“Not really,” he said. “Why is it that you two are so curious about a dead man? Pretty sure his wife is dead now too, isn’t she? I think the only thing left of that guy is his kids.”
Again, something that made me feel like I was going to be sick.
“Kids?” Rob asked. “As in more than one?”
“I don’t know, maybe,” he said. “I always got him and that old Goldshire headmaster confused. I think his name was Jack too, wasn’t it?”
The man chuckled. “Funny coincidence. One of them had a couple of kids I think; can’t remember which one it was. I know that the Jack I knew had at least one kid though, a boy, I think. I remember seeing pictures of him when he was a baby. Cute kid. Although all babies kind of look the same to me.”
That wasn’t any help either. He might have been thinking about my dad and about me and David. Since Marta had an affair with my dad, I can see how it would have been easy to confuse everyone. A lot of the lines got blurred. But David was legitimately my half-brother. We shared the same father. Michael was not. He was from an entirely different family, a product of Marta and her husband.
A husband who could not be my father.
“Well, sorry to take up your time,” Rob said as he stood up to leave. “Thanks for coming out to meet with us.”
He laid money down on the table to pay for Mr. James’s coffee and breakfast and then we left the diner and headed back to the car, leaving Mr. James with more food than his already engorged body could possibly need.
When we got in the car and Rob started to drive away, I tried to think about what we would do when we got back home. Maybe I would pot some more plants in the greenhouse or do some apartment hunting online with the guys while they looked for their new places. I tried to think about anything other than the one thing that I didn’t want to even entertain in my head. But it didn’t work. We were not even out of the street that the diner was on, when I burst into tears.
“Whoa hey,” Rob said as he looked over and saw me sobbing uncontrollably in the passenger seat of the car. “It’s okay, we don’t really know anything for sure yet.”
“That’s the problem,” I said as I wiped my face with my sleeve. “How am I ever going to be able to tell Michael about this without having any actual answers. I can’t keep it from him forever, no matter how ridiculous it seems. I promised that I wouldn’t hide things from him, and I intend to keep that promise. But I just know that he’s going to freak out when he hears about this.”
Rob pulled the car over into an empty alleyway between two buildings and turned off the engine.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“I’m stopping to talk to you,” he said. “I can’t keep driving when you’re this upset. Lisette, do you really still think that Adam’s theory about this is ridiculous?”
He saw the shocked look on my face as my mouth dropped open and I stared at him.
“I’m not saying that I believe Adam, I’m just saying that it might not be as ridiculous as you keep saying it is. And I don’t think that you think it is either. I think you’re just trying to keep yourself from panicking.”
“It’s too late for that,” I said.
I knew that Rob could see the despair in my eyes. I didn’t know what to think but the thought of Michael and I possibly being brother and sister, was more than I could bear.
“Are you telling me that you think it’s possible that the two of you are related?” he asked me.
I tried to hold in my tears in order to answer him without sounding like a blubbering idiot.
“I think that I don’t know what to think,” I said, doing an awful job at not choking on my cries. “I think that we haven’t found any answers to either prove or disprove anything, and that there are now three unexplainable coincidences. I just don’t know what to think or do.”
“I’m sorry, Lisette,” Rob said. “I know this must be difficult for you to even think about.”
“Difficult? It’s so much worse than difficult. Rob, I feel like I’m being ripped apart.”
I launched into more sobbing and Rob reached across the seat to pull me toward himself and hold me. I put my face against his shoulder as he rubbed my back and held me tightly.
“It’ll be okay,” he said.
“How?” I mumbled against his shirt. “Tell me how we are going to end this and make sure that it’s okay.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just know that you’re strong and that somehow you’ll find a way to get through it. You always do.”
I lifted my head up at his remark and our faces were so close that they touched.
“I don’t feel strong right now,” I said. When I opened my lips to let the words out, I could feel his breath against my mouth.
“Neither do I,” he said.
Before either of us could stop it, a sudden rush of heat came over us both. Rob and I had never really had enough time together, not even close to as much time together as I had with Michael and Adam. Maybe that was part of the reason that I couldn’t resist him now, or maybe it was because I was too upset over the possibility that everything I wanted in my life was wrapped up in one person that I now might not be able to have, or maybe it was just simply the fact that he thought I was strong when I felt so weak.
Neither of us were strong right this moment.
Neither of us were strong enough to stop the emotions that poured forth between us. Rob didn’t hesitate to put his mouth on mine.
And then mine was the first tongue to push against the other.
We both knew we shouldn’t be doing it, but we did it anyway.
The soft push of our lips together and the encircling movement of our tongues, made it impossible to stop once the line had already been crossed, and the agreement broken. Technically I wasn’t involved in the agreement, but that didn’t make it any less wrong for me.
My agreement was much more binding because my agreement with Michael was an unspoken one.
Nevertheless, the electricity surging between us brought me back into his arms. Rob pulled me over toward his seat and lifted me onto his lap as if I were nothing but a feather, and I adored the way his hands gripped my hips as I straddled him. The car was cramped but I didn’t care. All we needed was enough space for our bodies to be together. And the closer the car brought us, the more my heart soared for him.
Damn it, how in the world was I going to live without my boys?
