Page 104 of What the Wife Knew

“Wait. Are you saying you only slept with him once? Like, you met at a party and hooked up?” If so she’d really lost the baby lottery. And she’d been lying to me for years. She specifically told me they dated. Made it sound like he was her first love.

She made an odd noise. “I need to explain something about your father.”

“More than what I already know? You started dating in secret and got pregnant, which he didn’t know. He had a rich-parents problem, which you didn’t see as a problem at all. Worst of all, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Dougherty brothers walked into that school.” That summed up what she’d told me—banged into me—through the years. “Which part needs explaining?”

I knew other details. Curiosity drove me to investigate and find a photo of Zach to check for any resemblance. Every bit of information told the same story. Athletic. Good student. Well-liked. Three brothers. Involved parents. I doubted his life was perfect, but it sounded idyllic compared to mine.

Teenaged me toyed with fantasies about going to live with my loving grandparents in their big house with plenty of everything and no Mom. Those fantasies fed me when Mom would have a tantrum. But then I grew up and realized the Bryants didn’tneed an unwanted reminder of all they’d lost. They were Zach’s family. Technically, also my family but I didn’t see the nonexistent relationship that way. I already had more family than I could handle.

Jumping into their lives and shouting,I’m your surprise granddaughter,might have been the dream at one point. Now it made me cringe. Me connecting with them meant connecting my mom with them. Let them celebrate and mourn their son as they knew him without all the baggage.

“I’m not talking about what Zach looked like or anything as mundane as that. This is much more serious,” she said.

“You’re being really dramatic. We’re sitting here, in this diner and in this state, because of Zach.” In reality, he’d become a footnote in her Richmond revenge story, or he had until today. “Thanks to you and your threats of siccing the police on me for what happened years ago, I’m already stuck in a marriage to a man who considers me expendable. The marriage is legal and if I’m not careful it could turn lethal. So, what do I need to know?”

“Fine.”

“Great.”Get to it.

“I never slept with him.”

Wait...

“Zach Bryant isn’t your father.”

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Her

Present Day

“Cooper Dougherty was your father.” Elias didn’t say anything else after he delivered that stunner follow-up. Neither of us did for a solid two minutes.

I temporarily blacked out or maybe I hoped I did. The buzzing in my head drowned out any attempt at rational thinking. Answering Elias with the full, ugly truth was out of the question. An honest response would lead to a life explosion bigger than anything I’d experienced so far. That left me with the option of blathering on and hoping Mr. Lawyer would move to a new topic.

Keep the words neutral. That was the key. “Why would you think that?”

“All the worries you had about your DNA being analyzed by the police.”

“There are potentially other reasons for that concern. Maybe I have a criminal record or need to hide my identity for some other reason.” Most people in town assumed that, so why not lean into it?

He smiled. “Are either of those things true?”

“No.”

“Exactly.” Elias sat down on one of the kitchen barstools.“The investigator I hired provided some interesting information about your family.”

Oh, shit.“The one you promised was investigating August and not me. That investigator?”

“That was his task at the start, yes. When you told me your mom was a problem and couldn’t be trusted, I had my guy look into her.” Elias wrapped his fingers around the coffee mug but didn’t pick it up. “Her past was much easier to uncover than yours.”

I leaned back against the sink because I needed something to hold me up. “She lives her life wide open.”

This was one secret I never wanted to spill. The secret Mom dumped on meafterI’d already gotten tangled up with Richmond. The lie that tainted everything. The one lie I would never forgive. It sounded like Elias was about to ram up against it.

“Your mom grew up in Annapolis. She left school because she was pregnant with you. The public story was that she went to live with a relative in New York, but she never actually went to an aunt in New York.”

“She doesn’t have an aunt.” That seemed safe to admit.

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