She pulled out her phone and texted him.
Are you home?
I am.
Look out your window.
She saw the blinds open in the second-story window of his apartment.
I’m glad you’re here. I need to talk to you about something. Come up.
She felt better already because of how welcome he made her feel. He always brightened her days, especially when they got tough. It warmed her from the inside out.
When she got upstairs to his place, he was waiting for her at the door. He was wearing jeans and a brown Life is Good T-shirt with a picture of a dog next to a campfire. It struck her as funny because she didn’t think of him as rugged or outdoorsy. He was more of a suit-and-tie, office sort of guy. Or better yet, a tangled-bodies-in-the-bedroom type.
The last thought made her blush. It was pretty amazing that she would even think that way because her relationships never made it to the point where her subconscious was contemplating getting—no, longing to get—naked and tangled up with a man. But this wasn’t just any man. This was Joaquin.
Joaquin, who had said he was falling in love with her, which had opened the flood gates and allowed so many emotions to start pouring out.
As she fell into his arms, inhaling the delicious scent of him, she felt as if she’d finally found the place where she belonged.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Joaquin asked. “Are you okay?”
He held her at arm’s length for a moment, studying her face. When she didn’t answer he said, “Come in. Talk to me.”
He ushered her inside. He was leasing the furnished apartment for six months while he was working on the project for Robinson. The place was clean and, while the furniture wasn’t fancy, it looked new and functional. He had told her not too long ago that if he stayed in Austin, he would look to buy. He’d even asked her to recommend good areas. While he hadn’t said anything about them moving in together, it seemed as if they had a future.
In the midst of the family maelstrom, he was her touchstone, her beacon in the stormy night.
She took a seat on the couch and was a little surprised when he chose the chair across from her rather than sitting next to her, but the concern on his face was real.
“Zoe? What’s going on?”
For a moment she couldn’t speak. She didn’t know where to start or how to tell him that the one man in her life she had always trusted had been lying to her and her siblings their entire lives.
Finally she forced out the words. “I’m confiding in you. Please promise me what I tell you will remain in the strictest confidence. Because I trust you, Joaquin.”
He nodded. His brows knit with obvious concern.
“Of course.”
“It turns out that my dad is Jerome Fortune, after all.”
His eyes widened and, for a moment, he looked as though she had just told him she had had a personal encounter with the Sasquatch. In a sense, Jerome Fortune did feel like a mythical creature.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean exactly what I said. Gerald Robinson is Jerome Fortune.”
He shook his head. “No, what I meant was, how do you know this, or what makes you think this? You were always so adamantly against your siblings pushing to establish this connection. Did they find some evidence that supports their theory?”
“No. I’m the one who found it. Actually, it’s not just evidence. It’s irrefutable proof.”
His eyes widened again and all of a sudden a look of realization passed over his face. “Is it the ring? Did you talk to your father?”
She nodded, and she hated herself, but the tears started falling and she couldn’t stop them.
“I went to see him this morning and we sort of had it out. He tried to deny it at first, but when I threatened to take the picture to Ben, he told me everything. The ring is only the tip of the iceberg.”
She didn’t know if she could tell him, because relaying the whole sordid tale to someone else underscored the terrible things her father was capable of, the things he’d done. But she needed his advice. She needed to sort it all out and the only way she could do that was to review everything her dad had told her, detail by dirty detail.
She took a deep breath and told Joaquin everything.
“Now I don’t know what to do. I told him I wouldn’t say anything to my brothers and sisters. And when I came over here, I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do—”
“Of course it is. You have to tell them, Zoe. You owe it to them.”
She flinched at his words. “What I started to say was, after telling you everything, I think I’ve decided that it’s not my place to tell them. He needs to be the one to do that.”
Joaquin shook his head resolutely. “I don’t agree with you.”
Irritation sparked in her veins. Why was he being like this? She may have thought she’d come over here for advice, but she hadn’t asked him for any. And as it turned out, she didn’t want it; she just needed a trusted sounding board.
“I don’t mean to be mean,” she said, “but I didn’t ask you if you agreed or not.”
She saw his walls go up and his gate slam shut.
“Then why did you come over here?”
His words connected like a punch to the gut. Wow. And it hurt.
“It certainly wasn’t to make you mad. I came over here because I needed someone to listen. I had no idea this would make you so angry and judgmental.”
Yeah, why was he so angry about this? It really didn’t have anything to do with him. That was one of the reasons she’d decided to talk to him about it. Well, that, and if things were getting as serious between them as they seemed, she needed to be able to share things like this with him. But what she didn’t need was stern disapproval.
He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Look, Zoe, you said yourself that one of the reasons you were upset was that he had kept your heritage from you all these years. Because of that, you’ll never know your grandmother. You know firsthand that it’s wrong to keep someone’s heritage from him or her. Now, no matter how painful it is for you, you owe it to your siblings to tell them what you’ve discovered.”
