True to Me - Kay Bratt Page 0,54

talk to her in person before giving her any information. They set it for Thursday, which meant in three days she’d know something. Finally.

He wanted to meet at a restaurant in Napili called the Sea House and told Auntie Wang to have Quinn sit on the patio and order a strawberry daiquiri with two umbrellas so that he’d know it was her.

It was all so melodramatic.

She stood and went to the window. She could see across the lanai and into the house. Maria, Kupuna, and Alani were having dinner. Liam had gone home, claiming he was tired and had some work calls to make. Quinn had declined the invitation to eat and made a beeline for the privacy of the cottage to call Auntie Wang back.

Now things were getting real.

They still didn’t know what sort of connection the man was, other than it was close. Close could mean an uncle. A brother. Or—her breath caught as she whispered the words to the empty room—“a father.”

Quinn knew she should be feeling elated, but she wasn’t.

All she felt was terror.

A part of her wished that Liam had stayed, but the other part, the side that knew herself so well, knew she wouldn’t have told him. It was too personal, and she couldn’t deny that he wasn’t completely in the friend zone after the day they’d spent together. Sharing something so important with him would move him closer into territory that wasn’t fair to Ethan when—or if—she decided she wanted to work it out.

The messages he’d left on her phone made her feel crazy—he said he loved her and he’d slipped, but it meant nothing. That he was lonely and vulnerable because he felt she didn’t want him with her. That she was his everything. Quinn found herself believing it one minute, then feeling angry again the next. Would she ever be able to forgive and forget? Did she even want to try? And how many times had he slipped in the past that she was too naive to know about?

She felt such a keen sense of loss and longing for her mother that she was dizzy. If her mother were here, Quinn would be calling her. Telling her the news or asking what she should do.

But then, if her mother were here, Quinn wouldn’t have had a reason to take the test or seek out the truth about who her father was. She wouldn’t know that the man she’d always thought was her deadbeat dad actually wasn’t.

Quinn remembered what Auntie Wang had said about the birth certificate.

It was so frustrating. Her mother had started all this, and now, when Quinn needed her the most, Quinn had to navigate it alone. A catch in her chest alerted her to how lonely she felt.

She went to the bed, and after pulling off her dusty clothes from her day out with Liam, she climbed in, too overwhelmed and weak to even think about showering. For once, she wasn’t even going to go through taking off her makeup and the regimen that normally followed.

What was a film of sweat and dirt when she was soon going to meet someone related to her by blood?

In three days.

It would be only the second relative she had ever known. If he even was a relative. How much could a wad of spit really tell you about your family line or connect you with a relative half a world away? Was it really as accurate as people said? Could it be a mistake? What would she say to him? What would he think about her? And maybe he was a weirdo. A freak. A murderer who had hacked her account and was drawing her in as prey.

She turned over, clutching the pillow to her chest. Now she was getting melodramatic. But being alone with so many torrential thoughts was making her crazy. She needed to talk to someone.

A friend.

Liam was out of the question. The next thought that came to her was a surprise out of left field.

Maggie Dalton.

She hadn’t talked to her former best friend in quite a few years, she thought as she cringed, remembering that she hadn’t even contacted Maggie when her mother died. That would hurt her. Maggie had always said Quinn’s mom was like a second mother to her.

In the trauma of the long illness and then her mom’s death, Quinn wasn’t in her right mind. She’d mentioned Maggie to Ethan, but he’d encouraged her to just focus on the arrangements, telling her that she