That made her pause to study him. He sounded as if he had begun to like the McBrides. As if he was having second thoughts about whatever had brought him here.
She thought of what she had seen on those pages. The names of Caleb and his brothers, their wives and children. Notes about their jobs and their marriages.
My mother fell in love with another man. He was married to someone else. I was conceived from that relationship.
And his mother had called him Mac.
The insight came to her in a stunning flash. “You’re looking for your father.”
A muscle in his jaw was the only part of him that moved.
“Is that it, Mac? Do you think Caleb or one of his brothers was the married man who had an affair with your mother?”
He ground out a curse through clenched teeth, and then sighed. “I know one of them was. I just don’t know which one.”
“How do you know?”
“I found the name in my mother’s papers after she died. Just the last name. She probably never expected me to find it, or to make anything of it. I contacted her sister in Puerto Rico, who confirmed that she knew the man’s name was McBride and that he was from a place called Honoria, Georgia. She knew that because my mother told her. Mother expected to live in Honoria someday, when her lover divorced his wife and married her.”
Aware of the bitterness in his voice, she asked gently, “Your aunt didn’t know his first name?”
“Only the last name—and only because my mother told her that she called me Mac because my father’s name was McBride. A tribute to the man who abandoned her.”
“So you came here to find out for yourself.”
“I figured he owed me some answers. I didn’t know when I started this that most of the suspects were dead.”
Imitating him, she folded her arms and tried to speak unemotionally. “Have you decided which one it was?”
He shrugged. “I figure Jonah is the most likely suspect.”
She remembered what he’d written about Jonah. “Traveling salesman. Unhappy marriage.” He was probably right. “Jonah’s been dead for years.”
“I know.”
“His widow and his daughter are still living, of course. Ernestine is a very proud and snobbish woman. It would humiliate her to learn that her husband had an affair and fathered a child while they were married.”
“I didn’t come here to humiliate an innocent bystander. His wife wasn’t to blame for what he did. Mother knew he was married when they started their affair. She foolishly fell in love anyway. And she believed his lies that he loved her enough to marry her.”
“What about Savannah? If Jonah was your father, that makes her your sister. Don’t you want to get to know her?”
His face hardened. “I came here to find answers, not a new family. If Jonah had been alive, I might have tried to hurt him as much as he hurt my mother. I wouldn’t have cared much about who got hurt along with him. But he’s dead. It’s too late for me to do anything to him. His widow and his daughter have nothing to do with me. I have no reason to have anything to do with either of them.”
The hardness in his voice shocked her. This wasn’t the man she had fallen in love with. This was a stranger. Angry, bitter, cold.
This was the man who had callously used her for his own purposes. She wasn’t even sure this man was capable of love.
Was this only another side of the Mac she’d thought she knew? Or had she completely deluded herself while falling in love with a stranger?
“There is still one McBride brother living. Caleb,” she said quietly. “Is there any chance…?”
Mac shrugged again. “He’s been happily married for nearly forty years. He rarely leaves Honoria. I’d say it’s far more likely that Jonah was the sperm donor in my case. From what I’ve heard about him, I can understand why he fell in love with my mother. I just can’t understand why he left her.”
“Caleb will be home in a week. Are you going to ask him if he knows anything about this?”
“Don’t you think I have that right?”
“The right to cause an uproar in a very happy family?” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”