don’t think any of them are father material.” He raised a brow at her. “No offense,” she added. “Though, I don’t remember you. Then again, there were several men that I never knew my mother was being intimate with.”
“Your mother is Valerie, right?”
“Unfortunately, but how’d you guess?” Jalen assumed that he’d been with plenty of women in his life and wondered how he remembered one from eighteen years ago.
“You favor her a lot. Hard to forget a face that pretty,” he told her, and she watched as his eyes took on a far-off look. As if he were remembering. If she didn’t know any better, she would say this man had loved her mother at one point.
“I know that second part was a compliment, but the first is an insult,” she told him.
Though Jalen knew she looked a lot like her egg donor, she in no way wanted to hear it from anyone. That was akin to slapping her in the face.
Vega studied her for a moment, and he must have decided that her mother was a sore spot for her, which she was, and moved on.
“Is there a way we could not tell Landon I’m not her father?”
“Why would we not tell her?”
“I feel awful about the situation that I’ve put her in, but also, I could be her father.”
“Say what?” she questioned, bringing the cup down that was halfway to her lips.
“Valerie and I had an unhealthy, toxic, on-and-off relationship for years. Every time we saw each other, we fell back into one another until I cut it off about nine years ago. I had a feeling she was lying to me. I wanted stability, to have a family.Which she apparently had. The family part, and she never told me.”
“You’re not a good private investigator if you didn’t know that,” Jalen said, and she had honestly meant to just think it.
Vega laughed. “I was in the Bolivian military back then, and then working in security when I came to the States. I hadn’t even thought of becoming a private investigator. I’ve actually only been one for the past six or seven years, and I told myself I’d never look for her because I was happier without the arguments.”
“Trust me, I know. My egg donor is an Olympic gold medalist at arguing and neglect,” she told him, taking a sip of her tea. “So, nine years ago, is when you cut her loose. That means you could actually be three of my sister’s father,” she informed him, though she was more so thinking aloud. “The twins just turned six, so that rules them out, but Kodi, Landon, and Mikal are seventeen, fourteen, and ten.”
Vega hummed. “How old are you, Jalen?” he questioned.
“Twenty-four.”
“Then four of you,” he countered, and Jalen almost spat her tea out.
“Come again.”
“I first met Valerie when I was nineteen, and she visited Bolivia with some friends. I’d just joined the services the year before.”
Jalen shook her head. “No, that’s…how old are you now?”
“Forty-four.”
Jalen sat still for what felt like several long minutes, taking in the information she had been given. Not only was Vega saying there was a possibility that he could be Landon’s father, but from the time he’d stopped seeing her mother, he could also be Mikal’s. Now, he was telling her that there was a possibility thathe was hers. Had her mother really continued going back to this man?
Jalen wanted to doubt it because it meant that she cared about someone, and it had not been her children, especially since she seemed to always run from the responsibility of them. She had also never seen her egg donor go back to a single man she’d cut off.
