Page 231 of It Happened on the Lake

“And it was focused on my house?” he guessed.

“I guess, but really you can see all the houses across the lake.”

“Is that so?” He was staring at Harper, and she felt her jaw tighten.

Dawn was nodding. “Yeah and—”

A sharp beeping sound interrupted her.

“Oh crap!” Dawn made her way across the foyer to her purse, picked it up, scrounged inside, and came up with a black pager. She checked the message. “Oops. Gotta go.” She looked up at Harper. “I knew this would happen. It’s Gina. She’s such a flake!” Dawn rolled her eyes. “Listen, she’s ready to go, and it gets intense with her aunt sometimes. Like really intense. Anyway, she really wants to seeHeathers. Maybe since it’s an earlier show, I can go with her. It’s showing just a few blocks from my apartment, the theater by the Fifth Street Market. Really just around the corner and a couple of streets from where I live, so I could make it. But then, I really do have to study.” She bit her lip, seemed torn. “Anyway, I have to go.” She hiked the strap of her purse over her shoulder.

To Levi she said, “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too.”

She hugged Harper and said, “Later, Mom. I’ll call.” With that, she breezed out the door, dashing to her Acura which was wedged between Harper’s Volvo and Levi’s Ford.

“Drive careful,” Harper called after her, just as she had since Dawn had first gotten behind the wheel by herself at sixteen. “Let me know that you got back safe.”

Dawn just lifted a hand and slid into her car.

With Levi standing inches from her physically but miles away emotionally, she watched her daughter back out of the space, then put her little car into drive and speed across the bridge. The lump in her throat was immense.

Levi waited until the Acura had disappeared from sight, then turned to her and said, “Your husband isn’t Dawn’s father.”

The world seemed to go quiet and fall away. If there were birds chirping nearby, or water lapping on the shore of the lake, or traffic passing on the street past the lane, she didn’t hear any of them over the sound of her own heartbeat. She started to speak. Then stopped. The lie she’d been forming stuck in her throat. “Ex-husband,” she forced out.

Levi waited, jaw set, lips razor thin, the temperature seeming to have dropped ten degrees.

“No,” she admitted. “Joel isn’t Dawn’s father. I mean, her biological father.”

“Does she know it?”

The question rang like a death knell.

“Dawn?” Harper cleared her throat. “I haven’t told her. But . . . she may have guessed. She’s smart and knows part of my history. But no, I never actually sat down and talked to her.”

A breeze ruffled his hair and chilled her cheeks.

His brown eyes narrowed. “What about your ex? What did you tell him? He had to have known.”

“Of course.”

“So you told him that she was Chase Hunt’s daughter and explained that he was missing and that you needed a father for your kid?”

Close enough, she thought, her throat as dry as desert sand. “Something like that. Yeah.” But she saw the recrimination in his gaze. Her insides froze.Oh dear God. He knows.Her heart was thundering, her pulse pounding in her ears.

“So you lied,” he accused quietly. “Again.”

She closed her eyes for a second, gathering herself for the truth, this moment she had feared and dreaded for nearly two decades. “Yeah,” she finally admitted, nodding. She wanted to look away, to avoid the truth, but as it was being laid bare, she met the condemnation in his gaze.

“You and I took biology together,” he reminded her. “Sophomore year. Mr. Sandgren’s class. We were lab partners.”

“I remember.”

“We studied genetics. Dominant and recessive genes.”

She knew what was coming, could barely breathe.

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