Savannah laid a hand on Nolan’s knee under the table.
“As you know, I grew up in a modest neighborhood here in New Orleans. Your Grandma Melton was a single mother at a time when that was still looked down upon in society. I had an affinity for numbers, and got a scholarship to college, but not the best college. And I wasn’t ever invited to join the best fraternities. I learned early that it wasn’t just what you knew, but who you knew.”
Grandma Melton, much loved by all of them, and still a force in her eighties, would be at the party later, and spend the night to be there with them for Christmas morning, too. As would his mother’s parents.
Yeah, they knew all of this. And that his dad had changed his name to Fortune so he’d sound more important and spent the first few years after college working his butt off at a financial services company and learning to blend in with his more affluent colleagues. It was through them that he’d met Sarah Barrington.
“As you also know, when your grandparents asked about my family, I told them I was distantly related to the Fortunes of Texas.”
But he’d told Sarah the truth, about his mother, about his name change, and his parents had told them all, individually, when they’d been called in to their father’s den for “the talk.” In the Fortune family that talk didn’t have to do with sex. It was the talk that let them know who and what they were, as a family, and as a member in the family. They’d heard the story. Alone, with just their parents, so they could be free to ask any questions, or express any feelings whatever they might be.
They’d heard about how his father had made his first million by the time Austin was born, and how hard work and honest business dealings had built the Fortune empire they now all carried.
Nolan had been ten when he’d had “the talk.” Austin had been eight.
“My father never fought for me,” Miles said slowly. “When he found out Grandma Melton was pregnant he suggested that she terminate the pregnancy. Obviously she didn’t. She couldn’t even think about doing that. After I was born, he said he’d never acknowledge me as his son. And he told her she’d never get a dime out of him for support. Which she did not.”
“I...”
“What the...?”
“I can’t...”
“That’s horrible.” Nolan made out Savannah’s whole sentence. She was sitting right next to him.
“I’m sorry.” Nolan waited until the room grew silent to speak. “I had no idea.”
The rest of his siblings sat quietly now, pretty much dumbfounded, Nolan figured. Just like he was.
He gave Savannah’s hand a squeeze.
“There’s more,” Miles said, and Nolan’s gaze swung immediately back to him.
“Your mother is the only one who knows this, other than Grandma Melton, but...it’s time,” he said, repeating the words that had started the bizarre turn this conversation had taken.
Miles looked at Sarah, who, holding his hand now, nodded again.
“I didn’t know the identity of my biological father until I graduated from college,” he said.
Nolan’s jaw dropped. His dad knew who his dad was?
Part of the whole talk was about him not knowing...about the hard times they’d had with Grandma Melton being a single mom in times when that was frowned upon and...
He glanced around the table, needing his siblings for a second. They were all watching Miles.
“It was probably clear to her at that point that I felt like I was going to have to work harder for less, that I was facing a life with fewer chances, because of being a nobody. She wanted me to be proud of the man I was.” He shook his head, looking older than Nolan had ever noticed. “I was a kid, didn’t get yet that the man you are is defined by your choices, about what you do, not about who sired you.”
“Who’s your father, Dad?” Austin asked.
Miles looked first at him, and then around the table at all of them. “I changed my name to Fortune because my father is a Fortune,” he said, pausing when every one of them gasped.
What? Nolan wanted to blurt the word. He didn’t. He respected his father too much to give him an outburst when the man was clearly struggling and needed support.
“His name was Julius Fortune. He was a wealthy stockbroker who lived in New York.”
“Wait a minute...” Austin said, eyes wide. “The father of Jerome Fortune, from the Fortunes of Texas? He’s your father?”
Everyone stared. Except Sarah. She nodded.