I’m actively sweating now when I shouldn’t be.
He doesn’t know who I am.
He thinks my only secret is that I’m related to the triplets, which, clearly, I suspected he knew anyway.
“Of course I told my friends. But they’re not here. Where it could get uncomfortable for their family if their parents find out.”
That’s the story. That they don’t know if their parents know that they know that their dad is not their dad, and they don’t want me to blow it.
It’s a good story.
Even if I suspect that the triplets’ cousin who runs the coffee shop knows who I am too.
In the related-to-the-triplets sense.
Once a secret’s out, you can’t put it back. They’re playing with fire.
And that means that even if I never tell another soul, I’m still at risk of being blamed. So I have to stay squeaky-clean and stick to this story in public no matter what.
“You meet them?” Rhys asks me. “The parents?”
“No. I don’t—I will if all three of the triplets want me to, but I get the impression they’d rather I just remain an old friend of Lucky’s who washed out of nursing school. And I’m aware that not all of them are happy I’m here.”
“You really go to nursing school?”
I shake my head, reverting to the story I told Lucky. “College wasn’t for me. Any kind of school, really. After high school. Which was hard.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Des Moines.”
“Iowa?”
“Is there another one?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Had a buddy who went to high school there. How old did you say you were?”
Fuck. Here we go. “I’m twenty-nine.” Thirty-one, actually, but I’m fine fudging the truth here. The triplets haven’t asked, so right now, it doesn’t matter.
“Huh,” Rhys says. “So was he. Where’d you go to high school?”
“You know all of the high schools in Des Moines?”
“Know my buddy’s.”
“You must be very close. Where did he go?”
He stares at me.
I stare back.
I’m not often questioned by strangers, but I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of being questioned by my father.
Rhys O’Malley is gettingnothingout of me.
