Page 68 of The Sweet Spot

“Yes. I connected with her on Facebook so she could seethe kids. If you ever want her info, I can give it to you. If you want to meet her.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “What did she say about our father?”

“Not a lot. He was a truck driver coming across the border all the time. They met at a diner she worked at. They hooked up, had kids, and then he decided to go back home because it was hard to find work. Sounds like he didn’t want to be much of a father. She never heard from him again.”

I groaned. “How do you have kids and never want to know a thing about them?”

“Beats me. “

“I don’t ever want to meet him,” I said with disgust.

“I get that. And I didn’t want to keep any of this from you, but you were going through a lot with the restaurant. Now seemed like a better time to tell you.”

“I totally get why you contacted her. I’m not sure I can do it.”

“I understand.”

We rejoined Mom and Dad and the kids. We all had dinner together, and then Craig and Jen went home. I kept thinking about my birth parents, more so my birth mother since it sounded like my birth father was a deadbeat. But the more time I spent with Mom and Dad and remembered how they nurtured us, made us feel loved and secure, the less I wanted to know about my birth mother.

Mom had the whole week planned almost to the minute, but I carved out some time to go see Jan. I wanted to thank her in person for all she’d done and try to pay something for her time. Mom gave me a few hours to myself, so I headed down to Jan’soffice for the appointment. I checked in with one of the receptionists, who insisted I make myself comfortable and help myself to a beverage. That was when I saw the full coffee bar, complete with fridges filled with various pop, juice, bottled water, and just about anything you could think of. On the white marble island was an assortment of pastries, and I thought about trying a muffin but decided against the potential sticky fingers.

I helped myself to a bottle of water and returned to Wendy, the receptionist. Wendy looked up and smiled. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

“Does Jan usually take on pro bono cases like this?”

Wendy tilted her head. “Pro bono? Like what cases?”

“Mine.”

Wendy blinked a few times, then typed away at her computer. A few seconds later, without looking up, she said, “Your case wasn’t pro bono.”

I gasped. Oh god, how much money did I owe? Would she take partial payments? But hadn’t we discussed this on the phone? She’d said it was pro bono, right? Maybe I was remembering wrong, and a full-on panic was setting in. “What? I thought she was doing this pro bono! How much do I owe?” I had money set aside, probably enough to pay the bill if the bill wasn’t astronomical. How had this happened? I was suddenly sweaty and feeling a need to sit down. Had anyone passed out in their office before?

“Nothing,” Wendy said. “All your invoices are paid.”

I gaped at her. What was going on?

“Sorry ... paid? Who paid it? Can you print out a copy of the invoices?”

“Sure. And give me a second, and I’ll tell you who paid it.”

She printed off the invoices painfully slow, and whenshe handed them to me, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. The legal bills were just over sixty-seven thousand dollars.

When I glanced back at Wendy, the color had vanished from her face. “Oh no. Okay, maybe I should talk to Jan about this. I see a note on the file.”

Wendy had screwed up, and she’d just figured it out. But as the saying went, the horses were already out of the barn. Or whatever that saying was, because horses shouldn’t be in a barn to begin with. They led happy lives in the wild.

“I’m not going to get you in trouble. I just need to know if Brandon Warde paid the bill.”

She took a long second to answer. “Yes.”

“And here I was to thank Jan for her pro bono work. I guess that’s pointless now. I’m not going to say anything about this, but I think I’m going to go. I don’t need to see her anymore.”

Wendy looked a little scared, but I assured her again that I wouldn’t get her in trouble. I then took off before Jan showed up.

I didn’t know what to do with the invoices. The only thing I knew was how furious I was. Not once had Brandon told me about this. How many times had I brought up Jan? He had more than a few opportunities to come clean, but instead, he and Jan had come up with this lie!

It bothered me for the last few days of my trip, and when I got home, I called a friends meeting with Jill and Tangi, to be held at Tangi’s house. The Kodiaks road trip had a few days left, so I had more than enough time to stew about this.