“How did she even find this place?”
Pete stared at her. “Find them? What are you talking about?”
“She’s their mother! Maybe it’s time they went back to her.”
I froze in disbelief. “What did you say?”
Alice finally looked directly at me. “Those girls… they’re yours. The daughters you were told died.”
“Alice, stop,” Pete snapped quickly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The way he said it told me he was afraid.
“Those girls… they’re yours.”
I looked from Alice to Pete. Something was very, very wrong.
Then I pulled out my phone and held it up so he could see the screen.
“Pete, you have about 30 seconds to start telling me the truth. If you don’t, the next call I make is to the police. Are those girls my daughters?”
Pete scoffed nervously. “Don’t be ridiculous, Camila. Those aren’t your daughters.”
I pulled out my phone and held it up so he could see the screen.
He denied it. Of course he did, hands up, voice reasonable, the particular performance of a man who has been rehearsing innocence for years.
I stared at him for another second, then lowered my eyes to the phone in my hand and tapped the screen.
“Wait!” Pete shouted, lunging forward. “Camila, stop!”
My thumb hovered over the green call button.
“Please,” he begged. “Don’t do this. I’ll tell you everything.”
He denied it.
I slowly lowered the phone but kept it in my hand.
“Then start talking. Right now.”
Finally, he sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands.
What came out over the next 20 minutes was the worst thing I’d ever heard.
Pete confessed to having an affair for eight months before I got pregnant. When the twins arrived, he ran the numbers: alimony, child support, two kids, a wife in medical recovery, and he decided he didn’t want to pay any of it.
