“They let you have money here?”
He nods, eyeing me suspiciously the entire time. I grab the change and walk over to the soda machine. I insert the quarters and glance back at him. He’s not looking at me. He’s staring down at his hands folded together across the table.
I wait for my drink to plummet to the bottom, and even then, I stall another minute while I open it and take a sip. This man makes me nervous and I don’t know why. I don’t know how Charlie looked up to him like she did. I guess if I had memories of him as my father, maybe I would feel differently about him. But I don’t have memories. I can only go by what I’m seeing, and right now I see a criminal. A beady-eyed, pale excuse for a man.
I almost drop my soda. Every muscle in my body weakens with the realization. I think back to a description either me or Silas wrote in our notes. A physical description of The Shrimp. Of Cora.
“They call her The Shrimp because she has beady eyes and skin that turns ten shades of pink when she talks.”
Shit. Shit, Shit, Shit.
Brett is Cora’s father?
He’s staring at me now, probably wondering why it’s taking so long for me to make my way back to him. I head in his direction. When I reach the table, I eye him hard. Once I’m seated, I lean forward and don’t allow a single bit of my trepidation to seep through my confidence.
“Let’s play a game,” I tell him.
He raises an amused brow. “Okay.”
“Let’s pretend I’ve lost my memory. I’m a blank slate. I’m putting things together I may not have seen otherwise, in my prior adoration of you. Are you following…?”
“Not really,” he says. He looks sour. I wonder if he gets like this when people don’t fall all over themselves to please him.
“Did you happen to father another daughter? I don’t know, maybe one with a crazy mother who would hold me against my will?”
His face turns white. He immediately starts to deny, turns his body away from me, and calls me crazy. But I saw the panic on his face, and I know I’m on to something.
“Did you hear the last part of my sentence or are you just focused on keeping up appearances?” He turns his head to look at me, and this time his eyes are no longer soft. “She kidnapped me,” I say. “Kept me locked in a room in her—our—old house.”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. I think he’s deciding what to tell me.
“She found you trespassing on her property,” he says finally. “She said you were acting irate. You had no idea where you were. She didn’t want to call the police because she’s convinced you’re doing drugs, so she kept you to help you detox. She had my permission, Charlie. She called me as soon as she found you in her house.”
“I’m not on drugs,” I tell him. “And who in their right mind would hold someone against their will?”
“Would you rather she called the police on you? You were talking crazy! And you broke into her house in the middle of the night!”
I don’t know what to believe right now. The only memory of that experience I have is in the notes I wrote to myself.
“And that girl is my half-sister? Cora?”
He stares at the tabletop, unable to meet my eyes. When he doesn’t respond, I decide to play his game. “It’s in your best interest to be honest with me. Silas and I came across a file that Clark Nash has been desperately searching for since before your trial.”
He doesn’t even flinch. His poker face is too perfect. He doesn’t ask me what file I have. He just says, “Yes. She’s your half-sister. I had an affair with her mother years ago.”
It’s like this is all happening to a character on a television show. I wonder how the real Charlie would take this. Burst into tears? Get up and run out? Punch this dude in the face? From what I’ve read of her, probably the latter.
“Wow. Oh, wow. Does my mother know?”
“Yes. She found out after we lost the house.”
What a sorry excuse for a man. First, he cheats on my mother. Impregnates another woman. Then he hides it from his wife and kids until he gets caught?
“God,” I say. “No wonder she’s an alcoholic.” I lean back in my seat and stare up at the ceiling. “You never claimed her? Does the girl know?”
“She knows,” he says.
I feel hot anger. For Charlie, for this poor girl who has to go to school with Charlie and watch her live the life she didn’t get to have, and for this whole screwed up situation.
I take a moment to gather myself while he sits in silence. I wish I could say he was wallowing in guilt, but I’m not so sure this man is capable of feeling guilt.
“Why do they live in the house I grew up in? Did you give it to them?”
This question turns him a light shade of pink. He pops his jaw as his eyes dart left to right. His voice is quieter when he speaks, so that only I can hear him. “That woman was a client of mine, Charlie. And a mistake. I broke it off with her years ago, a month before she found out she was pregnant. We came to an agreement of sorts. That I would be present financially, but nothing else. It was better for everyone that way.”
“So what you’re saying is, you bought her silence?”
“Charlie…” he says. “I made a mistake. Believe me, I’ve paid for it tenfold. She used the money I’d been sending her all those years to purchase our old house in auction. She did that just to spite me.”