“Joaquin, it’s not my secret to tell.”
He shrugged. “Since we’re talking about your father and I’m advocating full disclosure, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “You can tell me anything.”
“You might not want to hear this. But that day that we were at Cowboy Country, I saw your father getting pretty cozy with a woman who wasn’t your mother.”
Zoe winced. Her father’s indiscretions weren’t a secret. Even though it hurt her heart and was embarrassing, the issue was between him and her mother. She certainly didn’t want to discuss it with Joaquin. Not on top of what she’d come to tell him. “I appreciate you telling me, but that’s nothing compared to what I learned today.”
Joaquin squinted at her. “Cheating is nothing?”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “You’re putting words in my mouth. Don’t.”
The two of them sat there in stalemate silence. He wasn’t going to budge and neither was she. She did appreciate his honesty, but the last thing she needed right now was another issue heaped on top of the mess she was already carrying. She couldn’t even look at Joaquin right now. She couldn’t even look at him. Actually she wished she hadn’t told him. She wished she hadn’t even come over.
She stood. “I need to go. Please just forget I said anything about this.”
As she started toward the door, she spied his copy of the consensual relationship agreement lying on the bar area that separated the kitchen from the living room. He still hadn’t signed it. Great. She wasn’t about to remind him about it. He was a big boy and God knew a fight
wasn’t the right moment to bring that up.
Were they having their first fight?
“Zoe, I don’t mean to be unsupportive. Secrets are never a good idea. Your siblings had a feeling that your father was Jerome Fortune and it turns out to be the truth. You keeping your dad’s confession from them doesn’t change the facts. It also doesn’t mean that you’re spreading gossip and rumors. You are not going to hurt them by telling them the truth. You are going to give them a gift of knowing who they really are. If anything, you’re hurting them by not telling them.”
Obviously they weren’t going to solve anything. Joaquin may have had a point that keeping this to herself wasn’t going to change the truth, but she stood by the fact that it wasn’t her place to tell her father’s story. Her dad may have proved himself to be a liar, but he was still her dad. He had always been good to her. Basically, without saying it, she had promised him he could tell his kids the truth in his own way and in his own time. She couldn’t see how Joaquin could think he was being supportive by badgering her to break a promise.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Joaquin.”
“I’m speaking from a place of experience, Zoe.”
Before she could think better of it, she whirled around. “How in the world could you have had a similar experience to this? Your family is wonderful. I met your dad. He’s great. I’m sure he never faked his death, created a new identity and pretended to be someone he’s not. So please don’t say that you’ve been here, because you haven’t.”
“It’s true, Orlando is a great man. But sometimes things are not always as they appear on the surface. So, even though I haven’t experienced verbatim what you’re going through, I am facing the challenge of someone dear to me not being who they think they are.” He softened his tone. “But you wouldn’t know that because I haven’t told you.”
What in the world?
“What are you talking about, Joaquin?”
Those lips that she loved so much were pressed into a thin line and she could see the wheels in his mind turning. He looked just as upset as she felt.
She walked back to the sofa and lowered herself onto the cushion.
“Please tell me what’s going on,” she said. “Help me understand.”
He looked at her with such heartbreak in his eyes that she wanted to take him into her arms and assure him that, no matter what it was, together they could make it better. But she didn’t. Instead she sat there, letting him tell her in his own time.
“In a nutshell, I have very good reason to believe that Orlando is not my father. Or not my biological father, anyway. I don’t know if he knows. I do know that once upon a time my mother had a thing for my uncle Esteban and apparently he led her on quite a chase. I don’t know if my dad stole my mother away from my uncle or what happened. But I found a person with Orlando’s blood type can’t father a child with mine.”
“How did you find out?”
“When my mother was sick. She needed a blood transfusion and Orlando was not a match for her blood type. I was, though. Of course. The doctor had mentioned Orlando’s blood type in passing and it floored me. I remembered some basic genetics from high school biology, and there was no way that his blood type and my mother’s blood type would produce a baby with my blood type.”
Zoe reached out and squeezed his hand. “Have you talked to your father about this?”
“Not yet.”
“How long has your mom been gone?”
“She died four years ago.”
Zoe tried not to frown. “That was a while ago. Why haven’t you talked to your dad about it?”
“That’s a good question. I don’t know the whole story. But I have reason to believe that my mother may have been cheating on him. He may be aware of it, too. And that could be why he brushed me off when I initially questioned the discrepancy at the hospital. But my mother was dying and my dad was grief-stricken. She was his soul mate and if he does know, he obviously forgave her.
