Page 53 of Wait a HO HO HO Second!

Joy leaned forward. “What? Did Lorelei know? She staunchly refused to talk about it.”

“Never told her,” Kian admitted, shaking his head. “We argued about it often when I was a teen. Then I learned about DNA testing and decided to wait until I turned eighteen to take a test. She couldn’t stop me then.”

“Something tells me this might be a ‘be careful what you wish for’ situation.” Joy was genuinely surprised that Kian had gone behind Lorelei’s back to find his father. She was even more surprised that he was telling her. His paternity had always been a tightly held secret. She never knew why, but she respected Lorelei’s wishes and never brought it up.

“You’d be correct,” he said, his laughter self-deprecating. “I took the test, and when the results came back, it was clear why she didn’t want me to know who he was.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Oh, no,” Kian said, shaking the ice in his cup. “He was in a maximum-security prison for sexual assault with a deadly weapon times four. He must not have liked prison life because they found him dead in his cell one morning.”

“Wait,” she grimaced, unsure how to ask the question. “Were you?” Rather than finish, she motioned with her finger, as though he would understand.

“The math works,” Kian admitted. “But his victims were protected, so I couldn’t access that information without requesting it through the court system. If Mom was one of his victims, I wasn’t about to do that. I’m glad she went to the grave not knowing.”

The look on Kian’s face devastated Joy. It was as if his little boy’s dreams of reuniting with his father had been ground to dust. She stood, walked to him, and knelt, taking his hands. “Our lineage is nowhere near as important as we think it is. Adopted kids become who they are because of the people who raise them, not the people who created them.”

Kian squeezed her hands back and smiled. “You know that one well, don’t you? Your dad never remarried, did he?”

“Nope,” Joy said with a shrug. “He and Mom were never divorced.”

“Serious?”

“Dead,” she said, nodding. “Which is probably what my mom is, though we have no proof of it.”

“Because someone doesn’t just go poof?” Kian asked, remembering the rumors in school that said her mom had literally been there one day and gone the next.

“Not when you know their name, Social Security number, and every other identifying detail. Dad spent thousands of dollars in the early days trying to find her, but no one could. Her case remains open with the Snowcap Ridge Police.”

“Maybe she didn’t leave willingly?” Kian asked, tipping his head. Joy could see in his eyes how much he wanted that to be true for her, that her mother hadn’t abandoned her as a newborn and taken off for parts unknown. “Dad knows she left of her own volition. Sorry to crush your hope, but she packed a suitcase and left a note. It’s just that when he tried to go after her for full custody, child support, and a divorce, she’d disappeared.”

“To this day, you don’t know whether she’s alive or dead?” he asked, and she shook her head no.

“Honestly, she’s always been dead to me. What she did was shitty, and my dad deserved better.”

“You deserved better,” Kian said, shaking her hands once. “That’s why I’m glad you had my mom in your life, even if it was only for a short time. She was the kind of mom you deserved.”

“Maybe, but I wish she had been the mom you needed as well.”

His shrug was lazy. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe he was just okay with the past. “After learning about my father and what he did, I feel lucky to be alive. If Mom was one of his victims, she didn’t have to have me, and even if she did, she didn’t have to keep me. She did the best she could with the hand she was dealt. In therapy, I learned to extend grace to people who may be going through something in life they can’t or don’t want to talk about. Once I framed it that way with Mom, my anger drained away. I’m confident she was one of his victims, and that left me feeling terrible for what she’d been through. I was a daily reminder of the terror she experienced, but I was forever grateful that she had the strength to keep me, even if she struggled in the early days to bond with me.”

“But you shouldn’t feel it was your fault. It wasn’t,” Joy said emphatically.

“That never crossed my mind, actually. It was more that she had gone through something traumatic, and I was the result. She did the best she could. I was well taken care of and didn’t want for anything.”

“Except her love,” Joy whispered.

“Except for her love, which, in hindsight, I had, she just couldn’t show it the way most mothers do. She built an empire for me. That was her therapy. My freshman year of college was full of revelations. We spent that Christmas together in Vail, and I apologized to her for everything that had happened when I was a kid.”

“Do you think she knew you’d looked into your paternity?” Joy asked, tipping her head to the side. “I remember when Lorelei came home from that trip. She was different. Lighter. Almost relieved. Yet I’d found her crying multiple times in January. Just staring out the window, crying. She never could tell me why.”

“I was born on October eighth,” he said, giving her a moment to do the math. “Which means I was conceived in January.” Kian let out a breath, then offered a weak smile. “This conversation got heavier than I’d planned.”

“The heavy conversations help us learn about each other on a deeper level. Life sure can deal us a hard hand to play, though, can’t it?” Joy asked, leaning against his legs to ease the pressure on her knees. Why on earth had she decided to kneel by him? There was no way she could get up without help, but would telling him that make her look weak? Maybe not, but it would ding her ego. All she wanted him to see was a strong, capable woman. Vulnerability was not an option for Joy, now or ever.

“It can, but sometimes we get a queen-high hand. When we do, we gotta know when to hold it and when it’s time to play it. Is this the right time for me to play my queen, Joy?”

Shaking her head, she fell to her hip, sadness filling her. “No, Kian. You’re made for the Sabrinas of the world, not the Joys of the world.”