by Holly Rayner
Rhea’s father sighed.
“What if someone had tried to keep Stephen and Rhea away from you?” Rhea’s mother pressed. “What would you have done?”
“Fought them, probably,” her father admitted. “I wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.”
Dana nodded. “Exactly. Because you’re a good father. And if this young man wants to be involved in his child’s life, that means he’s a good father too, no matter what else his family might have done. Right now, that’s the only thing that matters.”
Rhea got to her feet. “I just wanted to tell you both the news,” she said, feeling as if she was going to cry. This hadn’t gone that badly, but it hadn’t gone as well as she had hoped, either, and she wanted to be on her own to process her feelings.
“Rhea, don’t go,” her mother said. “Let’s go get out your old baby things. I’ve been saving them—”
“Not today,” Rhea said. “You’re right. I should probably go check in with work and make sure everything is okay. I didn’t give them a lot of notice that I was going to want the day off.”
Her parents exchanged glances.
“Rhea,” Dana said, “I don’t want you to think that we’re not going to love this child because of who the father is. You don’t think that, do you?”
“Not really,” Rhea said. “Not exactly. But… it’s pretty clear that it does matter to you who people’s fathers are.”
“It’s Zach’s upbringing we’re worried about,” her mother said. “Not his genetics. It concerns us that his father might have raised him to think that stealing was okay. He profited off of your father’s hard work, even if he didn’t know where the money was coming from.”
“I know that, Mom,” Rhea said. She felt exhausted. “I just need to take a break from this, all right?”
“Okay,” Dana said. “But come back any time and we’ll look through those baby things. I have lots of stuff that’s not being put to use right now, and I always meant to give it to you and Stephen when the time came.”
“I’ll come back soon,” Rhea said. “I promise.”
She couldn’t leave her parents’ house fast enough, and it felt like a miracle that she reached her car before the tears started to fall.
Rhea knew her parents would come out and check on her if they saw her just sitting in the driveway, but she didn’t trust herself to drive. She pulled out, drove around the corner, and parked by the side of the road. Then she leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel, struggling to regain her composure.
She hadn’t expected a warmer reaction from her parents. In fact, she had been pleasantly surprised by how accepting they had been of her unplanned pregnancy. So why did she feel so disappointed in the way that conversation had gone?
It’s because they said everything I’m thinking.
Her father’s mistrust of Zach was inconvenient, but it wasn’t hard for Rhea to understand because she felt exactly the same way. She had no idea how much of Lincoln Danes’ crime Zach had known about or been involved in. It was extremely suspicious that he had disappeared from her life at the same time as his father had stolen that formula.
And when she had confronted him… well, Rhea knew how she would have reacted if she had been confronted with the news that a member of her family had committed a crime. She would have been horrified, and she would have immediately begun her own investigation to see whether there was any truth to the accusation.
She would not have demanded that the person making the accusation provide the proof—especially if that person was her so-called best friend, lover, and a victim of the crime!
How was she supposed to put her faith in Zach when he had reacted that way?
And what was she supposed to do with the fact that he had demanded a paternity test, of all things? She certainly hadn’t seen that coming. Did he really mean to suggest that she had been sleeping around without telling him? Did he really believe that there was another possible father?
Or had he just said that to try to hurt her?
Either way, the result was the same—she was offended and heartbroken. She had cared for Zach. She had started to believe that she was falling in love with him.
And yes, okay, it was true that she had turned her back on him first. But hadn’t she explained what had happened there? Hadn’t she told him that she’d only done it because of what she’d learned about his father and his father’s crime?
I suppose I didn’t tell him that until we were already angry with one another. Maybe by then he just couldn’t hear it.
She pulled out her phone and sent a text message to her brother.
“I need you to send me the video footage of Lincoln Danes stealing that formula. Urgent.”
The response came two minutes later. “What do you want that for?”
“Personal reasons,” she typed.
“You’re not still involved with Zach Danes, are you? Because if Mom and Dad find that out, they’ll be pissed.”
She sighed. Couldn’t he ever forget about the fact that he was the oldest and stop trying to control everything?
“I’ve got it under control, Stephen. Please send the video.”
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t, but then the reply came.
“Check your email.”
She did. Sure enough, there was a message from her brother with a video file attached.
She watched it, the last shreds of hope that this might be some mistake evaporating as she did so. It was definitely Lincoln Danes. She hadn’t seen him in fifteen years, but she still recognized him.
And she knew that Zach would too.
She attached the video file to a new email, addressed to Zach. After a moment’s hesitation, she attached her sonogram picture as well.
