Catholic? I think we can assume if she hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have seen the light of day.”
He sat forward abruptly. “Jesus, Amy, don’t talk like that.”
“I’ve had two days to think about it. Wouldn’t most women who had been raped want to abort the baby?” She saw that he couldn’t deny her conclusion. “But Mom was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Specifically, her religion and her parents. Your dad gave her an out.”
He closed his eyes and scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked older when he was done. “No wonder he was so angry.”
“No kidding.”
“I tried to call him last night. When I hadn’t heard from you. He hasn’t returned my call yet.”
“You were going to ask him if he knew what was in the time capsule?”
“Yeah.” Jakob grimaced. “I was going to ask him if you were his kid.”
“I suppose the panties raised a few questions in your mind.”
“You could say that.” His eyebrows drew together. “DNA testing wasn’t available that long ago, was it? Did she say what she was thinking?”
“Only that she never washed them because she couldn’t bear to touch them. She says in there that they and the diary were a sort of funeral offering. That the woman—girl—she’d been was dead.”
They were both quiet for a minute after that.
Jakob let out a long sigh. “You know what you have to do, don’t you, Amy?”
She gazed at him in alarm. “What do you mean?”
“You have to talk to your mother. We could be completely wrong about all of this. The pieces could fit together in a way you’re not seeing at all.”
“You know I’m not wrong.”
“That doesn’t mean you should sweep it all under the rug, even if that’s what she did. You won’t be able to come to terms with it until you hear her side of what happened, why she made the decisions she did.”
Amy crossed her arms protectively. “What makes you think she won’t keep lying to me?”
“Why would she? You’re not a child anymore. I imagine she kept the secret partly, or even mostly, for your sake. You’re in your thirties now, and it’s tough to take in. Imagine if you’d found all this out when you were sixteen.”
Amy shivered a little. Of course he was right, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still mad at her mother. Which wasn’t the worst part, she realized. Most painful was the fact that, as a woman, she understood and sympathized with her mother. A second shiver was more of a shudder as she thought about having to bear a child of rape, keep her, raise her, pretend to love her.
Could I?
She honestly didn’t know.
“I’ll call her once I’ve absorbed all this.”
Jakob shook his head, his expression implacable. “Nope. We’ll figure out the time difference and you’ll call her tonight, while I’m here.”
“What?” she snarled. “You think I’ll collapse if I don’t have you here to support me?”
He actually had the nerve to smile. “No, I think you won’t do it at all.”
“My privilege.”
“I want to know, too,” he said simply.
She should have asked why. What difference did it make to him? Did he want permission to go back to ignoring her?
But she couldn’t do it. Some veiled emotion in his eyes made her uneasy. Did he suspect some other truth? If so, she couldn’t deal with it.
Anyway, maybe he was right. She should demand answers now, while the tide of anger still carried her. Wimping out wasn’t her style. She wasn’t about to start now.
“Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll do it. But not because you say I have to.”
He chuckled, deepening the creases in his cheeks.
Amy wanted to punch him.
CHAPTER FOUR
JAKOB’S PHONE RANG only a minute after he and Amy had finished calculating the time difference with Sydney, Australia. He looked at the number then answered.
“Dad.”
Posture having gone rigid, Amy closed her laptop.
“Hope you were calling to tell me you talked your sister out of that time capsule nonsense,” his father boomed in the voice that served him well on job sites.
Jakob winced. “Hold on, Dad.” He pressed the phone to his belly and said quietly to Amy, “Do you want to talk to him? I can put this on speaker and tell him I’m with you.”
“Well, that would be cozy.” Snarky seemed to be her fallback mode, but he saw the anxiety in her eyes when she lifted her head. “Call me a coward, but I don’t think I’m ready to talk to him. I know I’ll have to eventually, but...not now.”
“All right. You can eavesdrop if you want,” he offered, even though he didn’t much like the idea of luring his dad into confidences he didn’t know were being overheard.
She shook her head and started past him. “I need to shower.”
“Amy.” He said her name softly, but she stopped, her back to him. “Ask me if you want to know what he says. I won’t keep secrets from you.”
She nodded jerkily and kept going.
Swearing under his breath, Jakob lifted the phone back to his ear. “Dad?”
“Who was that? Did I get you at a bad time?”
“No, this is fine. A woman. She’s, uh, going to take a shower.”
“Lady friend?” His father sounded pleased. “You haven’t mentioned one recently.”
Jakob didn’t say, That would be because there hasn’t been one in a while, even though it was the truth. He liked sex as well as the next guy, but with the big four-oh looming on the horizon, he’d begun to tire of the effort it took to get some. Dating was mostly a huge waste of time.
He also didn’t say, Nope, I’m with Amy. She’s upstairs stripping and getting in the shower right now. He didn’t even want to think about that, never mind say it aloud.
“No, it’s been a while.” Vague was good, he congratulated himself. “And no, I didn’t head Amy off. In fact, I went with her, spent the weekend in Frenchman Lake.”
Deafening silence.
He made his voice hard. As a businessman,
