“She would have told me,” Lily said. “She told me everything.”
“Apparently not.”
“Even if it did happen like that, she would have told Greg.”
“Not Crystal. She needed to be the injured party in the divorce. Winning child support for three kids meant more money for her, and she knew she’d get more from a golf pro than a high school coach.”
“That’s a horrible, bitter thing to say.”
“Not nearly as bad as having one man’s child and attributing it to another.”
Lily felt queasy. “Crystal wouldn’t do that. She simply wouldn’t.” Lily stared at the dated test results and remembered that day with brittle clarity. It was a Monday, the same day Charlie had started stealing. Good God, she thought. Could Charlie have known? It was bad enough that Cameron was in on this. His mother and his coach. No wonder he vandalized the golf course.
“What’s your point, Lily?” Sean asked.
“Obviously, from the timing of the test, she wasn’t sure herself until just before she died. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Up until the blood test, she probably thought Ashley was Derek’s.”
“She might not have known whose DNA the baby has, but she sure as hell knew who she was sleeping with.”
“My God, you really did hate her, didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “This conversation is going nowhere,” he said. “Maybe we shouldn’t have had it in the first place.” He headed for the door.
“Wait,” Lily said, her voice very low. Too low, perhaps, for him to hear. If he didn’t hear and kept going, she wouldn’t call him back.
He did hear. He stopped and turned around.
She squeezed her hands together until they hurt. “We have to tell him.” She startled herself with her own words, because by saying them, she acknowledged the truth. Queasiness swelled inside her, tangling with questions that would never be answered. The trouble with being angry with a dead person, she reflected, was that you could never sit down with her, talk things out, get an explanation, make amends.
“That’s not what I want to hear from you,” he said.
“It’s not my job to tell you what you want to hear. That will never be my job, do you understand?” Her eyes burned with tears of fury. What did he expect, coming here and telling her this about her best friend, a woman she had loved and trusted and respected all her life?
“Cameron and I have already discussed this. We’re not telling him.”
She winced at the thought of Cameron discussing his mother’s infidelity. How could you, Crystal? Lily wanted to scream. How could you, with your son’s coach? “Sean, you can’t fix this with a lie or another deception. Greg deserves to know, and so will Ashley when she’s old enough to understand.”
“You’re not thinking this through, Lily,” Sean said. “The baby is with me because I’m the kids’ blood relative. If Duncan’s the father and not my brother, then I’m not related at all to Ashley. He is. So don’t you tell him.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat. You have no right. You were Crystal’s friend. Big deal. I’m the guardian of this family and the decision’s mine to make.”
She wondered what it was she saw in his eyes besides anger. Fear, perhaps? Then she told herself she didn’t have to worry about what he was thinking or feeling. It was a far different conversation from the one she thought they’d have this evening. And this angry, autocratic man was a far different person than the one she thought she knew. Clearly, she was only a part of this family so long as she agreed with Sean. She got to her feet, crossed the room and held the door open. “I think you should go.”
“Fine.” He strode out the door, then hesitated and turned back. “Was there something you wanted to tell me?”
Only a few minutes ago, she’d wanted to tell him she was in love with him. They should be having dinner together, sharing a glass of wine, making love deep into the night. She swallowed a knot of bitterness that had lodged in her throat.
Thank goodness she hadn’t told him yet. At least she hadn’t given him the hammer to crush her with. Then she realized she felt crushed all the same. “Not really. Nothing important, anyway.”
After he was gone, Lily sat very still. Darkness crept in, but she didn’t bother getting up to turn on a light. She wondered how long she would sit here, just like this, before someone