Because Lionel Astor as a child looks very much likemeas a child.
I grab for the photos on my nightstand without looking, fumbling for a second and knocking one over before I reach the other—cold metal and smooth glass clutched in my hand as I pull it to me, lifting it to inspect the picture more closely than I ever have before. I’m older in this photo than Lionel in his, but even so—yes. My eyes dart back and forth between my computer screen and the picture in my hand, and it takes less than three seconds to realize that we look alike. More alike than we should if we aren’t related.
Though my hair is blonde and his is dark, we have the same eyes, I realize with a start. The same vivid blue. We have the same smile, too, even despite the pictures’ age differences.
And the truth settles in my chest, a heavy, terrible weight: Lionel Astor is my father. He has to be. There’s no way we can look so similar andnotbe related.
He assaulted my mother and got her pregnant. He most likely killed Sandra von Meller because she found out. He may even have killed my mother and Thomas Freese. This smiling, sparkling-eyed little boy grew up to become that kind of person.
I push my laptop away, slamming it closed as a sudden disgust fills me. I don’t want to look at him, not as asweetly cheerful child or a grown man or anything in between. I don’t want to think about the half of my DNA that comes from him.
“Nothing has changed,” I tell myself firmly as I push the laptop even further away, until it’s all the way by the foot of the bed. “I’m still exactly the same as I was an hour ago. I’m the same person with the same brain and the same body and the same thoughts. My parents are still the same as they always were. I just know more now.”
But how is it possible that our thoughts don’t change our bodies on a cellular level? It seems inconceivable that the workings of my blood and bones and organs aren’t affected by the knowledge I obtain. How can information that shakes your reality be limited to the thoughts that dwell in your mind?
I jump off my bed, feeling somehow wired and exhausted at the same time. Like I’ve been awake for three days but have also consumed copious amounts of caffeine. It’s not a pleasant sensation, but I don’t know how to get rid of it, so I just go with it for now. Maybe later I’ll be able to sleep. I know that if I tried at the moment, I would lie awake for hours, my thoughts rushing like big city traffic.
I check the clock, calculating. I have forty-five minutes before I need to leave for work. What can I do between now and then? How can I be productive?
I run through a list of ideas—search more for the relationship between Sandy and Lionel; hunt for details about my mother’s death; work on my book.
In the end, I abandon all of those possibilities and lie on my bed instead, motionless, staring at the ceiling and listening to music. I have to remind myself every ten minutes or so that restisproductive, and that I’m allowed to sit here and do nothing but process information.
It’s a nice thought, and I do applaud myself for thinking it.But I rest productively for a total of thirty minutes before I can’t stand it anymore. So I reach for my phone to call Aiden.
“Hey,” I say when he picks up. “Are you busy?”
“Prepping for my next class, so no.”
I snort. “You’re quite the teacher.”
From the other end comes a little bark of laughter. “I know. What do you need?”
I hesitate, debating how best to lead into my news before finally deciding to just drop it on him. “I found a picture of Lionel Astor as a kid,” I say, “and there’s no way I’m not related to him.”
“Really?” Aiden says after a second of silence. He sounds both skeptical and intrigued. “You look that much alike?”
“We really do,” I say with a sigh. “I’ll send you a side by side. Hang on.” I lower my phone from my ear and do a quick search to find the photo of Lionel as a boy. Once I send Aiden the screenshot, I take a photo of the picture on my nightstand of me as a nine-year-old, sending that one too. “Okay,” I say. “I sent them both. Look at them and tell me what you think.”
Another second of quiet from Aiden, but when he returns, I can tell he’s on the same page as I am. “Wow,” he says, his voice heavy. “Yes. You look incredibly similar.”
“It’s weird, though, isn’t it? Because I look so much like my mom now. But as a kid, I looked like my—like him.” I can’t quite bring myself to call Lionel my father. I might never be able to do that.
“So what do we think—that Lionel—” He breaks off, and when he begins speaking again a second later, his voice is lower, more hushed. “It’s looking like Lionel killed Sandy after she found out that he was your father. We know she was the one who wrote the note to you about your parents. And Lionel is the one who has the most to lose if news breaks about a decades-old assault that resultedin a child. Right?”
“I think so,” I say. “I just don’t know how Lionel and Sandy were connected. I don’t know if it would have been something she overheard, maybe? Since Lionel dropped by Tonya’s office that one day; maybe they crossed paths through her mom?”
“Maybe,” Aiden says, his voice musing. “Or at something pageant related.”
We lapse into silence, a line full of things we don’t know and aren’t saying. We’ve gotten close enough that our silences are usually comfortable, but this one isn’t; it’s expectant, waiting, wanting.
“Oh,” Aiden says suddenly, and my heart sinks at the almost desperate note in his voice—he feels it too, the weirdness.
I swallow my disappointment. “Yeah?”
“I got permission to turn the prom dinner into a hunger banquet.”
“That’s great!” My voice sounds horribly cheery, chipper and excited in a way that I don’t feel. My words should be genuine, because it really is great news, but I can’t muster the emotions.
