1
ELENA
My father was dead.
I stared at the photo with the newspaper clipping in my hands, running my thumb over the face I barely recognized, my throat tight. Anthony Cassaro. The man who'd played a part in my being here. A man whose last name I'd never even known.
I'd always wondered what had become of him, why he'd never really been my father. And now, I finally knew where he'd disappeared to.
But despite a few memories of the man printed before me, he was essentially a stranger with my smile. The last time I'd seen him, I was eleven years old, sitting on our porch steps as he promised to come back soon. He'd given me a stuffed horse toy, saying all girls loved horses at my age, patted my head, and had said he'd be back in about a month, because work was busy.
Sixteen years later, I finally had my answer as to why he never did. And I didn't know how to feel. Sad? Angry? Relieved?
"I'm sorry, Elena." Trent pushed the manila folder across the coffee shop table. "I wish I had better news."
I set down the obituary clipping, my coffee growing cold beside it. "How long?" I couldn't draw my gaze from the photo.Trent was oddly old-school, not showing me screenshot or photo on his phone. No, he was keeping everything on paper, but then again, it would be useful for clients in his line of work.
"Fourteen years ago." Trent Simpson, my old classmate's brother and the cheapest private investigator I could find, shifted uncomfortably. "Car accident."
Sixteen years since I'd seen him. Sixteen years I'd believed he'd turned his back on us, abandoned us as he worked abroad or on the road. Fourteen years since the monthly checks had stopped coming.
The possibility something had happened had crossed my mind, of course. When the monthly checks abruptly stopped, I'd feared the worst. But seeing it confirmed in black and white hollowed me out in ways I hadn't expected.
Fourteen years I'd been hating a dead man.
The thought made my stomach knot.
Why had he not come to see us in the two years before his death though? Why had he abandoned us during that time?
Who really was this man that had played a role into bringing me into this world? A man my mother had spoken rarely of, but had done her best to never paint him in a bad light.
"The whole thing seems… off." Trent lowered his voice, leaning forward. His five o'clock shadow and the dark circles under his eyes suggested he'd put in more hours than I was paying him for. "Something about the paperwork surrounding his death feels strange. Nothing I can put my finger on yet. There are inconsistencies in the timeline and medical reports that raise questions." He shrugged. "Could be nothing, but I'll keep digging."
I nodded, numb, not quite understanding what any of that meant to me anyway. The man I'd thought was my last hope was nothing more than a skeleton I'd had to dig up from my past. Aman who'd walked away, who'd barely been there to begin with. A ghost of my past.
"Was there a will or anything?" My mind was a jumbled mess of guilt and unease, but I tried to focus on what could be a silver lining. Another way to fix this. Maybe there was a way he could still help me.
So I didn't lose both parents.
But if he'd died so long ago, why had we never been informed? Had we been too hard to find? No, we'd not moved, and it wasn't like we were trying to hide.
My stomach churned, already dreading the truth. Perhaps we'd not meant a thing to him overall, we were just throwaways.
But then, why the monthly checks?
Trent hesitated before pulling out another folder from his suitcase on the floor and sliding it over. "That's the other part." He pursed his lips as he stared hard at me, keeping his hand on the folder so I couldn't immediately open it. "Elena, you appear to have been conceived via an affair. You told me you didn't know his last name, and I think there's a reason you were never made aware of it. When I first told you it, you didn't know it. But I know why. He was a married man."
I stared at him, the words turning over in my mind as my stomach plummeted.
I was a bastard child?
I shook my head, not wanting to believe it. But it also made sense now that I considered it. My mother had always been secretive about my father, saying he worked abroad or on the road for months at a time, that they'd met when he'd stayed at the high-end motel she'd worked at. That he'd been more than willing to provide for us, but his work had him traveling all over the world.
Had he lied to my mother? Hidden a whole other life from her? I doubted my mother was that blind, which made me feel even more sick.
Had she lied to me? Spun me stories since she'd known he was married? Or had she found out afterwards and twisted it?
If so, why'd he still even visit? Out of obligation?
