Storm raised her eyebrows as it clicked, and my face changed. “What makes it worse is that, from the date of this other letter I found. My mother would have been pregnant with me at the time.”
Crap. Nowthatwas low.
We all sat in silence for a moment, attempting to digest what Storm had revealed. Then I understood why she was so upset. That was like the ultimate betrayal. Getting your wife knocked up and then going elsewhere for sex was surelyunforgivable. And then I realized, Storm had unearthed something she shouldneverhave known, and I felt bad for trying to belittle her situation.
“Are you going to tell your mother?” Mols asked.
“Hell no, it would crush her,” Storm huffed, wringing her hands together. I watched as Molly dropped her gaze back to the love letters. Her phone kept going off, and it was beginning to piss me off. As she glanced at my expression, she retrieved it from her pocket and put it on silent without reading the messages.
“Sorry. Hudson gets bored quickly.”
“I’m not surprised. They’re watching Jaws. We’ve all seen it around fifty times.” Releasing a breath of frustration, I focused on the PI letter. From the postmark, it had been mailed earlier that week.
“So, where does this fit in with everything?”
“That’s her now. The woman from my father’s past.”
“How do you know? You only haveYour Angelto go on, and that isn’t written here.”
“Well, of course not. But Iknowit’s her. Otherwise, why would that PI letter be inthisbox?” Storm had a point, but it was still only a hunch. If it was the same woman, why was he having her investigated now?
Shuffling to the medical section at the back of the report, I read the wordinggenetic health screening.
“How did you even find this box?”
Storm pinched the bridge of her nose and was silent for a moment before lowering her hand and confessing. “Daddy’s been so stressed recently and was having a clear-out. A few of the boxes next to this one had old stuff he’d kept of mine in them. Elementary reports and pictures I had drawn when I was a kid. My father’s assistant, Noah, was in the process of moving the boxes to the trash. I got nostalgic and started going through them when I opened this one and found the letter on top.”
It wasn’t hard to put two and two together at that stage.
“So, your father recently hired a private investigator to watch a woman he was banging around twenty years ago?”
“I think so.”
“But why?”
Molly’s Nancy Drew side kicked in as she gasped. “Maybe she’s threatened to blackmail him or something, now that he’s mayor?”
It sounded a little far-fetched.
I continued to read the report I held, my eyes falling on the DNA profiling and blood groups. “So why the medical data? Do you think she’s sick? Maybe he’s offered to pay her medical bills if she keeps quiet?” Even as I said those words, I realized how stupid I sounded.
Storm, being the most intelligent person there, must have figured it out, and her next words confirmed that. “If you flick to the back page, the medical stuff is from a hospital in Massachusetts, and they’re not hers. They’re for an adolescentmale.”
As I continued to digest the details on the pages, I added, “It’s for two men, actually.” My eyes skirted across the boy’s name, Master A. Leibrock, and landed on her father’s name, clear in black and white. And then the penny dropped for me.
Tension rested in the air between us as Molly sagged back in her seat, wearing a confused expression.
Stormed sniffed and said, “I can see from your expression that you’re where I am now, Harper.”
Molly sat back up. “What?”
I handed her the report and explained, “There’s a DNA profile attached to the back, and it belongs to Mr. Summers.”
Keeping hold of the PI cover letter, my eyes scanned the page, catching the address of the family who had been investigated. Maple Avenue. Why did that sound familiar?
“Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions,” I suggested.
“Come on, Harper. It’s clear as day.”
