Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77170 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77170 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Wendy’s eyes flutter closed, and she wrinkles her nose before reopening them. “How can you say that? I love you, Ryan. I would do anything for you.”
“Right. Anything, including allowing my brother to be taken as a child, tortured, abused, violated in the worst way. And then, after he’s happy, after he finds the love of his life, starts a wonderful life with a family of four children, two of whom he saved from the same horrible fate, then you try to take it away from him again.”
“He’s a military hero,” I say. “He’s been through so much, Grandmother. Why? Why would you do that?”
She reaches toward me with her wrinkled hand. “For you, my beautiful granddaughter. I do it all for you. Your grandfather was the love of my life. And I was the love of his.”
Dad groans. “That’s not true, Wendy. We all know it.”
“So you, my sweet granddaughter, are the first granddaughter from our love.”
“That can’t be the only reason you reached out to me,” I say.
“Because you’re a woman, like I am.”
“What about Lauren?” Dad asks.
“Unfortunately, Lauren feels the same way about me as you do, Ryan. Neither of my children seems to understand my love for them. What I’ve done for them.”
“This is such garbage,” Dad says.
I bite my lip, twist my lip ring. “There’s something about what you said, Grandmother.”
“And what’s that?”
“You specified granddaughter when you spoke of me.”
“You are my granddaughter.”
“Yes, but you said first granddaughter.”
“And again…you are my first granddaughter.”
I lock gazes with Wendy’s blue eyes, so like my own it’s almost creepy. “Why would you say granddaughter? Why not say grandchild? I could’ve just as easily been a boy.”
“But you aren’t.” She flutters her eyes closed.
I look at Dad, gesture for him to leave the room with me.
“What is it?” he says once we’re outside the room.
“Do you see how she didn’t answer me?”
“No.”
“You’ve said she has a brilliant mind, Dad, and I believe you. But she’s old, and she’s been in a medically induced coma for months. Her mind isn’t as sharp as she thinks it is. She made a misstep.”
“What misstep?”
“She specifically said granddaughter instead of grandchild.”
“And you think that means…”
“I think, Dad, that it means I’m not her first grandchild from your father. Only her first granddaughter.”
“You mean… But Jack comes from my father’s half brother.”
“Yes, but knowing how Wendy’s mind works, she only considers progeny from her liaison with your father to count.”
“Are you saying…” He shakes his head. “Yes. Damn it. I should have seen this. I should have known.”
I nod. “I’m beginning to think your father’s so-called half brother may not exist at all.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Brendan
Ruby pulls more vials out of the small freezer.
“Tom Simpson,” she says. “Larry Wade.” Then she gulps. “Theodore Matthias.”
“Who are they?” I ask.
“Wendy’s minions,” she says dryly.
Dad is still holding the vial of Sean Murphy and staring at it.
“You know, this is great and all,” I say, “but storing sperm in a house?”
Ruby rubs her forehead. “Oh, the sperm isn’t good. If it even is sperm. It’s probably just some kind of decoy. For sperm to remain viable, it needs to be processed in a special lab in liquid nitrogen storage tanks.”
“What about those mail-in sperm-freezing kits?” Dad finally says.
I drop my jaw, staring at him. “Mail-in sperm-freezing kits?”
“I read about them somewhere,” he says.
“Yeah, some companies do that,” Ruby says. “They send you a kit, which allows you to collect the”—she clears her throat—“specimen in the privacy of your own home and then mail it in for processing, and the company stores it for you in cryo-tanks.”
“I see.” Dad reddens a little.
“So,” I say, “first of all, we need to find out if this is indeed sperm, which I doubt it is. If Wendy Madigan is as smart as you all seem to think she is, she knows very well that you can’t store sperm at home. Not without specialized equipment, which I do not see here. This is a simple freezer.”
“How can we find out?” Jack asks.
Ruby pulls out the rest of the samples. “I can contact Tucker, and he can thaw these and look at them. See if there’s actual sperm there. But I can already tell you there isn’t.”
“Why would she keep fake sperm?” Jack shakes his head.
“For the same reason she does everything,” Ruby says. “Manipulation. My guess is… This is so screwed up.”
“What’s your guess?” Jack asks.
“My guess is she does have sperm, and this is her way of letting us find out. And my guess is she has Sean Murphy’s sperm”—she gestures to Jack—“and that he is your father.”
Jack shakes his head. “But I’m thirty-one. He died sixty years ago.”
“Not all sperm survives the freezing process,” Ruby says. “But the sperm that dies usually does so within forty-eight hours of freezing. Sperm can be stored for as long as fifty years without additional deterioration beyond that caused by the original freezing process.”