a coach in a team dugout, wrists balanced on his knees, fingertips touching, a scowl on his face.
“Is everything all right?” Lily asked. Dumb question. She already knew it wasn’t. He was probably dumping her, that was it. Dumping her for twin tire models or a Hooters waitress. She reeled in the loopy thought and waited.
“Cameron told me something that I think you should hear.”
Lily’s mind ran through the possibilities. There were so many of them. “And?”
“He said…I mean, he’s known for a while now that Derek isn’t—wasn’t—Ashley’s father.”
It was the last thing she’d expected, and the sound that came out of her expressed wordless disbelief. She felt a terrible shift in the world. Here was the man she loved, telling her something that could change everything. No, she thought. No.
“Did you know anything about this?” Sean asked her, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her in a way that was not altogether pleasant. In fact, it was singularly discomfiting to be regarded with suspicion and mistrust.
“Anything besides the fact that it’s patently untrue? No.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around the room, his gaze lighting on the photo of her and Crystal laughing, their arms around each other. “I was surprised, too,” he admitted. “Regardless of my opinion of Crystal, I never dreamed Ashley belonged to anyone but Derek. Neither did he. I know that for a fact.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Lily said. “She is Derek’s child. I have no idea why Cameron would say she’s not. He must be mistaken, must have misunderstood something—”
“Cameron’s not stupid. He didn’t make a mistake and he wouldn’t dream this up out of thin air.”
“It’s simply not true,” she said. “He’s not a liar, but he’s laboring under some misinformation—”
“I didn’t come here to debate this with you, damn it.”
“Then why did you come here?” Her temper rose right along with his. That was the crazy thing about love. It could turn in the space of a heartbeat. She should have respected her instinct not to trust it.
“To tell you something important about a family you supposedly care about,” he said.
“Supposedly? Oh, you mean the family I spent the summer with, in an RV with a dog? Gee, whatever gave you the idea that I care?”
He set his jaw, took a breath. “All right, so there’s no question about your commitment to this family. That’s the reason I’m here. You have a right to know. And I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t have proof.”
Lily sat down. “Proof?”
He stayed standing as he handed her the envelope. “This is a copy of a blood test Crystal had done the Monday before the accident. I picked up a copy from her doctor as soon as Cameron told me. The test removes any doubt. Derek’s blood type is AB, and Crystal’s is B. The baby’s is O, which any high school biology student will tell you means she can’t be Derek’s.”
Lily’s hand shook as she thrust the lab report away. Unfortunately, she remembered high school biology all too well, and she knew these test results were no lie. She nearly gagged on the next question. “Then who…?”
“The father’s Greg Duncan, the golf coach,” Sean concluded, “and he doesn’t know.”
Lily discovered that she’d stopped breathing. She started up again in panicky little gasps. Greg Duncan. She had worked with him, dated him. One time, she’d even kissed him. How could she have missed this? Crystal used to try to warn her away from him. He’s a player, she’d said. A user. You can do better. Lily assumed Crystal wanted her to find someone to get serious with. Now she wondered if Crystal warned her off because she herself had been with Greg.
Somehow, Lily found her voice. “That’s completely absurd.” Even as she spoke, she was comparing Ashley to Greg in her mind. Brown hair, brown eyes, big deal. Ashley looked like she could have been fathered by Keanu Reeves, too, but that didn’t mean he was her father. Yet Sean had cracked open a door and she couldn’t resist peeking in. In her mind’s eye, she caught a glimpse of Crystal, who had been team mother three years in a row. Lily remembered this because she’d urged Crystal to give it up when her marriage fell apart, since she had enough to deal with, but Crystal had refused. Maybe, just maybe…She kept picturing Crystal’s shell-shocked expression when she had come over to Lily’s house one night and said, “Derek has