“How long were you seeing her? Did mom know? Did Rebecca’s boys know?”
Hugh didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He just stared at the document, the weight of a decade of silence finally bowing his shoulders.
Noah felt a coldness settle in his chest as the numbers clicked into place. He had done the math. If the surviving son was now thirty, the affair hadn't just been a lapse in judgment after his mother's death. Carol would have still been alive when Hugh got Rebecca pregnant. While his mother was busy being the town's mayor and the family’s peacemaker, Hugh had been building a second life—a second family—right under her nose.
The "Sutherland Legacy" his father guarded so fiercely was nothing more than a house of cards built on a foundation of lies.
Hugh lifted his eyes. The expression behind them wasn't surprise. It was something older than surprise. Something that had been sitting behind those eyes for a very long time, waiting for the day someone put it on a table.
"I don't know what this is," he said.
"Dad."
"I don't know what this is, and I don't know where you got it."
"DNA doesn't lie. You know that. You spent thirty years in law enforcement. You know what that means."
“How did you?—?”
Noah kept his voice steady. “The blue latex glove found at the scene. The same one that went missing from evidence. The same one that found its way into Luther’s hands.”
“I mean, how did you get it?”
“I have my source.”
Hugh snorted. “Let me guess. Natalie?”
Noah considered throwing her under the bus but stopped short. He had no reason to hate her. He didn’t. In fact, he wasn’t sure how he felt. It was all a little confusing when it came to matters of the heart.
Hugh pushed the folder back across the table. A slow, deliberate movement. "You had no right to test that."
“That’s what Luther had on you, isn’t it?”
Hugh looked away.
“Your relationship with Rebecca Hale. Her children. Jacob and Liam." Noah kept his voice steady. "Your children. My half-brothers."
Something moved behind Hugh's face. Not a crack. A tremor. The kind of disturbance that happens deep underground before the surface knows anything is wrong.
"Jacob is dead," Noah said. “He was murdered at fifteen. Liam survived. He was at college when it happened. Did you know?”
“Has Parabon told anyone else?” Hugh asked.
“That’s all you have to say?”
“Who else knows?”
“Just me.”
Hugh stood up. The chair scraped against the floor. He picked up his coffee cup and carried it to the sink. He rinsed it. He set it on the drying rack. He placed both hands on the edge of the counter and stood with his back to Noah.
Noah could see the tension in his shoulders.
"I served this county all my career,” Hugh said. His voice was low and controlled. "You don't get to walk in here with a piece of paper and start rewriting people's lives."
"I'm not looking to tear anything down. I'm asking you to tell me the truth."
"The truth." Hugh cast a glance over his shoulder. "You want to talk about truth? Whose consent did you have to test that glove? Because in my experience, evidence obtained without proper authorization doesn't hold up in any room that matters."
