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Garrett parked the car across the street from the Mendez home, startled to realize that he had no memory of driving there.
He checked the side of the house. Emma and Stella were nowhere in sight.
Shit, the ice cream.Taking out his phone, he ordered it, tacking on some champagne, several appetizers, and a full gourmet meal for good measure.
He had a feeling Mariana wouldn’t be up to cooking after he got through with her.
Garrett found her in the kitchen, washing dishes. She turned to him with a pensive expression but tried to smile.
She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Emma and Stella are upstairs playing Legos.”
He sat at the table, grateful for small mercies. This conversation would be easier without them. “That’s good. Because I need to speak to you.”
He took out his phone and pulled up the quick side-by-side photograph. “So… did you lie to her or is my wife lying to me?”
Mariana startled. “What?”
He slid the phone to her.
Brow puckering just like Emma, she picked it up. The moment of recognition hit her like a freight train.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, the phone shaking in her hand.
“I know that child is not yours.”
His voice was flat and much colder than he intended. But that couldn’t be helped. It felt as if his skin was peeling off.
It seemed Mariana was feeling the same. The trembling in her hands had spread to her entire body.
“Sit,” he said, more gently this time.
Too shaken to disobey, Mariana slid onto the bench across from him.
He set his hands on the table, folding them together. “Tell me the truth before they come back.”
Mariana opened her mouth, her eyes going from him to his phone. “How?”
His head drew back. “How do you think?”
She sucked in a harsh breath, almost wheezing. “I can’t believe this.”
Mariana wasn’t the only one. Good God, he had a child—a five-year-old child. And Emma hadn’t told him.
“You’re not Stella’s mother,” he said with more composure than he felt. “You’re her grandmother.Emmais Stella’s mother. And I am her father.”
But Emma hadn’t told him. That was the hardest part of this whole mess.
Hell, he knew she had struggled in the aftermath of the accident, but how could she go along with this pretense that the girl was her sister? Or was he wrong about that?
Please let me be wrong.
Mariana leaned forward, casting a nervous eye in the direction of the stairs. “Are you sure Stella is yours? Really sure?”
Garrett tapped the picture. “She’s the spitting image of my mother at that age.”
“I can see that,” Mariana mumbled, looking allaround the room with a lost expression. She gripped her hands tightly together. “I had no idea you two even knew each other back then.”
“We were high school rivals,” he explained in a low voice. “But high schoolended.”