Dad scratched the scruff on his chin, then took the cup, clutching it between his hands. “Camilla is your mom’s sister. Well, half-sister.”
“What?” My jaw dropped as I leaned closer.Mom was an only child, right?
“According to your mom, Nonna Rosa got pregnant in college. Her parents were furious and sent her to live with relatives in Italy. She gave the baby up for adoption and came back to marry your grandpa. Almost forty years later, Camilla contacted Nonna. I guess Camilla did a DNA test and found our family. I never met her, but your mom did, and they had a good relationship.”
“Wow. We never knew.” The information blindsided me. I had a deceased aunt in Italy I’d never met, who’d had a life full of experiences she’d never share with me, and all I had left of her was a letter.
“She… Well, her lawyer sent me a letter. She passed away in a car crash last month and left me a sizeable sum of money.”
“Really?” he said, the surprise clear in his voice. I hummed, handing him the letter and watching his eyes widen the more he read. “Her Will was made after you were born, but before your sisters. Camilla didn’t have any children.”
“I noticed that. What should I do, Dad?”
He handed the letter back and rubbed his jaw. Holding the heart pillow tightly to his chest, he coughed and then groaned with pain, closing his eyes and taking several deep breaths.
“Can I get you a pain pill?”
He nodded, and I bit my lip. Then I stood to take our plates to the kitchen and grab his medicine.
“You should talk to a lawyer to see what the next steps are.” He took the medicine with a gulp of coffee and handed me the empty cup.
I set it next to mine and sighed, sitting down and putting my head in my hands. “Do you think my divorce attorney would help?”
“I can’t answer that. But if she can’t, I’m sure she’ll have a recommendation for you.”
“Oh my god,” I said, putting my hand on my mouth as my pulse throbbed in my ears. The full significance of that letter slammed into me like a sumo wrestler after a cheeseburger. “What if that letter had come last month?”
Dad looked at me, tilting his head before he narrowed his eyes and tapped his fingers against the arm of his lounger.
“That,” he said, pointing his finger at me and furrowing his brows. “That reaction right there should tell you divorcing that imbecile is the right decision.”
“I never said I regretted leaving him, but I should be allowed to mourn the end of my marriage.”
“Mourn, sure. Sulk, no. He wasn’t good enough for you, anyway.”
“Oh, Dad.”
“Don’t ‘oh Dad’ me, Summer.” He snatched the remote from the side table and turned the volume on the television up, staring intently at the episode ofFrasier.His cold shoulder lasted fifteen seconds before he threw the remote down. “I said from the moment he proposed that it was a mistake. I shudder to think what he’d do knowing you’d come into so much money.”
“I’m sure his new girlfriend would make quick use of it.” The bitterness seeped from my words like venom from a snake as I remembered his petulant smugness when I found out he’d been screwing his secretary.
He had ten more days to answer the divorce summons, and since I wasn’t insisting we split the house—a house I was 99.9 percent sure he’ddefiledwith his new lover—my anxiety was spiked, wondering why he’d been dragging his feet.
“Trey would have no way of knowing about this, right?” I asked, voicing the source of my anxiety in the hopes it would disappear.
“I doubt it, no. If there’s an upside to my pathetic condition, it’s that you’re here with your mail forwarded. That asshat would have no way of knowing about your inheritance.”
“Thank goodness for small mercies,” I said, scrubbing my hand over my face.
“If you say so, Summer. Now, what’s on the agenda today? More staring at the neighbor?” He chuckled, switching the channel to whatever sports ESPN showed on a weekday morning.
“Wha… How… Dad, I didn’t take you for the nosy type.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the television, but I watched as his lips twitched in amusement. As long as the guy next door hadn’t noticed, I could take Dad’s ribbing about my wandering gaze.
“Perhaps after lunch. Now, I have to work on the database for a new clinical trial, and then you and I are going to take a jaunty stroll to the mailbox.”
“Ugh. I can’t stand the way I shuffle. I can barely lift my damn legs up when I walk.”
