The Wager. Metsy Hingle

to her mother’s tales about their great romance, the idyllic marriage cut short by her father’s untimely death. This man couldn’t be her father because that would mean…

      “Listen to me, Laura. There never was a Richard Harte. Your mother made up the name. Your father was Andrew Jardine. And he didn’t die in Vietnam. He died in New Orleans about five years ago.”

      “You’re lying!” Sobbing, she glared at him through tear-filled eyes. “Why are you doing this to me, Uncle Paul? Why are you making up such horrible lies?”

      “It’s the truth, Laura. I swear it on your mother’s grave. It’s the truth.”

      Oh, God! He was telling the truth, she realized. All these years, her mother and her Uncle Paul had lied to her.

      Which meant her life had been a lie.

      She wasn’t Richard Harte’s daughter.

      There was no Richard Harte.

      The heritage, the good name she’d been so proud of all her life, they weren’t really hers at all.

      Hysteria bubbled inside her. How many choices had she made based on who she’d believed herself to be? How many times had she found a relationship lacking because the man had not measured up to the sterling image of her father? When all the while her father had actually been…She choked back another sob.

      “I’m sorry, honey.”

      She thought of her mother, the person she’d loved and admired most in the world. How could you, Momma? How could you have lied to me all these years?

      “I know what a shock this is for you, finding out this way—”

      “Do you, Uncle Paul? Do you really have any idea how I feel?” Another bolt of pain ripped through her. Her heart ached as she stared at him—the honorary uncle she had loved and trusted all of her life. The man who had perpetuated the lifetime of lies her mother had told her. “I thought you loved me,” she told him, her voice breaking.

      “Laura, I do love you. I’ve always loved you. You’re like a daughter to me.” He gathered her to him, patted her back the way he had when she’d been a child and had fallen and skinned a knee.

      For a moment, because the ache inside her was so great, Laura took comfort in the feel of his sturdy shoulder beneath her cheek, the familiar scents of peppermint and pipe tobacco that she’d always associated with him. She wept, remembering how she’d crawled into her uncle’s lap as a little girl and listened to stories about his adventures in the navy and his close friendship with her father.

      And not a word of it had been true.

      The admission was like a knife in her chest. She lifted her head, took a step back and stared into his eyes. “How could Momma do this to me? How could you?”

      “Neither of us meant to hurt you. Please believe that. Hurting you was the last thing either of us wanted.”

      Laura mopped her wet cheeks with the handkerchief he offered her, then she clenched the white linen in her fist. “All these years I believed my father was a hero, that he and my mother had been deeply in love, devoted to each other.” The smiling face in the clippings on the table seemed to mock her as Laura recalled the child she had been, how each night she had gotten down on her knees and prayed for this man she’d believed to be in heaven watching over her. And all the while…all the while he hadn’t been in heaven. He hadn’t even been dead. He’d been alive and raising a family in New Orleans.

      Pain ripped through her at the sight of him with his arms around the twin girls. She pressed her palm to her breast, trying to ease the ache in her chest. When her mother had died in her arms that night on the dark, wet road, Laura had been positive that nothing could ever hurt her so deeply again.

      She had been wrong.

      Learning of her mother’s deception and then having the memory of the father she’d loved stripped away from her was every bit as wrenching. It was like losing both of them all over again.

      “I’m sorry, Laura. I’d sooner cut off my arm than hurt you.”

      But he had hurt her…terribly. So had her mother. Wrapping her arms more tightly about herself, Laura ignored the twinge in her left shoulder, the reminder of the accident that had left her with a separated shoulder, bumps and bruises, but had taken her mother’s life. Oh, God! She swallowed back the spurt of anguish that came as she thought of her mother asking her to forgive her. This was what her mother had tried to tell her that night.

      “Please, try to understand.”

      “I don’t understand. I can’t,” Laura countered. She looked at the jumble of clippings and photos on the table. “And I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

      “Believe that I love you,” her uncle told her, his voice softening. “And believe that from the moment your mother learned you were growing inside her and until the day that she died, she loved you, too.”

      “Is that why she lied to me all these years? Is that why you lied to me?”

      He brushed his fingers along her damp cheek where the last of the bruising from the accident had begun to fade. “It wasn’t my place to tell you. It was your mother’s.”

      Laura stepped away from his touch. “And she chose to deceive me.”

      Her uncle sighed. His hand fell to his side. “Juliet didn’t set out to deceive you. She only meant to help you. If you believe nothing else, believe that.”

      “Why should I?”

      “Because it’s the truth. You were so smart, even when you were just a little thing,” he explained. “You were barely able to talk when you starting asking questions about your father. Where was he? Why did the other daddies pick up their kids from school, but your daddy never came for you? You were so eager to have a father that you even asked me if I’d be your daddy.” A pained expression flitted across his face for a moment before he continued. “Anyway, your mother was worried about you. And she felt guilty for not being able to provide you with the daddy you seemed to want so much. That’s when she started telling you the stories about your father.”

      “You mean the lies about my father, don’t you?”

      “She only did it to protect you. She didn’t want you to think that your father hadn’t wanted you.”

      But her father hadn’t wanted her, Laura reasoned as she looked at the photograph of him with his daughters and felt that sharp sting of rejection. “My mother should have told me the truth.”

      “She wanted to—especially as you grew older. But she was afraid that you wouldn’t be able to forgive her, that you might even hate her.”

      “So instead she let me believe in a father who never even existed,” Laura accused. The all-too-familiar ache that she had lived with since her mother’s death welled up inside Laura again. As much as she had loved her mother, right now, she almost hated her. And the admission both shamed and angered her. Above all, it hurt. So much. So very much. She wanted to scream at her mother and demand she explain. At the same time she wanted to bury her face against her mother’s shoulder, to hug her close and breathe in that combination of talcum powder and the rose scent that her mother wore. The tears spilled over once more, streamed down Laura’s cheeks. “How could the two of you do it, Uncle Paul? How could you make up those stories? How could you let me love someone who wasn’t even real?”

      Her uncle washed a hand down his face. For the first time he looked old to her, Laura thought, as though the very life had gone right out of him. He picked up an aging photo of the handsome navy officer and the dark-eyed brunette and traced the worn edges with his index finger. “He was real, Laura. Not everything was a lie. Twenty-nine years ago your father really was my best friend. We were flight buddies serving in the same unit. And your mother really was a WAVE nurse working at the base hospital in San Diego when she met Drew.”

      Drew. Hearing