He leaned towards Will. “Do you really go by Fitzwilliam?”
Will shook his head and swallowed. “No, just Will.”
“Will, huh? Well, for those of you who missed our show a few weeks ago, Chris Younge appeared with the shocking information that he is the father of Fitzwilliam Darcy, scion of George Darcy of AirVA. Fitzwilliam Darcy was born George Wickham and was adopted by the Darcys at the age of thirteen. Chris says that he raised George Wickham for most of his life and Will left him high and dry so that he could be adopted by a rich couple and live the good life. Will says he’s never met the man. Who is telling the truth?” Dramatic music played, and Will resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
Roan then turned to Younge and started asking him details about his story of Will’s childhood. Will listened incredulously as Younge spun a tale of caring fatherhood.
Younge opened a file folder he’d brought with him and handed Andy Roan several pictures. Will tried to lean forward to see.
After he’d learned from his father that some long-forgotten boxes of his mother’s possession were in the attic at Pemberley, he and Elizabeth had spent an afternoon going through them. It was mostly clothes, but he’d found a few things that his mother had kept from his grandmother’s house, like a Christmas ornament from the year of his birth. And he’d found some pictures of his own.
He’d spoken to Andy beforehand and offered copies of the photographs in advance, so that the staff could make them available on big screen to allow the audience a look. He had the originals with him, though, in a briefcase, so that he could hand them to Roan during the show. It was all about showmanship. And apparently Chris Younge knew the same thing, because he’d come with pictures of . . . what, exactly?
“These are pictures of Will and me, back when he was a boy,” he said. “We used to play ball together.”
This time Will did roll his eyes. Surely the audience could see that Younge was overdoing it. But those pictures . . . he wished he could see them better.
Roan, fortunately, had the same idea, because he clicked a device and the pictures showed up on a screen behind them. Apparently, Roan had been given pictures by both Younge and himself. Hopefully he’d be fair and show both.
Will squinted at the screen. There was Younge with a full head of hair, fewer wrinkles, and a fuller face, holding a toddler boy on his lap. A boy with dark brown hair and brown eyes, so he supposed there was some slight superficial resemblance to himself. He tried to hold back a smile. If this was Younge’s “proof,” then he was in for a rude shock.
The screen changed, and another picture showed up. This one had Younge, his arm around a boy. It looked like it might be the same boy a few years later, but it was hard to tell for sure. Dark hair, dark eyes. Then Will noticed something. He tried to hold in his smile, but wasn’t sure he was completely successful, because Roan gave him a sharp look.
“Will, you look like you have something to say.” Roan was smiling now, probably because he could see the drama about to unfold.
Will nodded. “The boy in Younge’s pictures has a widow’s peak.”
Roan and Younge both looked back at the pictures
“That’s not a widow’s peak,” Younge protested. “It’s just his haircut. See how it’s hanging over his face?”
Roan was frowning. “Hmm. Perhaps. But it does look like one, and Will here clearly doesn’t have one.”
“It’s genetic, not exactly something you grow out of,” Will added, keeping the triumph out of his voice.
Younge’s face was turning red, but he didn’t respond. Will decided it might be a good time to speak up further.
“I can tell you, Mr. Roan, that until I met Mr. Darcy, I never knew any father growing up.” He explained about his mother, his early years with his grandmother, living with his mother’s different boyfriends and sometimes apartments of her own, her time in jail, and his time in foster care and a group home.
“I was a shy little boy, and the group home was really rough. But it was necessary, as there was nowhere else for me to go while my mom was in jail, and there just aren’t enough foster homes, especially for older kids and sibling sets.” He turned towards the audience. “If you’ve ever wondered what you can do to help kids, consider becoming a foster parent. You’ll meet some great kids who are going through tough times, and you can influence their lives for the better. Mentors and friends are wonderful, too.”
“Nice public service announcement,” Younge muttered.
Will shrugged.
