“You broke them up?”
“Yourmotherbroke them up. She finally came to her senses and realized they never should have been together in the first place. Everyone knew it. Her parents. Mine. We all knew I was better suited for your mother than Prescott.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He was a scholarship student, for one.” Her father—or whoever he was—said this as if it were the ultimate sin. “He had no money. No chance of a real future. Not the kind of future a woman like your mother deserved.”
Evie was starting to understand. Denny Prescott didn’t come from a wealthy family, therefore he wasn’t worthy.
Typical East Hamptons attitude.
“So you what…swooped in and saved Mom from a life of despair?” Her sarcasm was more than a little obvious.
“I saved her from a life that would have been mediocre, at best. And I didn’t want that for her.”
“Let me guess, because you loved her.” Evie’s comment came out as a sarcastic quip, rather than a question.
“You’re damn right I loved her!” He took a storming step toward her. “Don’t you get it? Your mother was my everything. Myeverything!And when she told me she was pregnant with you, I was over the moon with joy. I took time off of work and was at every single doctor’s appointment…and the day I saw you for the very first time on that ultrasound screen, I thought,‘My god. My life is perfect’. Only it wasn’t perfect. It was all a façade. A joke created by your lying, cheating mother, and I…” Real emotion seemed to thicken her father’s throat. “I was the goddamn punchline.”
“You’re saying Mom cheated on you with this Denny Prescott guy?”
“She swore it was a one-time thing. A moment of weakness that just happened to result in your conception.”
“You think it was more than that.” Evie effortlessly surmised. “You think they’d been seeing each other behind your back for a while.”
“Wrong again, dear daughter.” His last word was an apparent dig. “I don’t think they everstoppedseeing one another.”
The room began to spin, and it was becoming harder and harder to breathe. Feeling sick to the point of nearly vomiting, she was forced to support herself with a hand on the edge of her father’s desk.
Except he wasn’t her father. A man named Denny Prescott was her father. The proof was clutched tightly in her white-knuckled fist.
Her mother had lied to her. The basis for Evie’s entireexistencehad been one giant lie.
It was no wonder the man standing before her never acted the way a father should. All those years of him being disinterested and distant. The times she’d tried over and over to gain even a fraction of his attention. Or a sliver of his love.
He hadn’t dismissed her because she’d been born a girl rather than a boy. She couldn’t even blame his presumed disdain on the stresses of his job or that maybe he hadn’t wanted children to begin with.
Phillip Mitchell was many things, but even she had to admit he was no liar. Sure, he’d initially tried excusing his claims of nothaving a daughter as his belief her call from the cave had been a scam. But now Evie understood why.
He’d been protecting her from the truth. Or, more accurately, he’d been trying to protect himself…and the Mitchell family name.
“That’s why you never said anything.” She glanced back up at her father. No…atPhillip.“You never told me the truth about this…about us…because it would sully your precious reputation.”
“It also would have sullied yourmother’sreputation.” A hint of real emotion flared behind his otherwise cold eyes.
“Did you ever tell her you knew?”
“I confronted her with that same piece of paper the day I got the results.”
“And?”
“And we both agreed it was in all our best interests to keep the truth a secret.”
“From me?”
“From everyone.”
Everyone…