doctored results. I knew you would react badly to this, which is why I didn’t tell you right away.”
“How long have you known?”
Lisette sighed. “The results only came back about a week ago.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
Lisette threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know, okay, Josie? Soon. But not while you’re working a big case or while you’re consumed with the flooding going on in this town. I was going to tell you. How could I not?”
Josie felt her legs weaken. She sat back on the edge of the bed. Lisette joined her. Neither of them spoke for a long moment. When Josie was sure she could speak without letting a sob escape, she said, “How is this possible?”
Lisette smoothed the fabric of her slacks over her thighs, looking at the floor. “I don’t know if you remember me telling you this a few years ago but your dad—my Eli—he dated Lila Jensen for a long time before you came along.”
“I remember,” Josie whispered. “You didn’t like her. You were happy when they broke up.”
Lisette nodded.
If only that had been the end of it. If only Lila had stayed away forever. Eli would still be alive. Lisette would be whole. Josie would never have met either Eli or Lisette, but they would have had good lives. Lisette would never have had to bear the horrific burden of losing a child. But instead, Lila had gone to live somewhere a couple of hours away from Denton. She’d gotten a job with a housecleaning service and gone to work at the home of Shannon and Christian Payne. They were both successful in their careers—she as a chemist for Quarmark Pharmaceutical and he as the head of marketing for the same company. They’d just had twin daughters. When Shannon realized that Lila had been stealing her jewelry, she reported it to Lila’s boss, leading to Lila’s firing. At that point, in her early twenties, Lila was already mentally ill as well as sociopathic, with likely more than one personality disorder. In retaliation, she’d burned the Paynes’ house to the ground and as the fire raged, she stole one of the three-week-old twin girls, leaving the other to be rescued.
That baby had been Josie.
The Paynes believed their daughter perished in the fire, but in reality, Lila had taken her and returned to Denton after a year away from Eli Matson. She’d brought infant Josie to Eli and told him that she was his daughter—that Lila had stayed away for the entire pregnancy and beyond, but that she couldn’t keep his child a secret from him any longer. Eli hadn’t had any reason to doubt her. There were no DNA tests back then, no way to prove paternity, not that it had ever crossed Eli’s mind. He’d taken Josie in as his own and loved her more than anything in the entire world until his death.
Josie said, “You also told me that Dad was seeing someone else after Lila left. It was her, wasn’t it?”
Lisette nodded. “Sawyer’s mother. Her name was Deirdre Hayes. They’d only gone on a few dates, but they really liked one another. When Lila came back to Denton with you and told Eli that you were his daughter, he broke things off with her. He wanted you. He was so happy to be your father. He wanted to try to make it work with Lila. Give you a real family. He didn’t know then that that would be impossible.”
“Sawyer’s mother—why didn’t she ever tell anyone? Did she even tell Dad?”
“His mother passed on last year. Cancer. Before she died, she told him the truth about his father. All his life he believed his dad was dead—which was true, I suppose. You two are about the same age, so Eli died when he was about six as well. She wanted him to know the truth before she died. She went to tell Eli that she was pregnant and instead, she met Lila.”
“Lila threatened her,” Josie said. “Because Lila didn’t let anyone get in the way of what she wanted, and back then, she wanted Eli.”
“Yes,” Lisette breathed. “Evidently it was enough for her to never contact Eli again. Then he was gone.”
“And she wasn’t about to mess with Lila,” Josie said.
“Yes.”
Josie put her face in her hands. “My God.”
After a few moments, Lisette slid her arm around Josie’s shoulder and pulled her close. “Josie, this changes nothing between us, do you understand? You’re still my granddaughter. You always