years ago,” Rhea protested. “And you never even told me why.”
“His father—”
“You don’t have to tell me now,” she cut in. “Stephen already did.”
“Stephen?” Dana asked. “So Stephen knew about this?”
“I had to talk to someone. And you never exactly made me feel as though I could come to you with this, Dad.”
Her father wasn’t budging. “If Stephen told you what Lincoln Danes did to this family, then you know why I don’t want you involving yourself with his son.”
“Zach isn’t his father,” Rhea said firmly, wondering how this could be so easy to say to her father but so hard to believe in her own heart. She still had doubts. She still wasn’t sure of him. And the way he had reacted when she had visited his house, asking her for a paternity test… that hadn’t helped.
“I don’t want that family in our lives,” Tom said firmly.
Her mother put a hand on her father’s arm. “It’s too late for that, Tom,” she said quietly. “She’s pregnant with his child.”
“That doesn’t mean she has to—”
“It means we need to let her do whatever she feels is best for her child’s sake,” Dana said. “If your parents had told you, when our kids were little, that they didn’t want you to do something you thought was best for them, how would you have reacted?”
“I never would have done anything like this in the first place,” Tom said.
“You got upset when your mother wanted to give Stephen processed sugar before his first birthday.”
“That’s different, Dana. That’s just a difference in parenting styles. This man is bad for our family and you know it! His father—”
“I know what his father did,” Dana said. “Rhea knows what his father did. But Zach Danes didn’t do that. Rhea is right. He’s a different person. It’s going to be difficult for us to accept this, I know,” she added. “It’s going to be hard to see our grandchild and know that he or she is also the grandchild of the man who stole from us. But that’s unavoidable at this point, and every child has a right to a father.”
Rhea’s father sighed.
“What if someone had tried to keep Stephen and Rhea away from you?” Rhea’s mother pressed. “What would you have done?”
“Fought them, probably,” her father admitted. “I wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.”
Dana nodded. “Exactly. Because you’re a good father. And if this young man wants to be involved in his child’s life, that means he’s a good father too, no matter what else his family might have done. Right now, that’s the only thing that matters.”
Rhea got to her feet. “I just wanted to tell you both the news,” she said, feeling as if she was going to cry. This hadn’t gone that badly, but it hadn’t gone as well as she had hoped, either, and she wanted to be on her own to process her feelings.
“Rhea, don’t go,” her mother said. “Let’s go get out your old baby things. I’ve been saving them—”
“Not today,” Rhea said. “You’re right. I should probably go check in with work and make sure everything is okay. I didn’t give them a lot of notice that I was going to want the day off.”
Her parents exchanged glances.
“Rhea,” Dana said, “I don’t want you to think that we’re not going to love this child because of who the father is. You don’t think that, do you?”
“Not really,” Rhea said. “Not exactly. But… it’s pretty clear that it does matter to you who people’s fathers are.”
“It’s Zach’s upbringing we’re worried about,” her mother said. “Not his genetics. It concerns us that his father might have raised him to think that stealing was okay. He profited off of your father’s hard work, even if he didn’t know where the money was coming from.”
“I know that, Mom,” Rhea said. She felt exhausted. “I just need to take a break from this, all right?”
“Okay,” Dana said. “But come back any time and we’ll look through those baby things. I have lots of stuff that’s not being put to use right now, and I always meant to give it to you and Stephen when the time came.”
“I’ll come back soon,” Rhea said. “I promise.”
She couldn’t leave her parents’ house fast enough, and it felt like a miracle that she reached her car before the tears started to fall.
Rhea knew her parents would come out and check on her if they saw her just sitting in the driveway, but she didn’t trust herself to