Page 91 of The Secret
“Not talking?”
She closes her eyes, her smile widening, and I grin at her. Maybe she can’t talk. Putting the weight on my heels, I straighten, tremors still rolling through me. She puts an arm behind her head and watches me with eyes half-mast. Smiling, I shake my head before heading off down the corridor to find a warm cloth. When I come back, she closes her eyes on a long sigh as I wipe carefully between her legs, then throw the cloth on the floor and pull the white cotton duvet over us both, curling around her.
The silence of the apartment shifts through me, and I close my eyes inhaling the scent of her hair, her warmth and softness, her skin against my forearm where it’s resting on her stomach. I’m bone tired. Losing her and the panic of the last few days, the physical labor of the farm, has wiped me out.
“I couldn’t get hold of you. Your location stopped updating. I knew you were here, but not where. Your DRC phone died and your old US number doesn’t work anymore,” I mumble.
She sighs. “Yeah. I changed my US number. After you went missing, it tortured me for a long time. I kept hoping that one day I’d get a text from you.”
God. I kiss her temple. “I’m so sorry. For all of it.” And Jesus, I understand. The panic. The powerlessness. “Don’t fucking leave me again,” I mutter into her hair. After what I put her through, is that even fair? I’m behaving like a caveman.
She shifts around and I open my eyes to look at her. Her gaze is wide, and a small frown sits between her eyebrows.Fuck.She licks her lips.
“I know Benny is your child,” she says.
41
LISS
Monday, April 11, 2022
Idon’t like the look on Dan’s face when I say this. My stomach drops.
“What makes you think she’s mine?” he asks.
Ugh. This is the problem with poking around: You eventually have to admit to it.
“Nathanial implied you were her dad when I took Benny down to the stables.”
Dan opens his mouth, and I rush on.
“But then I … I looked at some papers on Jed’s desk. I wasn’t really snooping; it was more sympathy for you with all the work on the farm and how difficult it all was … but I did look through stuff and I discovered her birth certificate.” She rolls her lips together. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone looking, and once I had, I didn’t know what to do with what I’d found.”
“That’s why you ran away?”
I screw my face up. “Sort of. I actually came back to confront my dad.”
“Your dad?” Then he shakes his head. “Let’s discuss this first and come back to your dad.” His eyes narrow. “Would it matter if Benny was my child?”
Is he saying she’s his? “It would matter that you’d lied to me,” I say as steadily as I can, rolling back flat on the bed, shifting away from him. I stare at the ceiling. I want to be clear about what I say here. “After everything that’s happened, the way you vanished … maybe you don’t trust me because you think I keep leaving, but you disappeared and appeared again with a daughter. I want to be on a firm footing with you, not half-truths. My dad did things behind my back all the time, and I need someone who’ll give me honesty.”
Dan props up on one arm immediately, looking down into my face. He looks serious. Concerned. And my heart sinks.
“Linda used my father’s horses to ride for years, but then she and Jed got together and while he was trying to extricate himself, Linda slept with my dad and got pregnant: deliberately. Jed overheard her scheming one night out in the barn when she was talking on her phone. Her plan was to take us for as much money as she could, and you’ve probably realized by now my dad was a wealthy man. The problem was that Linda had form. She married an older guy when she was young and then divorced him, netting herself a tidy sum. So my dad, Jed, and I had a meeting: We couldn’t let her go after the farm. My father was a devious asshole, but Jed and I went along with it because there was no way we wanted Linda to get her hands on everything. She was already threatening Dad with paternity lawsuits and media exposure. We agreed I’d be the fall guy. Dad took me out of his will and left everything to Jed. I got friendly with Linda and made her think that I’d look after her. Even though she slept with my dad, he was never interested in her, and she knew he was a womanizer and that he’d fight her tooth and nail. I persuaded her to put my name on the birth certificate.
Of course, it gave her very little claim on anything. She was furious when she found out, and she walked out, leaving Benny with my dad. Legally, I’m on the birth certificate and we’ll have to sort that out at some point, but it’s way down the agenda. Neither Jed nor I have felt like getting into more legal issues. Timing-wise, there was, and still is, a question of whether Jed or my dad is Benny’s father. Jed’s always said it doesn’t matter to him, that he sees Benny as his whatever.”
But my heart is expanding like it’s going to explode with relief. He didn’t lie to me, that he just didn’t tell me the whole story. And God do I know about scheming people and the constant rearguard action you have to take to stop yourself from getting sucked into their bullshit.
Dan rolls onto his back and looks at the ceiling. “I didn’t tell you this because I’d just got you back in my life and it didn’t seem that important.” He runs his hand through his hair. “That probably sounds terrible, but compared to what we’ve been through over the last three years, Benny’s birth certificate seemed like a nonissue.” He winces. “Obviously it isn’t. I’m so sorry, Liss.”
“No, I get it.”
“I don’t like what I did with Linda, but it felt really necessary at the time. Now … I don’t know. On the one hand I feel terrible, like I’d do anything to protect my family’s money. And maybe I would. But on the other hand, the farm was in real trouble then; it was burning through cash and we didn’t have a lot of options. My dad was furious about Linda, Jed too, with himself more than anything. Jed’s a difficult guy, but he’s been there for me and I wanted to be there for him.” He runs a hand down his face. “In theory, the farm is worth a lot of money, but as you probably realized if you looked through the desk, it’s only valuable if you can make it into a profitable business.”
“And she abandoned her only child? My God, I just can’t imagine …”
“Benny was just a means to an end for Linda. She was an awful woman. In the short relationship I had with her, it became abundantly clear how devious she was.” He turns his head on the pillow. “I asked whether it matters with Benny because she’s important to me. Even though she’s not my child, in some ways I love her like she is. She’s a sister, maybe a niece, but she feels like more than that.”
