Because of Audrey

“Wearing?” She’d thrown him. He’d just told her that Audrey had the means to scuttle a huge deal for the family and Mother wanted to know what the woman was wearing?

He rubbed his hands over his face. As dear as his aging parents were, he didn’t have time for their eccentricities.

“Well?” Mom persevered.

Gray pointed to a large illustrated hardcover on the coffee table. In a full-page photo on the cover, Jackie Kennedy wore the pink suit she’d had on the day her husband was assassinated.

“She wore a suit like that, but it was gray with white trim.”

His mother caught her breath. “A vintage Chanel? I always knew Audrey had class.”

He thought of the full curves shaping the suit. Class? Yes, but also a whole lot more.

“No hat?”

He mentioned the red hat that had matched her lipstick and her nail polish and the glimpse of her toenails he’d seen through her open-toed black suede pumps, which looked as though they’d come straight out of the forties.

“Describe the hat.”

When he finished, Mother nodded her approval. “A pillbox. You don’t see those anymore. Was she wearing gloves?”

Thinking of those bright red nails, he shook his head.

“Ah, well,” she said, “I guess times have changed. Too bad she hadn’t really completed the outfit, though, if you know what I mean.”

He didn’t have a clue.

“Have you thought anymore about what we discussed last night?” she asked.

What they’d discussed many nights since he’d moved back home had been his getting married and having children. His parents wanted to meet their grandchildren before they died. Gray still had to produce those grandchildren. First he needed a partner. It should be the least he could do, but he thought of Marnie and held his breath until the pain passed.

“I’m thinking about it.”

Mother smiled. Honestly, he lived to make her happy, but how did a man snap his fingers and, poof, there would be a wife, ready and willing to bear his children?

He headed upstairs to his bedroom. He needed to change his shirt. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock in the morning and the day not yet hot, but under his business jacket, he’d been sweating like a linebacker. Since the car accident, his body had been betraying him in strange ways. A giant rodent gnawed gaping holes in the cool, collected persona he’d cultivated in business, and he didn’t have a clue how to boot the offending creature from his body.

He picked up a letter that had arrived yesterday, addressed to his father, but Gray handled all of his parents’ correspondence these days. They’d relinquished that responsibility happily, and thank God for that. What if Mother had opened this instead of him?

The thought sent a shiver through him. Mom would have been devastated. He had to protect her at all costs.

He read it yet again with a creepy fascination, as though rubbernecking at a traffic accident.

I have three children to support. Their father is dead. My oldest son has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I can’t pay for his therapy. He needs a wheelchair. I need money. I’m desperate. I’ll go to the newspapers.

Shelly Harper

Who was this woman? This Shelly? Was she for real? Were her accusations true? That Dad was her father? He checked the postmark. Denver. Too close to home for comfort’s sake, only an hour away.

At heart, Gray was a cynic and took nothing at face value.

And yet, he had an eerie suspicion that everything she’d said was true.

She’d enclosed a birth certificate, hers, with his dad’s name on it, along with a photograph of herself that showed a strong likeness to Dad. The final shot, though, of three children, one of whom was the spitting image of himself at around nine or ten, left him shaken.

It all seemed legit. These kids looked like family. The woman bore an eerie resemblance to him.

Nonetheless, after he’d received the letter yesterday, he’d posted one back to her. I need proof. Give me a DNA sample for testing.

Let’s see if she had the nerve to provide one.

His gut screamed she was telling the truth. In business, he trusted his instincts all the time—they rarely steered him wrong—but how could this be real? Dad couldn’t possibly have committed adultery. Could he have? Dad?

If the woman’s allegations were true, Gray would need quick money to buy her off. It took time to come up with the kind of cash she demanded—four hundred thousand dollars.

Four hundred thousand dollars. Mind-boggling. He started to sweat again.

Yes, his business was successful, but he wasn’t a millionaire. He didn’t have buckets of cash lying around.

He’d already started things rolling yesterday with instructions for his CFO to liquidate certain of his own assets, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

Farm-Green was willing to buy now—the ultimate answer to this mess.

The woman’s threat filled him with cold dread.

How could Gray ever let Mom find out? How could she survive the betrayal once she knew that her husband had been unfaithful, that she’d been wrong about his character throughout her marriage?

He dropped into his old desk chair. It squeaked under his weight. He wouldn’t let Mom be ruined by this. He threw the paper on to the desk—not while he had any say in the matter. But what could he do? If this woman was telling the truth—and it sure looked as though she was—she had a real need.

Then again, if what she claimed was true, she was his half sister and only a year older than he.

Man, that floored him. He’d been a happy child, but so alone. For a long time, there’d been an emptiness inside of him, a wish for more, a sense that he’d lost something he couldn’t name and couldn’t get back.

For years, he’d wanted a sibling.

Was he willing to accept this woman’s assertions too easily because of a long-buried wish for a brother or sister? For something to combat being alone in the future after his parents died, and to assuage his current loneliness?

How was her existence even possible? Dad had adored Mom all of his life. Dad, the epitome of ethics and morals, a man whose backbone and strength of character were admired by all, couldn’t have had an affair.

Gray, though, was stuck considering the unthinkable, that his dad had fathered an illegitimate child while married to his mom.

Talk to Dad.

Can’t. What if I find out it’s true?

Suck it up and ask.

It would shatter Gray, make a mockery of his history and his parents’ history.