“Let her sit up, Dylan,” the man said. Dylan hesitated, but when she again tried to sit up, he didn’t stop her. “Nice and slow,” the man urged. Alice swung her legs to the floor and came to a sitting position next to Dylan.
“That was so weird. I’ve never passed out before,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. She’d been afraid and filled with dread, because of what she suspected they’d say to her. It was time she faced the truth, no matter how ugly it was. The gray-haired man sat in the chair in front of the couch. She forced herself to focus on him, grasping for his name. “You said your name was Sidney Gates?”
“Yes,” the man replied.
She swallowed thickly. She felt very strange, like an exposed, quivering nerve, hypersensitive and numb at once. “Dylan said you knew my father?” she asked hollowly.
Sidney nodded. She found his gray eyes comforting, soft and yet steely strong at once.
Alice glanced up at Dylan. Her heart squeezed a little when she realized how pinched his expression was, how fierce his eyes. “You said you didn’t use a private investigator to find out who my father was, but you did, didn’t you?” she asked resignedly. Why had he done that? Why was he so intent on seeing her exposed and vulnerable?
And why, despite the feeling of betrayal she experienced at that thought, did she still desperately seek Dylan out for comfort in her disorientation?
She closed her eyes when her voice played back in her head, and she recognized it shook. She took a deep breath. “What did you find out?” she demanded. “Is he …” Nausea rose in her. She fought it back. “Is my father one of Sissy’s brothers?”
A ringing silence. “What?” Dylan’s harsh query shattered it.
“Is it?” she demanded, looking from Dylan to Sidney.
“No,” Dylan said heatedly, grabbing her hands. “Why would you think that?”
“It’s what I’ve always thought. Worried about. Suspected,” she mumbled the last, staring blindly at her knee.
“You thought one of your uncles was your father?” Dylan asked.
Shame wriggled its way in, even through her thick state of shock. “They were the most likely candidates, yeah,” she said a little defensively. It’d been the first time in her life she’d spoken aloud this deeply mortifying suspicion. Despite Dylan’s adamant denial, she felt no relief. Shame swelled in her like a living creature coming to life and writhing in her belly. “Are you sure?” she asked in a cracking voice.
“Alice, look at me,” Dylan said.
She recognized that steely tone. She fought her shame and stared up into his face, her mortification making eye contact difficult. Their gazes locked. She’d never seen him look so fierce.
“Dylan …” Sidney Gates said warningly.
“I won’t have her continuing to believe something so poisonous, not if I can stop it,” Dylan bit out, glaring defiantly at Sidney. He turned back to Alice. “I’m very sure. I knew your father.”
“You did?” she asked, amazed.
He nodded. “And he wasn’t one of the Reed brothers. Not by a long shot. He was a wonderful, brilliant, caring man. I knew your mother, too. And she was no Sissy Reed,” he said forcefully, tightening his grip on her hands. A muscle leapt in his cheek. “I know this may seem incredible, but I’ll try to explain—”
“Dylan, as a psychiatrist, I don’t advise this—
“Alice, your mother and father were Alan and Lynn Durand,” Dylan said.
NINETEEN
Both men stared at her like they expected her to transform into an alien right before their eyes. Strangely, Dylan’s ludicrous statement and their tangible anxiety served to steady her by contrast. She took a deep, even breath of air and smiled.
“Ha-ha,” she said with weary sarcasm. She noticed her discarded water glass on a side table. She stretched, reaching for it, and prepared to stand. Dylan caught her with his hand on her upper arm.
“Alice.”
She looked at his face. It struck her in that moment. The hint of some weight, of some intense pressure or burden, had always been cast over his handsome features. She only noticed it now because it was there in full force, undisguised. She read it in his eyes.
A spasm of some unnamable emotion went through her.
“I don’t believe you,” she muttered. “You’re crazy.”
“No,” he said emphatically, an apology softening his rocklike expression slightly.