Swim Deep - Page 102

I sat back on my haunches, gripping the toilet seat. The dread had been too much for me to contain. I’d vomited it up violently. There was a continuous roar in my ears. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hear Evan breaking through the lock on the door.

I looked up at him when he burst into the room.

“Madaster told me that I was Elizabeth’s child. I remember that now,” I told him dully. I couldn’t voice the other part… couldn’t possibly name whom Madaster had said was my father. Of course I couldn’t speak of Madaster’s monstrous claim. It’d be like sending a sharp knife through my own flesh. Self-preservation won out, I guess.

Evan stared down at me, horror plastered on his face.

My husband’s face.

My father’s?

My stomach and ribcage heaved again. Impossibly, more bitter fluid came out of me. I felt Evan’s hand on my back, stroking my body as it convulsed.

A moment later, my arms limply circled the toilet seat. I pressed my cheek against my biceps.

I’d read something else in Evan’s horrified expression when he’d looked down at me a moment ago.

“You think it’s true. Don’t you?” I asked him weakly. “You believe that somehow, some way, I’m Elizabeth Madaster’s daughter?”

Evan stood. I heard the water running at the sink, and then he knelt next to me. He pressed a cool, damp washrag against my forehead and cheek. Then he carefully cleaned my mouth.

“Anna? Look at me,” I heard him say firmly.

I forced my tired eyes to focus on him.

“It’s true that Madaster told me yesterday that he believed you were Elizabeth’s daughter. He was spewing all kinds of filth while I tried to get you out of that tower. But because Madaster said it… because he wants to believe it’s true, that doesn’t mean it is.”

I lifted my head off my arm. “Tell me that you didn’t believe I was Elizabeth’s daughter when you set out to seduce me.”

Tell me. Please, tell me.

He opened his hand on the side of my head, his finge

rs sliding through me hair.

“I never, ever thought such a thing. Why would I? You can’t think that I would have allowed what’s happened between us to happen if I believed that.”

“You never suspected it? Given how much Elizabeth and I look alike?”

“Of course not. Elizabeth told me everything, eventually. She was never pregnant.”

“She told you things only after you discovered her lies, or when she was trying to cleanse her consciousness of everything she’d done.”

“Anna, I know how old you are. I saw your birth certificate when we got the marriage license. Elizabeth would had to have been sixteen when she had you. I knew her then. It didn’t hap—”

“Didn’t you say she went away to school? When she was sixteen? Couldn’t she have been pregnant then?”

He looked taken aback, but only briefly. “No. There’s no way. It’s true that Elizabeth became secretive and evasive when she got older, but she told me everything when we were kids.”

“Except that Madaster had been abusing her since she was a child.”

He flinched slightly at that.

“Evan, what if I am related to him… to that monster?” I whispered, feeling the nausea rise in my throat again.

“No. I’m telling you, it’s not possible,” he said with a slashing gesture of his hand. I sensed he wasn’t angry at me. He was angry at Madaster for putting the idea into our heads. He was angry at himself, for even considering the possibility. Or for not considering it before.

“You don’t understand. Elizabeth couldn’t have children,” he stated harshly.

Tags: Beth Kery Romance
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