“Here’s the proof you wanted, along with your child’s first picture. I’m not taking a paternity test. I know who the father is. I guess if you don’t want to accept it, you don’t have to be in your child’s life. It’s up to you if that’s the kind of man you want to be. It’s not the kind of man I thought you were.”
She knew she was being harsh, but she couldn’t help it. Just thinking about Zach made her feel angry. All things considered, Rhea thought she was to be congratulated on not including any curse words in the message.
She hit send, put her phone away, and wiped the tears from her eyes. She wasn’t about to sit here crying over Zach Danes any longer. The ball was in his court now, and he could get back to her or get out of her life.
As for Rhea, she had other things to consider.
She was going to be a mother.
There was a lot to do. She had to set up a nursery in her apartment. She wanted to go shopping for baby clothes and for parenting books. She needed to buy the vitamins the doctor had told her to get, and to stock her house with healthy foods that would be good for her growing baby.
All important things. All things that she would have been able to enjoy and take pleasure in under better circumstances.
But even as she drove to the mall, already visualizing the kinds of clothes she would try to find for her baby, she felt herself losing focus.
This was the kind of thing a person should be able to do with someone else. Not alone.
And she couldn’t help wishing that Zach was at her side, cooing over the cute outfits and helping her to ridicule the sillier ones, giving his opinions about things like hats and onesies.
She wished she wasn’t doing this alone.
But she would do it.
I might wish I had Zach with me, she told herself fiercely. But I don’t need him. I can handle this on my own.
Chapter 14
Zach
Thoughts of what Rhea had told him troubled Zach all night long, and all through the next day and night as well.
By the time the weekend came, he felt as if he were going mad. How could he believe the things she had said, the accusations she had leveled against his father? Zach and his father had been the only
family each other had had for years, and they had been incredibly close. They had always told one another everything.
At least, Zach had told his father everything. But had his father reciprocated? Had the information really flowed both ways?
He never did tell me why he was fired.
That thought continued to worry away at the back of Zach’s mind.
Of course, it made sense that there were things his father hadn’t told him. Some things a parent just didn’t share with their child. Zach couldn’t be angry about that.
But it did mean that Zach had to rethink his perspective.
There might be things I never knew about my father. Things he never told me.
Could this be one of those things?
Could he really have stolen from Rhea’s family?
Zach tried to set his feelings aside and look at things analytically. Prior to his win, his father had never played the lottery. That part of the story had always been strange. That he could win a jackpot the very first time he ever bought a ticket—well, there was no reason that couldn’t happen, of course. But it did strike Zach as surprising.
Then there was the fact that there had never been any kind of news story about the lottery win. Zach would have remembered it if his father had been featured in the paper. And that did sound like something his father would do—sharing a story of his own good luck like that. He wouldn’t have kept it private.
He wished he had asked more questions, tried to find out more, at the time. Now it was too late.
Or was it? Maybe there was evidence somewhere in the house. He did have his father’s financial records. He hurried to the study, where he kept a file of important papers, and began to shuffle through them.
Here was a record of his father’s investments, all of them purchased around the same time. This confirmed the fact that he had come into a large amount of money—though really, Zach had only to look around to see confirmation of that fact.
This money hadn’t been in his family growing up. It had come from somewhere.
Was there some record of the payment from the lottery organization? There should be, Zach knew. His father had been meticulous about paperwork. There were electric bills from the 1980s in this file. His father wouldn’t have thrown away something that important.
Zach combed through the papers, determined to find it.
But it wasn’t there.
He grew increasingly desperate as he moved from file to file, looking in places there was no reason to believe that document would be after he’d exhausted the more predictable places. It had to be somewhere. It had to be.
But it wasn’t.
There was no record of any lottery win. There was no indication that Zach’s father had ever even played the lottery.
That’s not proof, Zach thought desperately. That doesn’t prove anything.
But it as good as proved it. If his father had won the lottery, he would have documented that fact. That he hadn’t done so showed Zach that the story he had been told was almost certainly false.
The money had come from somewhere else.
And the only reason Zach could think of to lie about the money’s source was if it had been obtained dishonestly.
He shoved the papers back into their file drawers and hurried out of the library, unable to bear looking at them anymore. Everything around him in this room felt like evidence of his father’s deception.
But when he had left the study, he found that he didn’t feel any better. Every room of the house held reason for sadness and guilt.
The living room was organized around his large flat-screen television, an indulgence that Zach had bought happily after opening his first catering company, a promise to himself that he would continue to strive for success. He had always enjoyed relaxing in this room on his plush leather sofa, watching a movie on one of the many streaming services to which he subscribed.
