Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 108362 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108362 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
“As I said, Melanie was an unruly child. Maybe we spoiled her, or maybe we just weren’t strict enough, but we tried our best. By the time she entered her teens, we’d completely lost control of her. She’d go out drinking, doing drugs, shoplifting, and getting involved with boys. She’d lie to us constantly, but when she came home pregnant at fifteen, Nina and I were at our wit’s end. Melanie didn’t feel ready to raise a child, which was completely understandable. She was still so young. So we came up with a plan to home school her until the baby was born, then we’d raise him as ours so that Melanie could go on with her life, complete her education, and hopefully go to college.”
“Him?” I asked, starting to put the pieces together.
“Cai,” Dan explained. “He was Melanie’s son, not her brother.”
Holy shit.
“It was the worst mistake,” Nina confessed, a tear falling down her face. “After Cai was born, keeping the secret only made her so much worse. She started drinking again, going missing for days on end, not turning up for school.”
“We told ourselves we were doing it for Melanie and her future, but really, we were just ashamed and wanted to avoid judgement from our family and friends,” Dan said, getting choked up.
Wow. This was so much more complicated than I ever could’ve expected. Cai wasn’t Margie’s brother; he was her son who she’d been forced to pretend was her brother. No wonder she’d left and not spoken to her parents in twenty years.
“So, Cai was Margie’s … I mean, Melanie’s child?”
“Yes,” Nina replied. “He was hers, and we … we never should’ve taken him from her. Perhaps if we hadn’t, things wouldn’t have turned out how they had.”
“Who’s Margie?” Dan asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.
I cursed myself for letting the name slip. Margie obviously had good reason to estrange herself from her parents, and I had no intention of telling them her new name or where she was living. That wasn’t my place. I did, however, have no problem informing them that she’d befriended Shannon under false pretences and that she may have been orchestrating some kind of revenge against me through my ex-wife. I didn’t tell them about the catfishing or the near hit and run because, so far, there was no evidence to prove she’d been behind those things, even though in my mind I was almost certain it was all her.
Nina burst into tears when I’d finished speaking, while Dan stood and went to wrap his arms around her. I had empathy for them, sure, but what Dan and Nina had made Margie do was cruel and messed up. Living your life having to lie to everyone that your son was your brother would eat at anyone’s psyche. But it made sense if she were out for revenge. If Cai had died while she was away in Canada, I’m sure she had a lot of anger over losing him before she could ever tell him the truth of who she was to him.
When I was ready to leave, I promised Dan and Nina that I’d keep them updated as much as I could before I texted Dixon. He pulled up outside the house, and I slid into the passenger seat, mind racing.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I feel like I have,” I replied.
A silence fell before he offered, “Want to talk about it?”
“It’s all so insane. You know Shannon’s friend? The blonde?”
He shifted a little in his seat. “Uh huh.”
“She’s been lying about her identity. She was Cai’s mother, but she got pregnant really young, so her parents made the decision to raise the baby as their own and pretend to everyone that Margie was his sister. She moved away to Canada twenty years ago and hasn’t been heard from since. Well, until now. She obviously reinvented her life and, for some reason, found cause to befriend Shannon.”
“Shit,” Dixon swore. “They told you all this? The parents?”
“They seemed pretty ashamed, but yeah, they came clean. They feel terrible about what Margie might be doing, asked for her address so they could go speak to her, perhaps convince her to get help.”
“Did you give it to them?”
“No. That’s not my place. Maybe after I can prove she’s behind all the crazy shit that’s been happening, I will. But even then … I don’t know … it’s so hard to hate her knowing what she’s been through, but at the same time, if she’s the catfish, she needs to be arrested or something for causing so much havoc in our lives. I just don’t know what to think right now.”
“Have you told Shannon?”
I nodded. “She’s in shock and refuses to believe any of it yet. She loves Margie and doesn’t want to think she could do something like this.” Exhaling heavily, I rubbed my jaw. “Can you drop me back at my parents’ house? I need to talk to my dad.”