Page 77 of The Charade

Elyse nodded. "Yes. And since Mr. Hastings had to help run his family business and Mom didn't feel right about leaving her dad, they ended up just having to accept that they couldn't be together at that time."

"Sad," I said, thinking about how I would feel if I was in my mom's shoes.

Carter cleared his throat. "So how does this lead to you figuring out who your dad is?"

Elyse bit her lip, and after drawing in a shaky breath, she said, "Okay, so according to what Mrs. Simmons said, Carter's dad ended up dating around again about a year later when he realized that the long-distance thing with our mom wasn't going to work out. Mrs. Simmons was at Yale with him and remembers him being even more popular with the girls in college than he was in high school.”

"Uh-huh." Carter came to stand by my side and waved his hand like he wanted Elyse to get to the point.

"And he must have met his wife Dawn sometime after that," Elyse said, looking at Carter for confirmation.

"I think they met during his last year at college," Carter said, filling in what he knew of his dad's history. "They dated for about a year, but then Dawn's ex-husband tried to come back into the picture and so there was a bunch of drama. She ended up going back to him for a little while since they had Ian together and she wanted to try and make things work for his sake."

"Is that when your dad went to Guatemala?" I asked Carter.

"Yeah," he said. "He thought some manual labor would help him clear his mind." He tilted his head to the side. "And apparently, the fling with my mom was supposed to help with that, too."

I winced because I knew the repercussions that fling had brought to Carter and his family.

"But didn't your dad get back with Dawn shortly after that?" I asked.

Nash had been born about seven months after Carter, so they couldn't have been broken up for too long, could they?

"I think they got back together that summer."

"Do you know when?" Elyse narrowed her eyes.

"I don't know." Carter ran a hand through his hair, which I'd tousled during our make-out session earlier. "I think it could have been around my dad's birthday."

"And when's that?" Elyse asked, the earnest expression on her face telling me that this information was really important to her for some reason.

"August thirteenth," Carter said, rubbing his forearm.

"What's going on?" I asked Elyse, my heart pounding because it almost seemed like she was trying to make it sound like my boyfriend's dad might be the mystery man who'd gotten our mom pregnant. "Why does any of this even matter?"

Please don't matter.

Please,pleasedon't let Mr. Hastings be our dad, too.

I'd wanted to know who my dad was for my whole life—wanted to know who had given me and Elyse half of our genetic makeup. But if it was Mr. Hastings who had gotten my mom pregnant, I didn't want to hear it.

I'd rather not ever find out who my dad was than find out it was the father of the only guy I’d ever wanted to date.

I couldn’t accept that Carter might be my brother.

Elyse handed me the papers she'd been holding on to. "These are some of the photos that Mrs. Simmons took from their five-year reunion."

Carter leaned closer to me so we could look at the images printed on the copy paper together. The first sheet of paper showed a twenty-something version of my mom and Carter's dad posing together for the camera, with Mr. Hastings’s arm wrapped tightly around my mom's waist and huge smiles on their faces.

The second page had a photo of them sitting at a round table with a few other people from their graduating class. Mom and Mr. Hastings weren't sitting by each other in this photo, but the camera had captured my mom looking across the table at Mr. Hastings with what I could only interpret as a longing expression on her face.

I knew it was longing because it was exactly the way I'd caught Elyse looking at Mack the past several weeks during our group study sessions.

We Cohen women did not hide our feelings very well.

The next paper had a group shot of everyone who had gone to the five-year reunion. It took a moment to find my mom, but after scanning the rows of faces, I spotted her at the end of the middle row surrounded by random people I didn't recognize.

"Is your dad in this?" I swallowed as I looked up at Carter who was also studying the photos, anxiety visible on his handsome face.

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