Chapter 20
Lana
The front door opened and Lana’s dad stepped out. Not her dad—heruncle. “Lana?” He barely took in Griffin’s presence. “Oh god, Vivien?” His voice shook.
Lana realized what it must look like—she’d come to break bad news in person. She slipped away from Griffin. “No news there, Dad—either way. But there is something I need to talk to you about. Mom around?”
“Yeah, she’s inside. I was just going to grab some herbs.” He looked at Griffin, his forehead creasing.
“This is my friend, Griffin,” Lana said. “He’s helping me look for Vivien. Griffin, this is my … dad, Todd.”
The men shook hands, and her dad hugged her. She felt like she was about to betray him. Though, to be fair, he was the one who’d lied to her—her entire life.
“Can I help with the herbs?” Griffin said.
“It can wait. Come in, come in.”
The introductions were repeated inside with her mom—nother mom. Not a blood relative at all. Lana felt detached, as if she were the visitor, seeing her parents and their home as Griffin saw them. The floral wallpaper that hadn’t changed all her life, broken up by her parents’ paintings, the green sofa andmatching recliners clustered around the wood stove, the wood-paneled kitchen cupboards, the cork-tile floor and popcorn ceiling. Her parents didn’t believe in trends. Todd Fleming with his polo and jeans, Dawn Fleming, also in jeans, with a knitted sweater—all clothes homemade or bought from thrift stores. No fast fashion, and definitely no Chanel. Something fragrant was cooking on the stove, and there was the usual yeasty scent of breadmaking.
Lana and Griffin hadn’t had a proper date, and already they’d slept together and brought each other home to meet the parents.
Her mom was making a big effort not to stare at Griffin. He’d pulled on a blue cotton sweater, and Lana could still feel its softness against her cheek from when he’d hugged her. Forget tuxedos or loincloths—put a sweater on a guy and she was his.
Once they were shepherded to the sofa and armchairs, with coffee and chai laid out on side tables cut from a tree trunk, Lana came right out with it. “Mom, Dad, I saw my original birth certificate. Vivien’s too.”
Her parents exchanged grim glances. It was a moment they’d been expecting.
“How much do you know?” her dad said.
“Not a lot. I only found out last night.” She gave them as concise a rundown as she could, including an update on the search for Vivien. When she stumbled, Griffin filled the gaps. She left out the dangerous bits and the part about him being a Hollywood megastar. “So it’s true? Walter Shepherd’s our father—our birth father?”
Her mom deferred to her dad, as if it were his story to tell.
“We’re subject to a strict NDA,” he began. “But since you found out through other means, yes, he is.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Brenda was Walter’s mistress, if you want to put it in those terms. When she died in the crash, Dawn and I flew home and adopted you.”
Lana swallowed. She got the feeling he’d been rehearsing that for some years.
“I grew up in foster care,” Dawn explained for Griffin’s benefit, before turning to Lana, “and I would have done anything to keep you girls out of that system, so there was never any question about saying yes. We just had to make it work.”
Todd leaned forward, clasping his hands. “It was never our choice to keep it secret, but it was part of the deal for getting custody and enough money to settle up here and cover your education.”
“Walter Shepherd paid you to take us away?”
“Oh, he offered us more—obscene money—but he was just buying off his guilt. It was painful enough to accept the money we did, but we wanted you girls to be provided for, and we couldn’t cover it ourselves. We had to make hard decisions, real quick. My family deserted Brenda when she had Vivien—they’re ultra-conservative, and a child out of wedlock to a married man…? The deal with Walter was that we were to move far enough away that your paths wouldn’t cross, and bring you up as our own. His choice, not ours, but honestly, we were happy to have nothing to do with him. I always figured his ‘arrangement’ with Brenda would end badly—just not like that.” He gestured at the room. “What better place to retreat to than here?”
Lana cradled her chai, which she had no desire to drink. “You always said you came here for the simpler way of life, to unplug. But it was to hide us?”
“It was both. It suited us and the situation. We had deep concerns about the impact of screens and twenty-four-hour news and constant connectivity. And this was thirty years ago—it’s so much worse now. I knew from my travels that my creativity fired whenever we switched all that off. We spent years experiencing other ways to live than suburban consumer culture. Although,” he added wryly, “even with all the TV in theworld, I suspect you’d still have grown up with your nose in a book. Vivi, not so much.” He sat back, the recliner squeaking. “And slowing things gave us more time for you girls, and each other, and ourselves. Plus, you and Vivi … you needed to heal. You needed to learn to trust again.”
Again, it seemed like something he’d long ago rationalized and composed. Dawn was silently crying. How hard must this be for her—the moment the truth came out that she wasn’t anyone’s biological mother? Lana shuffled closer along the sofa.
Dawn smiled sadly at her. “I never expected to have to keep the secret this long. As you and Vivien grew up, Todd and I had a lot of very…” She exchanged a look with her husband and chose her words carefully. “…intensediscussions about it, and we sought legal advice about this NDA.”
“How old were we when you adopted us?”
“You were a baby, Vivien was two. Gosh, that first year… You would cry for your mama, of course you would, but you settled fairly quickly. Poor little Vivi, though.” Dawn blinked hard. “She kept asking for ‘Mommy’—she wasn’t old enough to comprehend death. We read books on the subject, consulted a therapist. He said that in time, Vivi might forget if we didn’t remind her. Then she started calling us Mommy and Daddy, about the same time you began to speak. And one day, we realized she hadn’t mentioned her other mommy in some time. I honestly felt awful. I hated that we were living a lie and that it was like Brenda no longer existed, when you two had been everything to her. But it seemed to be for the best.”
Griffin sniffed. He was sitting quietly in the other recliner, a little removed, but Lana felt his support as a palpable thing.