He had had none of those things growing up. Entertainment had consisted of watching a VHS tape on his father’s twelve-inch TV or reading one of the paperbacks he owned. Sometimes he had been able to get a new book from the library, but even that had been an infrequent pleasure—the library had been located across town, and his father hadn’t often had the time to take him.
I shouldn’t have this, he thought now, looking at the television. I don’t deserve it.
Zach had never thought that his wealth had been earned—at least, not all of it—but there was a difference between a lucky break and theft. He could rejoice in the idea that his father had won the lottery. That had been something to celebrate, something to feel happy about.
He couldn’t feel happy about the idea of taking advantage of Rhea’s family. That felt horrible.
He went into the kitchen. Here he was surrounded by top-of-the-line appliances, one of the most important things he had told his realtor he was looking for in a home. He had to be able to cook. And though his kitchen was not as spacious as Rhea’s kitchen, he had become fond of it since moving to Baltimore.
Now, he felt ashamed of it.
Working in the kitchen had always filled him with pride. It had always made him feel good about what he was doing with his life—that he had a quantifiable skill and that he was using it, not only to earn money, but to help do his part for the environment.
But how could he feel proud of his cooking now? In order to cook, he would have to stand in this kitchen he never could have afforded without the money from his father that had enabled him to get his start.
He couldn’t do it. It had been ruined for him.
He felt a surge of anger at his father, just thinking about it. How could he have done this? Hadn’t he realized that his actions were doing more than hurting Rhea? He had had dinner with Rhea’s family. He had known that she was Zach’s friend, for God’s sake. He must have known that there was a chance that Zach would find out about this someday, and that the knowledge would hurt him.
Maybe he just didn’t care.
That didn’t sound like the man Zach had known. Lincoln had spent his whole life doing whatever he could to give Zach opportunities, to make sure that Zach was happy. He wouldn’t have done something like this without considering how Zach would feel about it.
Maybe he thought I would support it.
That was a horrifying thought. But Zach had to consider it. Was it possible that his father had done this terrible thing on the assumption that Zach would also think it was a good idea?
No, he couldn’t have. If he had believed that, he would have just told me what he was doing.
Zach sighed and climbed the stairs to his bedroom.
This room was as luxurious as any other in the house, with expensive bedding, a mounted television, and a door to a balcony that wrapped around the house. But the luxury of the room felt a little less obvious than it did downstairs. The TV was smaller, and while it was off, you couldn’t see all the features it offered. Expensive bedding didn’t look any nicer than the cheap stuff.
Zach flopped down on his bed.
He had never for a moment stopped wishing that his father was still alive. He missed the man every day, and every day he wanted to know what his father would think of his life choices. One of the hardest things about losing a parent, he’d discovered, was the inability to know whether your parent approved of you. He would never know whether he had his father’s approval again, and that had been a hard thing to adjust to.
But now, for the first time, he felt that pain in reverse.
He wanted to know whether he could possibly still approve of his father’s actions.
It felt like the answer had to be no. If Rhea had told the truth—and his father’s documents, or lack thereof, did seem to back up her story—then his father had committed a crime against his best friend. And that was something Zach could never approve of.
If only he was alive so that we could talk about all this. If only I could get some answers!
But then again, his father had never told him anything about
this when he had been alive. What reason was there to think he would be honest about it if he was here now?
Zach closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his face. This whole situation was maddening.
In his pocket, his phone buzzed. He pulled it out and saw that he had a new email from Rhea. His stomach dropped. The subject line simply read “Proof.”
He couldn’t believe the way he had spoken to her the last time he’d seen her.
Of course, he had been shocked by her pregnancy announcement. He hadn’t been at his best. But there had been no excuse for the fact that he had taken his shock out on her. After all, she was dealing with an unplanned pregnancy too.
I should have supported her. That’s what she needed.
She had attached two items to her email. The first was a video. Zach loaded it and allowed it to play.
It appeared to be security camera footage of someone’s office. He frowned, not sure what he was seeing.
But a moment later, he felt as if he had swallowed a pile of lead. The video showed a man sneaking into the office, clearly not supposed to be there. He looked around, stopping every few steps, as if to make sure that nobody had heard him.
Then he turned to face the camera.
And Zach was looking at his father’s face.
Lincoln Danes seemed not to know that he was on camera, because he didn’t make eye contact. Instead, he began to go through the drawers of the desk in the room. After several minutes, Zach saw him put something in his pocket. Then he hurried out of the room and the video ended.
Zach swallowed hard.
He did steal something.
There was no way to know what it was he had taken. But that part almost didn’t matter. The point was that he had used his position as custodian for Rhea’s father’s company to steal. Rhea had been telling the truth all along.