“I made a friend, during the last couple of years before I met the Darcys.” He gave Roan the picture of him with Elizabeth, and it appeared on the large screen behind them. The audience reacted, mostly with cheers, to her pretty smile.
“Her name was Elizabeth, and we would meet at the park and read books or play. She was probably the greatest influence on my life. She taught me to love books and to play like a kid again. In fact, she’s still a fantastic reader and storyteller, and started her own YouTube channel of stories for kids, ‘Lizzy’s Dragons.’ When she had to move away, it devastated me.” He could hear the audience say “Aw” collectively and wondered if their reaction was truly spontaneous or if they were reacting to cue cards. He couldn’t see any, but he might not from his angle.
He handed over the picture of himself at the park and saw them queue it up on the screen. “But shortly after that is when I met Mr. Darcy and got to know him largely because of my love of books, and obviously that turned my life around. And I think you know the rest. I do have something else to show you, though.”
He handed over a few pictures he’d found in his mother’s things―ones of him as a baby and a toddler. He had been surprised and pleased to discover that she had, probably from his grandmother’s collection, photos of him up until about his fourth birthday.
What they showed, however, was a boy with a completely different look to the one in Younge’s pictures. Dark hair and dark eyes, yes, but otherwise with a completely different face shape.
“Isn’t that interesting?” Roan said with an expression Will could only describe as gleeful. “You certainly look different in these two sets of pictures. Almost like a different person.”
He put two of the pictures on the screen at the same time. One was Will’s picture at the park at age twelve, the other was the picture Younge had presented with the boy with a widow’s peak, who looked about eight or so.
“Now,” Roan said, indicating the pictures, “I can definitely see which one looks more like Will.” Will was glad he pointed it out for the audience. To him, it was plainly obvious that one looked like a younger version of him, and the other didn’t. But it was hard to tell whether that was apparent to other people. Roan’s editorializing would help.
Younge stood up so quickly he almost knocked his chair over. “That looks Photoshopped! It’s impossible that he has pictures!”
Roan raised his eyebrows. “Impossible?”
Younge sat back down, leaning back in his chair with his legs out in front of him, arms crossed on his chest. “They’re clearly faked.”
“And on that note,” Roan said, his smile a bit gleeful, “Chris, we talked about doing a paternity test. It seems a simple and obvious answer to the question of whether you’re Will’s father. We asked you to do one before returning on the show, and yet you refuse to do it. Can you tell us about that?”
Will swallowed. He hadn’t known they had asked him to do that before coming on the show. Had they forced it in the end? Would they reveal the results on the show?
Younge shifted in his chair. “I’m not refusing, exactly. It’s just that I don’t trust those things. How do you know that some technician didn’t get paid off to switch the samples? The Darcys are crazy-rich; they could do something like that. And, well, Rebecca Wickham did have a lot of short-term boyfriends around the time I dated her. It’s possible that I’m not George’s biological father, but he was the son of my heart.”
Will leaned forward
. “That’s a complete departure from what you’ve been saying before. If you’re not my biological father, what’s to prove you aren’t some guy off the street who decided to run a scam?”
Younge scoffed. “And who knew all of those things about your mother? You have to admit that I know her well, dare I say, even better than you do!”
“My mother had many boyfriends, Mr. Younge,” Will said vehemently. “The things you know might mean you knew her, but that doesn’t mean you know me or that you took any kind of role in my life.”
Younge looked surprised at Will’s strong response and maybe even a little uncertain. Will could feel his confidence growing. Younge didn’t have any proof; he didn’t have anything. Will was certain, suddenly, that he knew what a paternity test would show. Younge was not his father, biological or otherwise, and Younge knew it, too.
“Well,” Roan said, “it’s been fun hearing from the two of you, but I have somebody else who wants to chime in here.”
Will sat back. Now the rest of the plan could unfold.
An older man with dark, curly hair and glasses walked onto the stage. Younge visibly paled, a sight that reassured Will.
