Page 81 of The Charade

"It's nice to meet you," Dr. Aarden said to the twins. Then hooking his thumb over his shoulder, he said, "Would you like to sit down?"

"Sure, that would be great," Ava said.

We followed Dr. Aarden into the great room just off the entryway. He took a seat on one couch and the twins and I squished together on the couch across from him.

"So, what can I do for you three?" Dr. Aarden asked, leaning his tall frame against the couch. He'd played basketball in college and had been drafted to play for the NBA, but after Mrs. Aarden was diagnosed with her first brain tumor when she was pregnant with Mack, Dr. Aarden rethought his career choices and ended up going to medical school. He'd been doing his residency at a hospital in New Haven when I first came to Eden Falls and was now one of the best neurosurgeons in the world.

"We were hoping you could help us figure something out," I said, deciding to just jump right into it since it was getting late and I knew he probably had an early morning. "You see, my friends have been trying to solve a puzzle and we were wondering if you might have some of the answers they're looking for."

"Okay." Dr. Aarden ran his thumb and index finger across his chin. "So, what is this puzzle that you're trying to solve?"

I looked at Ava and Elyse, figuring it was best for one of them to take over.

Ava gave me a quick nod and then turned back to Mack's dad. She said, "This is probably going to sound pretty strange, but for the past several years, my sister and I have been on a sort of quest to figure out who our biological father is. We've never had a lot of info to go by since our mom hasn't ever told us very much, but we’ve been able to find a few clues here and there and have an idea that our father could have been someone she went to the academy with.”

"Okay." Dr. Aarden frowned, not seeming to understand how he played a role in helping them yet. "Is your mom someone I would know? I went to the academy, but that was a long, long time ago."

Elyse nodded. "Yes, our mom's name is Miriam Cohen."

"Miriam Cohen?" Dr. Aarden's eyes went wide, and he sat up straighter, leaning forward. "Your mom is Miriam?"

Ava and Elyse glanced at each other, a look of excitement in their eyes at the prospect of Mack's father remembering their mother.

"We found some old photos of our mom with you and your wife and Carter's dad when we were going through some of the old yearbooks at the school," Ava continued. "And so we figured that she was friends with you guys back then."

"Yes, we were good friends. She and my wife were actually really close back then."

"Yeah?" Elyse asked, her eyes brightening.

"If my wife wasn't already in bed resting, I'd bring her out to meet you, but she hasn't been feeling well lately so…" he drifted off, and I couldn't help but notice the look of grief in his golden-brown eyes.

Whenever I asked Mack about how his mom's health was doing—how the experimental treatments were coming—he made it sound like things were looking up for his mom. But that one look from Dr. Aarden told me that maybe things weren't going as well as they'd hoped. Maybe Mack was acting more optimistic than he felt because it was better than the reality of things.

"Oh, you don't need to get her," Ava said. "In fact, the only thing we really needed tonight was to see if you knew the name of the guy in this photo with you." Ava handed him the paper Elyse had shown us earlier with the photo of Dr. Aarden, my dad, Ms. Cohen, and the random guy we hoped was their father.

Dr. Aarden frowned as he studied the photo. "That's Billy Monaco," he said. "He graduated with us, but we were never really close in high school."

"You weren't?” Ava asked, her lips pouting with disappointment.

Dr. Aarden shook his head and handed the paper back to Ava. "I remember him being really friendly that night, talking to everyone like we’d been the best of friends back in high school, but he was kind of a weird dude."

"He was weird?" Elyse asked, her voice shaking slightly. "Like, weird enough that my mom might have a reason to block him from her life?"

Oh.

I caught onto Elyse's train of thought. Was it possible this Billy Monaco guy was dangerous? And that their mom had never talked about him or involved him in their lives because he was unfit to be around them?

But then Dr. Aarden said, "I don't know if she'd need to do anything like that." He glanced between the three of us confusedly. "What exactly are you three trying to get at here?"

The girls looked at each other, seeming to have some sort of twin telepathic conversation. But when they didn't say anything, I said, "Do you think it's possible that Billy could have convinced their mom to sleep with him at all that night?"

"What?" Dr. Aarden's eyebrows shot up. "Why in the world would you ask me a question like that?"

"I'm sorry," Ava apologized for me. "Carter isn't trying to be inappropriate. It's just that Elyse and I figured out that we could have been conceived around the time of our mom's five-year reunion, and so we're just trying to narrow down our list of suspects to hopefully figure out who our biological father is. Our mom hasn't been very forthcoming with any details and tries to avoid the topic every time we bring it up, so we were hoping that by doing a little digging around of our own we might solve the mystery."

But Dr. Aarden didn't seem to be listening to anything Ava was saying because he just stared at the coffee table between us with a serious expression on his face.

"Dr. Aarden?" Ava asked when he didn't say anything after a moment.

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