“For a long time I brushed it off because I thought if he could forgive her, then there was no reason to talk about it. But the more time that went by, the more it weighed on me. If he’s not my biological father, who is? I mean, Orlando was the best dad anyone could ever want, but I finally came to the conclusion that knowing about my birth father didn’t necessarily have to take anything away from the love and gratitude I feel for Orlando.”
“So...why are you having a tough time talking to him about it?”
“How do you ask your father if your mother—his wife, his soul mate—was unfaithful? It’s even trickier than that. I think I know who my birth father might be.”
Zoe’s eyes widened and she leaned forward. “Who?”
“I have very good reason to believe that my mother may have had an affair with my uncle Esteban, my father’s brother. I put two and two together and it just made sense. My dad and my uncle have been estranged for years—all my life. Nobody talks about the reason they don’t speak. I’ve wondered if anybody even knows. My dad and my uncle aren’t prone to holding grudges with anyone else. But the bad blood between them seems to run deep. It’s the only thing that makes sense. So, for the last year or so, I’ve been pondering whether my uncle actually is my father. And wondering if Orlando has been keeping it from me all this time.”
Zoe’s heart ached for him. That would be a huge burden to shoulder. She understood why he might hesitate to bring up the issue after it had been buried all these years. Even though it wasn’t a carbon copy of her own situation, it was parallel and she understood the angst he must be feeling. She just wondered why he couldn’t seem to cut her any slack, since he hadn’t yet faced his own demons.
“I’ve contemplated talking to Esteban about it, but I feel duty bound to discuss it with Orlando first.”
“I totally get that,” said Zoe. “So, are you going to talk to your dad?”
Joaquin shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been waiting for the right time. At first Orlando was so grief-stricken I thought he was never going to get over my mother’s death. The last thing he needed was for me to ask, ‘Oh, by the way, did you know your wife may have been having an affair, and did you know that I’m not your biological son?’”
Zoe nodded her understanding.
“My sister Gabi had some medical problems. Her health was still fragile when my mom died. He had just lost his wife and he was afraid he would lose his daughter, too. It wasn’t the time. After he was sure Gabi was stable, he moved to Horseback Hollow. Since I was still in Miami, I barely got to see him as it was. I didn’t want what little time we had together to be overshadowed by the revelation that I’m not his son. Then I moved to Horseback Hollow, fully intending to get to the bottom of the situation, but he had just started coming out of his grief. He’s so happy with Josephine. I just couldn’t pull him back into the shadows again. He’s happy. I can’t remember a time when he was so happy. I guess it was before my mom and Gabi got sick.”
“You do understand that there never will be a perfect time, right?” Zoe’s voice was gentle. “Since it’s weighing so heavily on you, I think you need to just go visit your father and talk to him. He is happy now. If he takes it hard, he has Josephine to lean on.”
She shook her head and gave him a sad smile. “Now it’s my turn to be the bossy one. Take it from someone who knows. You think it’s going to be painful to dig up the past, but the truth is, it’s worse to keep it bottled up. Silence is so corrosive. It eats away at you and your relationships. Look at the wedges that my father’s lies have driven between my brothers and sisters and me, and between them and him. I know the truth and I still maintain that my dad needs to be the one to tell them, but there’s no getting around it. The truth is the only thing that will set you free, and the only way you’re going to find that truth is to talk to Orlando yourself. Otherwise, this baggage you’re carrying arou
nd will keep coming between you and the life you deserve. The past doesn’t change how Orlando has loved you and it doesn’t have to change your relationship with him going forward. Take it from someone who is speaking from experience.”
She’d meant the part about speaking from experience to lighten the mood, since she was echoing what he’d said earlier. But Joaquin wasn’t laughing. He was sitting there with a blank look on his face that bordered on annoyance.
“Look, I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on these issues,” he said. “I think you need to tell your siblings and I think there will be a better time to talk to my dad about my issue.”
“You think I’m wrong for not breaking my father’s confidence, but you are not willing to talk to your father about your paternity?”
“Right,” Joaquin said. “They are similar situations, but they need to be handled differently. The only reason I brought up my situation was because I know how it feels to be lied to about your heritage. Nobody deserves that, Zoe. I’m not the one keeping this from anyone.”
“You might be if your father doesn’t know. You’re just assuming that he does.”
Joaquin shook his head. “It’s still different. You know and you’re perpetuating the lie if you don’t expose it.”
Who is this person?
Just last night he told her he thought he was falling in love with her. Now he was condemning her and casting her into the same liar’s arena as her father.
“So, you’re pinning this on me? You are not even willing to fix your own situation, and you are judging me for keeping my father’s confidence? Oh, that’s rich, Joaquin. Neither one of us seems to be in a good place to talk about this right now. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
Tears stung her eyes. She swiped at them before they could fall.
She had just put her hand on the doorknob when he said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to sign that form.”
She looked at him over her shoulder and her heart clenched when she saw his face. “The consensual relationship agreement?”
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