I tried to scream, but the sound carried nowhere. The arm dragged me backward, off the road, through the narrow strip of wet bushes beside the building. Panic exploded inside me with such force that I could barely see. I kicked, twisted, and banged my elbow against something solid.
A male voice, urgent and low, reached my ear.
“Don’t fight me. Please. Please. I won’t hurt you.”
I bit his palm anyway.
He cursed under his breath and loosened his grip just enough for me to flinch.
Then he said, “I am your father.”
Everything inside me stopped.
Rain dripped from my hair into my eyes. I turned so quickly I nearly slipped in the mud.
It was the man she met on street corners and at bus stops.
Up close, he looked older than I’d imagined. Maybe in his sixties. Deep lines lined his face. His eyes were red, frightened, staring at me with a kind of desperate tenderness that made no sense.
I backed away until my shoulders hit the brick wall.
“NO.”
“YES.”
“No,” I repeated, more firmly this time. “My father is dead.”
Pain crossed his face like a shadow. “Your mother told you.”
The rain grew heavier. Cars whizzed by just a few feet away, yet the world around us seemed strangely closed off.
I stared at him. “Who are you?”
“My name is Gabriel.” His voice trembled. “And I didn’t want you to hear it from a detective sitting behind a desk. I have sources who tell me he now knows the truth.”
I laughed once, a harsh, breathless laugh. “So you thought attacking me outside my office was better?”
“I didn’t know how else to stop you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He raised both hands slightly, letting me know he wasn’t touching me now. “You’re right. I know. I handled the situation poorly. I just… I knew Keene had found me. I knew he would tell you. I couldn’t let the first truth about me come to you from a stranger.”
The detective had found him.
That meant something terrible: that this man might not be lying.
I should have walked away and trusted Keene, expecting him to give me the information I needed. Instead, I heard myself say, “Prove it.”
His lips tightened. “Come with me to a public place. Five minutes. If I lie, you can leave.”
Every instinct I had split in half.
Finally, I said, “The coffee shop on the corner.”
He nodded like a man being allowed to walk on thin ice.
Inside, the café was almost empty. We sat at a table at the back. I didn’t take off my coat. Neither did he.
For a full ten seconds, we looked into each other’s eyes.
Then I said, “Start talking.”
He clenched his hands so tightly his knuckles turned pale. “I met your mother when I was twenty-eight. She was brilliant, funny, and worked harder than anyone I’d ever met. I loved her very much.”
I didn’t say anything.
He swallowed. “Then I fell in love with someone else.”
The frankness of that statement hit me harder than it would have if he’d softened it.
“I told her the truth,” he continued. “I told her I was leaving. She hated me for it, and she had every right to. Then, a few weeks later, she told me she was pregnant with you.”
I stared at him. “So?”
