Page 100 of The Charade

I hadn't fallen in love with my brother.

I needed to tell him. I needed to tell him that our worst nightmare had just been a huge misunderstanding.

I was about to stand up to go and tell him the good news when Elyse brought me back to the present by asking our mom, "So if Mr. Hastings isn't our dad, then who is? Is it another guy from the reunion? Billy?" Elyse looked at me for confirmation that she was remembering the name Dr. Aarden had given us correctly. "Is it a guy named Billy Monaco?"

I didn't know what I expected my mom to do when she heard Elyse's question, but I certainly hadn't expected for her to laugh. Laugh so hysterically that I worried about her sanity.

"You thought Billy Monaco was your father?" she asked.

Elyse and I looked at each other, not seeing how this was funny.

"Who else would it be?" Elyse asked.

Mom sobered up and after drawing in a calming breath, she said, "Okay, so I…" She smoothed her hands along her skirt again, like her palms were suddenly sweaty. "I'm not sure how you even know who Billy Monaco is, but let me first assure you that no, he’s definitely not your father. He was hanging around Joel during the reunion because he was trying to sell Joel some kind of business idea and thought it was his chance to do so. But well, I guess I'll just come out and say it. Your father is Brendon." She cleared her throat and looked at both Elyse and me carefully. "Dr. Aarden is your father."

What?

"H-how?" I asked, pulling my head back.

"How?" Mom asked, her voice rising an octave—like she thought I was expecting her to explain the birds and the bees again.

I shook my head. "How could Mack's dad be our dad? Wasn't he married to Mack's mom at the time?"

Mom's features darkened. "Brendon and Brianna were not married at the time, no."

"But Mack is older than us," I said as if it proved that his parents had been together.

"Yes, he is." Mom looked down at the carpeted floor for a moment. "Like I said earlier, at the time of the reunion, Brendon was single. He and Brianna had been together ever since high school and were very serious, but then just a couple of weeks before the reunion, Brianna broke up with him out of the blue and told him she didn't want to see or talk to him anymore. She basically just cut things off with him cold turkey without any warning signs or any real explanation for why she had a sudden change of heart."

"Did he know she was pregnant with Mack?" Elyse asked.

"He didn't."

"Didsheknow she was pregnant with Mack?" I asked.

Mom shook her head. "I don't think so. He was actually born a couple of months prematurely because of some complications, so I don't think she knew about the pregnancy yet herself."

Interesting.

"Anyway," Mom continued. "Brendon wasn't exactly in the best headspace the night of the reunion after having his heart broken a couple of weeks before. And I was pretty bummed that Joel wasn't interested in rekindling anything with me. So we both kind of commiserated together and ended up getting wrapped up in our own little bubble that night."

"And then you slept together?" I asked, knowing that my mom was trying to find a delicate way to put it.

Mom nodded. "Yes. I had a little more to drink that night than I usually did, and so when everyone was leaving, I suggested we take things upstairs to my room and then…" Her cheeks colored, obviously embarrassed to admit all of this to her daughters. "Even though Brendon and I hadn't dated for long in high school, and we'd ended up dating each other's best friends for far longer, we always did have great chemistry. There was always a little spark brimming under the surface between us."

"So you had sex and you got pregnant, and then what?" I asked, impatient for her to get to the part where shedidn'ttell us who our dad was for the last seventeen years.

"Ava," Elyse chided me for my bluntness.

But I just shrugged and said, "I'm just trying to hurry things along."

Mom swallowed. "Okay, so yes, that’s basically what happened." She readjusted her legs, crossing the left over the right this time. "Anyway, I went home the next day and didn't hear from Brendon for several weeks. We hadn't necessarily planned on dating since I lived in Ridgewater and he had just been drafted to the NBA. I didn't think anything was up until about a month after the reunion when I realized that my period was late. I tried not to panic, since I was on the pill and was usually pretty good about remembering to take it. But then a few more days passed and my period still hadn't shown up. I took a pregnancy test and found out I was expecting.

"I was pretty scared since I was a single woman and knew how my dad would react when he found out. He'd been supplementing my income when I first moved to the U.S., so I didn't exactly have the greatest job to provide for me and a baby when he cut me off. But I knew it had to be Brendon's baby because he was the only person I'd slept with since my previous boyfriend six months before. I figured that while it would probably be a pretty awkward conversation to have, he'd step up to the plate and at least help me co-parent, even if we weren't going to get married or anything like that.”

My mom paused for a moment, and it was then that I noticed a shift in her demeanor. Up to this point, she'd been able to tell her history in a very matter-of-fact manner, but now there was something different in her eyes. An anxiety or fear as she relived the memory from what I now realized must have been a pretty scary time in her life.

And I suddenly felt really bad for how I'd been so rude to her so far tonight.

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