Chapter 14
The DNA report arrived sealed.
Sarah advised me not to open it until I was ready.
I looked at Dad.
He nodded.
“No paper can change me.”
I opened it.
Victor Vance was not my biological father.
Harrison was.
The room spun.
Harrison.
Marcus’s father.
My father-in-law.
The man who watched my husband bruise my throat.
The man who vomited when he saw Dad’s tattoo.
Dad closed his eyes.
“I suspected,” he whispered.
My stomach turned.
“That means Marcus—”
“No,” Sarah said quickly. “We need more testing.”
But I understood the horror.
If Harrison was my biological father, then Marcus might be my half-brother.
Lily might be the child of incest without anyone telling me.
I vomited into a hospital basin.
Dad held my hair back.
Sarah ordered immediate legal and medical testing.
Marcus gave a sample under court order.
The results came back the next day.
Marcus was not Harrison’s biological son.
His father was Victor.
Patricia had lied to Harrison for decades.
The Vance family tree was not a tree.
It was a crime scene.
I laughed and cried until my body shook.
Lily was safe from that horror.
But not from the truth of what these people had done.
Harrison asked to see me.
I agreed only with Sarah and Dad present.
He entered looking broken.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
I stared at him.
“You knew my mother was hurt.”
“Yes.”
“You knew she died because of your family.”
His eyes filled.
“Yes.”
“And you still stood beside Marcus.”
He lowered his head.
“I was a coward.”
I looked at Dad.
May you like
Then back at Harrison.
“Yes,” I said. “You were.”