“Mark Torres,” Roan said, shaking the newcomer’s hand and directing him to a seat. “A friend of yours contacted me and said you might have some useful information for me.
Mark visibly swallowed as he looked at the live audience. “I, uh . . .” He looked back at Roan. “Yes, I have plenty.”
“So first, tell us who you are and how you know these two men.”
Mark nodded. “I’m Mark Torres, and I own an auto repair shop. I dated Will’s mother for a couple of years, from about 2000 to 2002. And,” he said, with a nervous look at Younge, “I worked with Chris Younge at another auto shop around that time. We were coworkers then. I was fired for drinking on the job a little while before Will’s mother and I broke up, and a couple of months later I got my act together enough to start working at a different local shop. I bought that shop two years ago.”
Will gazed at Younge. The man’s hands were clenched in fists, and he looked as if he desperately wanted to interrupt but didn’t know what to say.
“Will—George at the time—and his mother lived with me in my apartment for those two years. I will confess that I didn’t pay much attention to Will at the time, something I regret now, but I knew him reasonably well. In 2002, I discovered that Rebecca was cheating on me with Younge.” He practically spat out the last words.
“It’s no surprise that she’d pick a man like me over somebody like you,” Younge broke in, “but it’s all a lie nonetheless. I dated Rebecca back in 1990, and your ass is just making this all up to suck up to the Darcys. Probably getting paid to lie for them.”
Mark glared at Younge and took a deep breath. “I told her to get out, and she did, taking Will with her. I heard later from mutual friends that she’d gone to live in the shelter on East Third but that she continued her relationship with Younge when she could get away to see him. I do, however, know when she met Younge, because I was the one who introduced them, much to my regret. She met him in 2002.”
“He’s lying,” Younge burst out. “Rebecca and I just pretended to meet for the first time then. We were hiding our relationship.”
“Odd, then,” Mark fired back, “that the entire two years that she lived with me, she never once mentioned you, and clearly she wasn’t living with you then. Will couldn’t have left you behind to go live in a homeless shelter, as he’d been living with me for the two years leading up to it.”
“Do you have any proof of this?” Roan asked. Will thought it seemed rather rich to ask for proof now, when he hadn’t bothered to get any from Younge at the start of this entire charade. But then, getting Younge’s story out then, and arguing about it now, were both dramatic and good for ratings, which was, he knew, all that Roan cared about.
“I do. She had done jail time and was on probation when we first started dating. Her probation documents list my address at the time as her home address.” Mark handed paperwork to Roan, and Will saw it appear on the screen. Mark, too, had planned ahead.
“Well,” Roan said, facing Younge now. “This all seems rather damning. We have some significant evidence that you were not a part of Will’s life as you claim, regardless of his paternity. Do you have any response to all of this?”
Younge leaned forward in his chair with a look of defiance. “Look, I never wanted to have to start all of this. I’m not in it for the money. It’s just been hard dealing with cancer treatments and bills, knowing that my son is raking in the millions and has forgotten me so entirely. I literally spent years raising him, teaching him, loving him, and then he was willing to give me up so he could go to some hoity-toity private school and get a new car to go along with his new parents.”
New car? That was news to Will. He wondered if Younge knew how many hours he’d put in back in high school at AirVA in order to get his own used car before graduation. Dad believed in the value of hard work and responsibility. His aunt and uncle had thought Dad was being stingy at first, but they’d come to realize the sense of it. Will still rolled his eyes when he thought about Richard’s poor Honda Civic wrapped around a tree. At least Richard had learned his lesson from that incident.
“Mr. Younge,” Will said, careful to use the formal address to make their lack of a relationship clear, “I am not your son. But I do sympathize with you, dealing with cancer and all the bills from your treatments. I know that can get expensive very quickly. So I’ll make you a deal.”
Younge’s eyes lit up. He leaned forward, mouth slightly open. “A deal?”
