He cups my face. “We’re real, baby. If you think that changes when this is over, it won’t. Wait and see.”
“The sooner this is over, the sooner we prove you right. Call Blake.”
“If it will make you feel better, I’ll call.” He dials Blake and talks for all of three minutes. “Blake says he’s already taking a deeper look at your mother, to help us be ready for her tomorrow. He’ll look for an affair. Until tonight, he didn’t consider it an option, but now he agrees. It’s worthy of a deeper look.”
“What about news on the birth certificates?”
“He has one of his men working backdoors to get Isaac’s birth certificate. He’s going to work on it all night. I’m not sure where that leads, but we’ll find out soon.”
“What about the other birth certificate? Who is that man? What was his name?”
“Ryan.”
“Okay. Ryan. Why were we sent a coded message with his information? With his birth certificate of all things.”
“Blake says he’s going to have a full update tomorrow morning, but he’s found a business link to my father.”
My brow furrows. “Why would we be given one of your father’s business contacts as a lead? Is it a mob connection, maybe? Have they been involved with the mob longer than we know?”
“That wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Eric says, as the doorbell rings with our food delivery.
He stands and walks to the door. I twist around and call out. “You might want to zip up your pants before you open that door. That prize is all mine.”
He laughs and zips up. “Happy now?” He opens the door.
A few minutes later, we’re chowing down and sipping wine when a thought hits me. I set my slice down and twist around to face Eric. “Is Ryan more than your father’s business associate? Is he the man my mother is having an affair with?”
“He’s dead, Harper. Remember? He’s been dead for years.”
“Right. He’s dead. And dead people can’t speak from the grave.”
“But obviously someone is trying to do it for him. He’s important. We’ll find out why.”
I nod and accept what I can’t change now, and that’s our ignorance on too many topics. For the next few hours, we talk and strategize how to handle my mother tomorrow. We debate all the ways this could go, and somehow I start telling Eric stories about her and my father to support her being a warm, loving mother. When our stomachs are full, our minds numbed with wine, my mother is still in the air, on her way here to try to hurt the man I love, and that defines her more than the stories. “I’ve been trying to convince you that my mother couldn’t order the murder of your father.”
“Convince me?” he challenges. “Or you?” We’re on the couch, side by side, facing each other, both with a leg on the cushion between us.
“Me. I’m trying to understand why my mind went there. Why I thought she could be responsible for any of this but my answer isn’t in the past. It’s in the present. In her current behaviors. She knows you matter to me yet she’s coming after you.”
“She knows he killed my mother,” he says. “It’s not unreasonable for her to believe that I did this.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Is that a question, Harper?”
“No. It’s not a question. Is that a test?”
His eyes narrow on me. “She’s going to try to turn you against me.”
“She already tried and failed.”
“In person is different than on the phone, baby. You know it and I know it.”
“She can’t turn me. I’m with you. All the way.”
I lean into him and press him back against the cushion, the two of us stretching out long and close on the cushion, our bodies folded forward into each other. “I’m with you,” I promise.
“And I’m with you,” he says, rolling onto his back and settling me on his chest, but we don’t speak again.