true,” he said sharply. “It can’t be true. I’m not your father. Why would you even say such a thing?”
She wiped at her cheeks. Damn it. Why wouldn’t the stupid tears stop? They were angry tears, she told herself. She wasn’t hurt at all by his reaction.
“DNA doesn’t lie. I took a test at one of the genealogy sites. It sent me the names of people who are closely related to me and, guess what, your sister came up as linked to my DNA profile. Since she is closely related to me, that means you have to be my father.”
Chief Vance sank down onto his desk. Olivia just stared at both of them.
“There must be a mistake. She told me I wasn’t the father. She swore up and down. She swore on her dad’s memory.”
“You slept with Natalie.” Olivia looked like somebody had just punched her in the gut, like that time Caitlin had fallen climbing the ropes in PE class and had the wind knocked out of her and had gasped on the ground for like five minutes.
Chief Vance—her father—looked about the same.
“Once. The night before I left for basic training.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Only that one time. I don’t think either one of us meant for it to happen. It was just...one of those things. She was upset about me leaving. I’d had more to drink than I should have. It was... It shouldn’t have happened. We used protection but...”
“But it doesn’t always work,” Olivia said, her voice sounding strange and distant.
He gazed at Caitlin, his eyes still stunned. “When I found out from Melody that Nat was pregnant, I came home as soon as I could get leave to ask her if you were...if you were mine. She said no. She swore it. She had a boyfriend but she wouldn’t give me his name. She...she claimed he was married and that she didn’t want to ruin his life.”
“I know his name. Paul Reyes.”
Olivia looked astonished. “You can’t know that. How could you possibly know that?”
Caitlin shrugged. “She wrote a lot of stuff down. Not everything, apparently, since I didn’t know about you until after the DNA test.”
“That’s why you read her diaries,” Olivia exclaimed. “You were looking for your father.”
She shrugged, which wasn’t really an answer.
“I’ve been curious for...for a while about my dad. Mimi wouldn’t tell me anything. She said she didn’t know. One day after Christmas when I was carrying decorations up to the attic for her, I found a bunch of my mom’s stuff. I went through and found her diaries. So, yeah. I read them looking for answers. She didn’t leave me much else.”
If she sounded bitter, too bad. Her mom had chosen drugs over being a parent to her. How could that not leave scars on her heart?
For all her hurt, Caitlin knew she was one of the lucky ones in the opioid epidemic. She might not have a mom and dad but at least she always had her beloved Mimi to take care of her. It was important to focus on the positive in the situation, on what she had and not what she had missed out on all these years.
“Mimi has told me stuff about my mom over the years when I’ve asked, but I think she only tells me the good things. Not necessarily the truth. I wanted to know who she was.”
“You could have asked me.”
“What would you have told me? You would have just told me the whitewashed stuff, too. Anyway, you weren’t around. You couldn’t wait to leave your mom and Nat’s Brat. That’s what you called me in your diary.”
Olivia looked stricken. “You read mine, too.”
Caitlin shrugged again. “Okay, I was wrong to do it. I guess maybe I thought you might know who my dad was.”
“I obviously had no idea who your father was,” she said stiffly, not looking at Cooper. “I had a few suspicions but apparently all of them were wrong. Cooper would never have been on my list because Nat always said he was like her brother.”
Chief Vance looked like he wanted to throw up. “I didn’t know, Caitlin. I swear it. I asked and Natalie told me I wasn’t. I suppose I...should have insisted on a paternity test.”
She faced him, her chin up. “So why didn’t you?”
COOPER
He didn’t know how to answer her. How could he come up with something coherent when he could barely put two thoughts together?
He felt as if a flashover had just destroyed