Will nodded and did his best to hide his turmoil. “Yes. If you take a paternity test and it shows that you’re my biological father, I’ll pay for your cancer treatments, as long as they’re at an accredited American hospital.” He didn’t want to risk Younge leaving the country and finding somebody he could bribe into pretending to be a doctor to launder the money.
Roan raised his eyebrows. “That sounds like a fine offer, Chris.”
Younge was clearly incensed. “I don’t need to be treated like a liar. I’m the only one here telling the truth!”
“If you are,” Will said calmly, knowing that the tables had turned and he was now the one in control, “then you don’t have anything to hide. I would, of course, need to see your medical records.”
“That’s a violation of my HIPPA rights!” Younge was looking more and more incensed, and Roan seemed happy to let them battle it out. Will imagined that Roan would probably be delighted if they resorted to chair throwing.
“That only means the hospital can’t release them without your permission. But you are free to do so.”
Younge leaned forward in his seat and pointed at Will. “I don’t want to share my hospital records with an ungrateful son. It’s my private information. If you’re going to help me out, it shouldn’t have all these strings on it.”
Will shook his head. “You haven’t convinced me that there’s any connection between us. My pictures make it clear that whoever the boy in your pictures is, he isn’t me. Mark Torres is willing to state that he introduced you to my mother when I was twelve years old and that you weren’t around me at all. Without a positive paternity test, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for you.”
Chris Younge drew a swift breath. Then he stood up and walked off the set.
Roan, Mark, and Will stared after him.
The response was anticlimactic after how tense everything had been. “I think we can safely call that a forfeit,” Will said after a moment.
Roan laughed, then caught himself and coughed. “Well, it seems that Chris Younge isn’t willing to stand his ground when the questions hit too close to home. I guess it’s a good thing you don’t have his genes after all, eh?” He chuckled and patted Will on the back, but at a look from both of his remaining guests, he went on. “Thanks for coming on the show, Will and Mark.”
He shook their hands, then tur
ned back to his audience. “Coming up next for our ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ week: Lena says that her boyfriend Anthony is her baby’s father, but Anthony says it’s his acupuncturist, Deonne. Who is right? Find out next on Let the Truth Hurt with Andy Roan!”
After some dramatic pronouncements and grandstanding for his audience, Roan shook their hands and rushed them off the show now that the drama was over.
Will hadn’t realized how hot he’d been under the bright lights until he returned backstage, suddenly chilly and not quite sure what to do next. The assistant vanished, off to guide the next victim to the cameras, and Will found himself standing alone with Mark Torres.
The man was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his thumbs hooked in his front pockets. Will thought he ought to say something, but the words just wouldn’t come. He was relieved when Mark spoke first.
“Will,” Mark said hesitatingly, “I just wanted to say . . . I’m sorry that it took me so long to come forward. I was worried about, well, what people would think about me for the situation with your mother. I have a family now. My son David, he kept trying to get me to talk to you. Somehow he got your number from his girlfriend—I think he said she’s a relative of yours—and tried a couple of times to have me call you from the shop, but I couldn’t do it. I finally confessed to my wife, and she understood. She told me to talk to you. The phone just didn’t seem right, though, and that’s why I asked David to arrange things.”
“I’m very grateful you came this morning,” Will said quickly. “I understand about not wanting to dredge up the past.”
“Unlike Younge,” he said wryly. “You should sue for slander, you know.”
Will shrugged. “I’ll let the lawyers at AirVA decide if we have a case. I―I’m glad to see you doing so well. I wondered, you know, what had happened to you.”
Mark sighed. “Yeah. When I ended things with your mom―well, I overreacted at the time. I mean, I had to break up with her, but I shouldn’t have kicked her out so abruptly, especially with a kid. I worried about how things were going for you from time to time, but honestly, not as much as I should have.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, the dark mixed with gray now.
A Good Name: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 28
