Page 25 of The Hampton Beach Café 4
Frances looked up to see Alex, Lucinda, and Vincent all standing in the doorway—when had they arrived? Her stomach dropped. How much had they heard?
Silence followed, and she looked in turn at each face staring back at her with various shades of horrified looks from everyone in the room.
“What?” Frances asked, dropping down into the chair next to the table, now half covered in coffee.
Alex shook his head, covering his face with one hand, while Lucinda just stared. Vincent, probably the smartest of them right now, turned on his heel and went back to the gallery section of the café.
She hesitated as she took in just how horrified everyone looked.
“What!?” she asked again, louder.
“What do you mean,ourfather?” Kennedy said in a flat and low voice.
FIFTEEN
“Fathers,” Frances said quickly. “Fathers!Both of our fathers…”
Alex had turned away. He clearly didn’t know what to do or say. Lucinda just continued to stare blankly at her—how had they been spending so much time together, and yet she still hadn’t told Lucinda half of what was going on? The unwelcome stab of guilt made Frances feel even more ill than she already did.
“That’s not true,” Kennedy said flatly. “I was watching you. You didn’t mean anything other than exactly what you said.
If she opened her mouth, would she be sick all over the table?
She steeled herself.
“I…I don’t know what you mean, I…”
“Stop lying!”
The pain in Kennedy’s voice was palpable. She was angry but not as much as she was confused and upset.
Oh lord, this wasn’t going to go well.
“I…well, looking at those photos you showed me. I had recently found some photos of myself around the same time, and…we look really alike, Ken.”
Kennedy scoffed. “That means nothing. We were both brunettes in high school, so what?”
“It was more than that…A stranger asked off his own back if we were related, and considering what I now know about my father’s…extracurricular activities, I had to know.”
“How could you possibly find out!? You said it yourself, he disappeared, and even your obsessive mom couldn't find him.”
The lump in her throat wouldn’t go away, and her next words came out in a croaky tumble.
“I kind of secretly got our DNA tested.”
Kennedy didn’t react. She just stared blankly back at Frances and blinked rapidly.
“That’s not funny, don’t try and be funny.”
“I’m not…I really did. We picked the results up in Boston last week.”
The blank expression hardened into a stony rage.
“How?” she whispered.
Frances glanced around the room at the still silent Lucinda.
“You know the taste test we did for Alex’s recipes? That one that didn’t taste like anything? Well…it was the kit swab.”
