been giving since she started out on this quest, that she might be going through all this effort and still have nothing to show for it.
“I know. But I have to start somewhere, don’t I? The diaries are all I have.”
He gave her a careful look. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed. What’s going to happen when your DNA tests come back without any connection to another soul in Cape Sanctuary.”
“It’s possible,” she said. Even probable, though she wouldn’t admit that to Jake. “I’ll just have to assume that none of my dad’s relatives took the same test.”
“You’re prepared for that?”
“Yeah. Of course I am,” she lied. She was pinning all her hopes on the test and would be devastated if she couldn’t find any results, but she wasn’t about to tell Jake that.
“Even though it might not be any of them, you still want to check them out?”
She shrugged. “I just want to get to know them more. See if there’s any kind of instant bond between us, you know. I thought maybe I might be able to get them to talk about my mom.”
“How, exactly, do you intend to do that?”
She loved Jake but he was always such a doubter.
“I’ll wing it. So let’s go through the names again.”
“Coach Hardcastle, Paul Reyes, Jeff Seeger,” Jake recited from memory.
“Right. Coach Hardcastle is a strong contender. He dated my mom a few times in high school. He’s mentioned in the journal and she liked him a lot.”
“Paul Reyes, who used to party with your mom and whose youngest daughter, Melissa, goes to school with us.”
“Exactly. I know they had an affair, even though he was married at the time and already had a couple of kids. Melissa’s older siblings.”
That was the creepiest of the possibilities and she couldn’t imagine why her mom even used to hang around with him when he already had a wife and kids. It was another mystery into Natalie and one she knew she’d never solve.
“And Jeff Seeger,” Caitlin said.
“Pastor at the church on Shell Street.”
“That’s right. Pastor Seeger, who used to be my mom’s pot dealer.”
“It could be any of them. Or none. How do you expect to talk to them without revealing your suspicions?”
“Well, I’ve signed up to take German instead of Spanish next year, which Coach Hardcastle teaches. And I’ve already been to Melissa Reyes’s house once to hang out, but her dad wasn’t there. I thought maybe I’d see if I could talk her into inviting me over again somehow.”
“And Pastor Seeger?”
She gave her partner in crime a long look. “How do you feel about checking out a new church youth group with me this week?”
Jake sighed, showing no sign of surprise. “Do we have to?”
“You don’t, but I’m planning to go. He’s a really promising possibility. My mom mentioned meeting up with him a lot in her journal. A girl who sits next to me in social studies goes there, so I asked her about it. She was excited to tell me all about it. She says Pastor Jeff is cool.”
“I still can’t believe your mom’s dealer is now a pastor. Maybe it’s a completely different Jeff Seeger.”
“I won’t know unless I ask him. I’m going Thursday. They only meet once a month and that’s the next time.”
“You’ve been thinking about this awhile, haven’t you?”
All the time. Somehow reading those journals had made her feel closer than she ever had before to her mother, which led her, naturally, to want to find out more about her father.
“I just really want to know. If you were in my shoes, you would, too.”
“First, I would be happy that I have a loving grandma and aunt who have taken care of me all these years,” he said. “But, yeah. I would probably want to know.”
“So will you come with me?”
He shrugged, swinging the hammock with his foot. “Sure. I’ve got nothing else to do. Only mountains of homework to wrap up the school year.”
She smiled and touched his hand. “You’re the best, Jake. I mean it. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
He gave her a long look, one she couldn’t quite figure out. Whenever he looked at her like that, she felt like she’d just dived from the cliffs into the Pacific.
She had to stop being stupid about that. Jake wasn’t interested in her romantically. He was her best friend but that was all and she wasn’t about to ruin what they had by twisting his reaction into something