My heart began to thump wildly. I didn’t have a good feeling about whatever was coming.
“What?”
“Has he told you about any mysterious phone calls he’s gotten?”
“No…”
“Someone has been calling him, claiming to be his mother.”
“I’m sorry. Isn’t your mother…?”
“Dead? Yeah. At least that’s what we’re all hoping.”
Say what? “What are you getting at, Marjorie?”
“Call me Marj. Everyone does.” She sighed. “This is still so surreal… There’s a chance that Ryan has a different mother than Talon, Joe, and I do.”
I went numb. I had no idea where this could be leading, and a feeling of dread overwhelmed me. “Oh my God. Who?”
“Wendy Madigan.”
I knew the name well. She was a member of my father’s infamous future lawmakers club in high school, and Melanie and I had talked in detail about her. She was currently in psych lockup here in the city.
“It’s a long story, but she told Jonah and Talon that she was Ryan’s biological mother, and that she gave him to our father in exchange for five million dollars.”
“She’s obviously lying.”
“That’s what we all thought at first too, but it makes an eerie sort of sense. The psych ward assured Jonah that she didn’t have access to a phone. But how hard can it be to hijack a cell?”
Not hard at all. As a police officer, I knew that security in psych detention centers wasn’t the best. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because Jonah and Talon have a lock of her hair. We need a lock of Ryan’s to get a DNA test done. We need you to get one for us.”
I about fell off my office chair. “Excuse me?”
“I know it’s a little unorthodox—”
“Unorthodox? That’s a pretty tame word for what you’re talking about here. It’s a total violation of his trust. I can’t have any part in this.”
Marjorie sighed across the phone line. “Melanie and Jade agree with you. But Jonah, Talon, and I are determined to keep this from him for his own good. Even thinking there’s a possibility that he might not be our full brother will cause him tremendous trauma. We want to avoid that. If we find out he’s not Wendy’s son, he never has to know there was an issue.”
“You’re his sister. How can you possibly condone this?”
She sighed again. “I don’t like it, not at all. Neither do the guys. It’s the lesser of two evils, though. We want to protect our brother as much as we can.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to let him know there might be an issue than to spring this on him all of a sudden if the DNA proves he’s Wendy’s son? That way he can at least prepare for it.”
“You think just like Melanie. That’s what she said. And Ruby, we have considered it. But our family has been through so much already. Why create more havoc if there’s no need?”
Poor Ryan. What if this turned out to be true? He’d be devastated. I was just starting to know him. Maybe even starting to fall in love with him. If he found out I had a part in this deception, what would he do?
I couldn’t take that risk.
“I’m sorry, Marj, but I can’t help you. It just feels wrong to me in so many ways.”
“I understand. I really do. We’ll figure out another way to get a strand of his hair.”
“Why not just grab his comb or brush? Certainly there are hairs there. Or get another type of DNA sample?”