Page 98 of Only One More Lie
She pressed her eyes closed as if gathering her courage. Then she opened them again, a new determination staining her gaze before she began. “A year and a half ago, Peppermint convinced me I should do one of those DNA tests. She thought it would be fun. She’d done one herself and found out her family was from Germany and that she’s eight generations removed from being royalty or something crazy. I didn’t really put much stock into anything she said. But just for kicks, I decided to do a DNA test also. However, I didn’t tell my parents.”
“Why not?” Ranger asked.
“Because I told them that Pepper had done one, and they thought it was stupid. Said that the government was going to get ahold of those DNA records and put her in a database. They were adamantly against me doing it.”
“But you did it anyway?” Andi clarified.
“I had a little money saved up, and I decided to use that. I suppose I halfway did it out of rebellion. My parents had a lot of rules for me, and they drove me crazy at times. This one seemed so harmless, not like something that could hurt anybody.”
“So you got the results back? How did that point to the fact that your parents weren’t your parents?” Andi knew the detailsof what happened to Simmy, and the facts weren’t adding up in her mind.
Juniper’s gaze stopped on Simmy. “You were registered with one of those ancestry websites.”
Simmy’s cheeks flushed, but she nodded. “I signed up several years ago. My boss gave it to me as a Christmas present. I’m not sure why I did that even. I guess I was curious if I had other family out there. Nothing ever came of it, though. In fact, I forgot I even did it.”
“You were a match with me. So I started digging a little deeper. I knew my parents’ DNA wouldn’t be in the system since they were so against testing. But that led me down a rabbit hole that eventually led me to you.”
Simmy quickly shook her head, an almost panicked look in her eyes—and Simmy never looked panicked. “That’s not possible. The DNA would have to belong to someone else.”
“I struck up a conversation with my father. He admitted that he and my mom used a surrogate—but that was all he admitted. I began to do my own research into surrogates in the New York area that same year. That’s when I found an article about that surrogacy scandal.”
Simmy stared at Juniper in shock.
She took some time to process before asking, “What happened next?”
Juniper glanced at her lap. “What happened next is where things get a little complicated.”
Duke waited patiently to hear whatever Juniper would say next.
He hadn’t expected this twist. Did her story tie in with her parents’ murders somehow? He wasn’t sure yet.
“I felt betrayed, like I didn’t even know my own parents,” Juniper explained. “But I’d hit a dead end. I didn’t know how to find out the truth. So I hired someone to find some answers for me.”
Duke’s eyebrows shot up. “That doesn’t sound cheap.”
“It wasn’t. I couldn’t afford to do it. Not really. I had to borrow money out of my parents’ safe box.” She frowned and pressed her eyes closed. “Before I could pay them back, they discovered the money was missing. They blamed Caleb, which I hated. But I couldn’t correct them. I didn’t want them to know. Besides, they’d lied to me so I figured I could lie to them too. Looking back, it was so immature.”
“And that’s how you discovered Simmy?” Ranger’s voice still held an edge of protectiveness. No doubt, he didn’t want Simmy to get hurt in the midst of this.
“It is. The guy I hired was able to figure out that Simmy had changed her name after giving birth to me. That’s why I got confused.” Juniper’s gaze fluttered from her lap to Simmy as if she wasn’t sure how Simmy would react.
Did she fear Simmy would reject her?
Duke knew Simmy wouldn’t. But he could see where Juniper might be uncertain.
“I kept researching and discovered Simmy was a part of this true crime podcast.” She paused. “For the longest time, I didn’t want to dredge up anything about my parents’ murders. I wanted to forget what I’d learned. But then I realized you could help me find answers, that it was a win-win. That’s when I started trying to contact you.”
“I remember we got some emails from you a couple of months before we were able to respond.” Simmy tilted her head almost apologetically. “We’ve been getting an overwhelming amount of correspondence.”
“I understand.” Juniper glanced at her hands again. “I never told my parents any of this. I didn’t know how to. But I felt bad about deceiving them. I even wondered for a while if me digging up the past is what got them killed.”
“Why would you think that, sweetie?” Simmy squeezed Juniper’s hand again.
The motion seemed to give her another surge of strength, and Juniper sucked in a breath as if pulling herself together. “I knew the man who hired you to be the surrogate was a bad person. I knew he probably wasn’t operating alone, and when I started digging into my past, I wondered if that triggered something. I wondered if my parents had been killed to keep their silence and protect this guy’s secrets.”
A tear trickled down Simmy’s cheek. “Oh, sweetie. That’s a big weight for you to carry.”
Tears streamed from Juniper’s cheeks now too, and she quickly wiped them. “It has been.”