Griffin looked between Lana and his mother. “Anyone wanna let me in?”
“You first,” Evangeline said, taking the spot on the sofa that Estelle had vacated.
Lana sat forward. “I failed to notice what was missing from her reading history—adoption, DNA, attachment theory, Walter Shepherd and his wife… But no books about pregnancy and birth—and I’ve never known a pregnant woman to leave the library without one. In itself, no big deal, right? Maybe she was happy to google the pregnancy, maybe she bought a book. But then, the photo of my parents, in the newspaper. It was the Christmas Eve before Vivien was born—like,two monthsbefore she was born. Her birthday is leap day, February 29. My mother should have been seven months pregnant, but she obviously was not. I feel silly even suggesting this, but…”
“Griffin?” Evangeline said. “You did tell Lana about the birth certificates?”
“Didn’t get a chance.”
Evangeline looked confused—she clearly didn’t know about Estelle’s visit.
“Mom got her P.I. to look up Vivien’s birth certificate,” Griffin explained to Lana. He gestured at his mother to take over.
“He discovered that the original record is sealed,” Evangeline said.
Lana frowned. “What does that mean? Also, you have your own P.I.?”
“It’s what commonly happens in an adoption. However, he’s nothing if not resourceful.” Evangeline unlocked the laptop and passed it to Lana. “He managed to get a look at it—usually you need a court order for this in California, but he is connected in ways I don’t even want to ask about—and he managed to take a photo. The father’s name is missing. The mother’s name is…”
“Oh my god,” Lana said, reading. “That’s my aunt Brenda—my dad’s sister. She died, years ago.Shewas Vivien’s mother? So it’s true—Vivien’s not my sister? She was adopted?”
Evangeline shot Griffin a loaded look. He shifted closer to Lana, his thigh touching hers. “Mom’s P.I. also looked up your birth certificate.”
“You looked upmybirth certificate? Why?”
Griffin’s mouth flatlined. “Actually, she started with yours.” He met his mother’s eye, and a look passed between them that Lana couldn’t interpret. “My parents have a thing for background checks—I’m sorry. Usually, they get people to sign a form first.” He tapped the keyboard, bringing up a photo of another birth certificate. “Again, the original was sealed.”
Lana double-blinked. She was looking at her full name, her date of birth. But in the space for her mother’s name was … Brenda Fleming. No father. The same as Vivien’s. “No way. But I have my birth certificate—it has my parents’ names on it.”
“An amended birth certificate looks just like an original, apparently,” Evangeline said. “Looking at it, you’d never know the person was adopted.”
Evangeline drew a folded piece of paper from her pocket and laid it on the coffee table—a grid of names, roughly scribbled in pencil, with lines and arrows, and a lot of crossing out. A family tree. “This is very rough. But those names on the DNA site? Many of them are from branches of prominent old Hollywood families. I put together the names I knew, plus the info on the site, and called some friends—discreetly—and did some extrapolation, and I managed to trace back the relationships to a common source. A missing link, if you will.” She tapped a name, written in pencil and circled several times.
Lana didn’t have to read it. She already knew. “Walter Shepherd,” she said. “Vivien’s father.Myfather.”
Chapter 19
Lana
Lana’s world dissolved. Everything she thought she was, she wasn’t. Griffin’s arm around her shoulders could be the only thing stopping her floating away.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Evangeline said, and quietly left.
Lana pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “I don’t think I’m capable of processing this. I’d figured out that my mom couldn’t have been Vivi’s birth mom, but I didn’t think for a second that I… And then Estelle showed up and… But it checks out. The first thing Walter said to me was, ‘It’s like I’m looking straight at her.’ He was talking aboutBrenda,not Vivien. He was seeing a ghost.”
“What do you know of your aunt—your…”
“Mymother? Only that she died in a car crash. My dad—my… God, my adoptive dad—my uncle—was close to her. Was this why my parents went off-grid—they suddenly inherited two children they were passing off as their own?”
“How do you keep that a secret?”
“They made a clean break and moved where nobody knew them. They were traveling the world before that, working for NGOs in developing countries—that’s how they met.” Lana looked at the birth certificate again. “They didn’t need to changeour surnames, and we look so much like Dad… I mean we look like… Oh, man, this is gonna mess me up, isn’t it? Here’s me having you on about your existential identity crisis.”
“If you’re Walter Shepherd’s daughter, that’s huge.”
“So—what?—he had two secret children with my aunt? That’s not a quick fling—he must have been living a double life.”
“But when you spoke to him…”
