Lisette’s words cut into her morass of horrifying thoughts. “Josie! Look at me.”
Josie realized she had started pacing. She stopped and met Lisette’s eyes. “Gram, this seems a little inappropriate to me. You barely know this guy. This isn’t right. It’s a sweet thing for him to do, but what is he even talking about? Receptive? What does that mean?”
Lisette stood up, grabbing her walker and shuffling over to the foot of her bed to the spot Josie had just vacated. She sat down and patted the bed. “Please, Josie. Come sit.”
Reluctantly, Josie lowered herself onto the bed. Their shoulders brushed against one another. Lisette found Josie’s hand and took it, squeezing tightly. “There’s something I need to tell you, dear.”
Josie’s heart began to thunder, the roar in her ears growing more deafening by the second. Why did she feel afraid? What could Lisette possibly have to tell her that had to do with Sawyer Hayes? If he was conning her or pursuing her, Josie could still stop it. She was a police officer. She’d come after him with the full weight of her department.
Lisette’s bony fingers tightened around Josie’s hand until it hurt. Lisette gave news the same way that Josie did—swiftly and without qualifiers. Josie had always thought of it as ripping off the Band-Aid. The sooner you got it over with, the sooner the person could process what they were about to learn.
Lisette said, “Sawyer is my grandson.”
A perfect silence fell over the room. Everything became so still that even the dust motes floating in the shaft of light coming through the window seemed to freeze. The bustling noises of the rest of the facility outside of Lisette’s door receded into nothingness. Surely, Josie had heard her wrong.
“What did you say, Gram?”
Lisette took a deep breath. On the exhale, she repeated, “Sawyer is my grandson.”
Josie started counting off seconds in her head, trying to maintain her composure. He was running a con. That son of a bitch. One, two, three. She sprung up from her seat, tearing her hand out of Lisette’s grasp, pacing frenetically in the tiny room. “Gram, I don’t know what he told you, but he obviously thinks he can get something out of you. Some grand inheritance or something. This is a con. He’s a con artist. I knew there was something I didn’t like about this guy. Listen to me, I want you to stop all contact with him until I sort this out. I’ll talk to the front desk and tell them he’s not to come in here any longer.”
“Josie,” Lisette said. “Sawyer is my grandson.”
Josie pointed to her own chest. “I’m your grandchild. Me. Just me. Sawyer Hayes is a complete stranger.”
Lisette stood, pushing her walker out of the way. Using the bed to hold onto, she made her way to her nightstand and opened the drawer. She pulled out a sheaf of papers and brought them to Josie. “This is real, Josie.”
Trying to calm the tsunami of anxiety about to overtake her, Josie took the pages and studied them. She was looking at a DNA report of some kind. It was from one of those sites where you sent in your DNA sample via saliva, and they analyzed your ancestral origins and also, if you chose to participate, they would put you into a database with other people and match you with family members you might not know you had. According to the report, Sawyer Hayes shared twenty point six percent DNA amounting to thirty-eight segments with Lisette Matson. Life Lineage predicts that Lisette Matson is your grandmother, concluded the report.
Josie’s hands shook. She placed the report onto the bed. “When did you do this? When did you submit your DNA? Who—who helped you? Was it him?”
Lisette reached for Josie’s arm, but Josie tore it away. “It was several weeks ago, dear and yes, Sawyer helped me. He came to me a couple of months ago—”
“So he lied the other day when he said that he ran into you here!” Josie said, realizing quickly that her voice had risen to a shout.
“Josie, please,” Lisette said. “Stay calm. I’ll explain everything.”
“This isn’t real,” Josie said, pointing to the report. “This is a con. He did this to trick you. I don’t know what he wants or what he thinks he’s going to get from you but it’s a lie. All of it is a lie. Gram, you’re vulnerable.”
At this, Lisette wobbled and grabbed her walker to steady herself. “Don’t talk to me like that, young lady. I’m not some old, doddering fool. I’ve still got my mind. I think I can figure out what’s real and what’s not.” She pointed to the pages. “This is real. I took the test. I had one of the nurses here help me log into the site myself so I could make sure he wouldn’t bring me doctored results. I knew you would react badly to this, which is why I didn’t tell you right away.”
“How long have you known?”
Lisette sighed. “The results only came back about a week ago.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
Lisette threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know, okay, Josie? Soon. But not while you’re working a big case or while you’re consumed with the flooding going on in this town. I was going to tell you. How could I not?”
Josie felt her legs weaken. She sat back on the edge of the bed. Lisette joined her. Neither of them spoke for a long moment. When Josie was sure she could speak without letting a sob escape, she said, “How is this possible?”
Lisette smoothed the fabric of her slacks over her thighs, looking at the floor. “I don’t know if you remember me telling you this a few years ago but your dad—my Eli—he dated Lila Jensen for a long time before you came along.”
“I remember,” Josie whispered. “You didn’t like her. You were happy when they broke up.”
Lisette nodded.
If only that had been the end of it. If only Lila had stayed away forever. Eli would still be alive. Lisette would be whole. Josie would never have met either Eli or Lisette, but they would have had good lives. Lisette would never have had to bear the horrific burden of losing a child. But instead, Lila had gone to live somewhere a couple of hours away from Denton. She’d gotten a job with a housecleaning service and gone to work at the home of Shannon and Christian Payne. They were both successful in their careers—she as a chemist for Quarmark Pharmaceutical and he as the head of marketing for the same company. They’d just had twin daughters. When Shannon realized that Lila had been stealing her jewelry, she reported it to Lila’s boss, leading to Lila’s firing. At that point, in her early twenties, Lila was already mentally ill as well as sociopathic, with likely more than one personality disorder. In retaliation, she’d burned the Paynes’ house to the ground and as the fire raged, she stole one of the three-week-old twin girls, leaving the other to be rescued.
That baby had been Josie.
The Paynes believed their daughter perished in the fire, but in reality, Lila had taken her and returned to Denton after a year away from Eli Matson. She’d brought infant Josie to Eli and told him that she was his daughter—that Lila had stayed away for the entire pregnancy and beyond, but that she couldn’t keep his child a secret from him any longer. Eli hadn’t had any reason to doubt her. There were no DNA tests back then, no way to prove paternity, not that it had ever crossed Eli’s mind. He’d taken Josie in as his own and loved her more than anything in the entire world until his death.