You could have knocked me over with a feather—literally. “You knew?” I stammered.
“Not right away,” Alan answered, “but we figured it out within a couple of weeks—as soon as we realized she was expecting. Once the doctor told us how far along she was, we were pretty sure you were the guy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“Maybe I’m the one who needs to tell you the whole story,” Alan said. “I was married once before. I wanted kids. My then-wife absolutely did not want kids. She told me that if I didn’t get a vasectomy, she was going to divorce me. I wanted to be married and live up to that whole ‘in sickness and in health’ thing, so I did what she asked. Guess what? She up and divorced me anyway and ended up having three kids with her second husband. Live and learn, right?”
“Right,” I muttered.
“When the show was on the road, there were rumors among the crew that Jasmine was being coerced into playing hostess with some of the high-fliers on the producer’s guest list. The talk was she was probably putting out. I already liked her by then. We weren’t together yet, but I didn’t want to believe the gossip either. I thought it was just a bunch of sour grapes. Then, when the whole drug-dealing thing came to light, of all the cops on the scene, you were the only one who seemed to have Jaz’s back—our backs. Later on, when we started getting serious about each other, she told me about what had been going on. She also told me that she doubted you had any idea in advance about the nature of your date. She said that when she hopped into your bed, you’d been pretty much blindsided.”
“Blindsided yes,” I agreed, “but pretty much blind drunk as well. That was a couple of years before I sobered up.”
“Jaz and I were already back in Jasper when she started getting sick. At first we thought it was the flu or else something she’d eaten, but when she went to see a doctor, it turned out to be morning sickness. That’s when we counted back and figured out you were probably Naomi’s biological father.”
“Why didn’t you let me know?”
Alan shrugged. “It seemed to me that God was giving me a second chance to finally have a family, and I was afraid to rock the boat. I worried, too, that if you knew Naomi was yours, you might initiate some kind of custody battle. I mean, you were a cop and all, and I’m sure you could have if you’d wanted to.”
I wasn’t sure he was right, but I let it go.
“So the three of us became a family,” Alan continued. “I have to admit that when Naomi hit her teens and turned into such a handful, there were times I thought we might all have been better off if we’d brought you into the picture. We decided early on that when Naomi turned twenty-one, we would tell her the truth, but long before that Naomi took off. A few years later, Jaz was gone, too, and after that last awful phone conversation, I’d lost both of them without ever telling Naomi the truth. With all those DNA companies out there now, I figured there were ways she can find that out on her own without it coming from me. Which reminds me, how did you reach that conclusion?”
“I suspected it when you first showed me Naomi’s school photo, the one you keep in your wallet,” I answered. “But tonight, the moment Naomi walked into Reverend Seymour’s office, there was no denying it. She looks just like my daughter, Kelly . . . my other daughter. But if you knew this all along, why did you come looking to me for help in finding Naomi?”
“Because,” Alan Dale said simply, “you were the only person in Seattle I knew I could trust.”
“Thank you,” I said and I meant it.
Sometimes the bad things you worry about turn out to be the best things, but I went to bed that night and tossed and turned. I thought about my other kids—about Scotty and Kelly. Due to an inheritance from a biological auntie on my father’s side, those two kids are both fixed for life, even if I never left them another dime—which I will do eventually anyway. But what about Naomi? What did she have? A cot in a homeless shelter,