The Charade: A Billionaire/Fake Relationship Romance (Eden Falls Academy)
The Charade: Chapter 32

‘IS it possible that it could have been anyone else at the reunion?’ Ava asked a while later. ‘What about Mack’s dad? He’s in the photos from the reunion, too. And from all the other photos I’ve seen of them in high school, he was good friends with Mom back then, too.’

‘Do you think that’s possible?’ Elyse looked at me earnestly, as if I’d have some extra insights into the past that I wasn’t around for.

But I shook my head and said, ‘Mack’s birthday is in February. So his mom would have already been expecting him at the time. I’m not sure when Mr. and Mrs. Aarden got married or anything like that, but I’m sure they were together and Dr. Aarden wouldn’t have cheated on his wife.’

Especially since that was around the time they found out about her first brain tumor. He wouldn’t have cheated on Mack’s mom when they were going through all of that.

‘What about the other guy in that last photo?’ Ava asked, seeming to perk up at the possibility of someone besides my dad being her father. ‘She seemed pretty comfortable with him in the photos.’

When Ava stood to grab the papers she’d dropped on the ground earlier, I went to stand next to her to see what the guy looked like again.

I studied the guy with narrowed eyes. I didn’t recognize him at all, but he did have a similar hair color as the girls. And if their mom had told them they’d gotten their height from their biological father, this guy was tall enough to match that description.

‘Is he in the other photos?’ I asked, taking the papers from Ava.

She leaned closer to scan the images with me, and I hated that my body still reacted to her closeness. I forced myself not to think about it; instead, I focused on looking for the guy in the group photo.

‘There he is,’ Ava said, pointing to the same area where my dad and Mack’s dad were standing at the top.

‘Okay, so he was probably at least friends with my dad and Dr. Aarden if he was by them in several photos,’ I said as I pulled the group photo up to the top of the stack. I narrowed my eyes as I looked carefully at the people sitting around the table with my dad and Mrs. Cohen. Sure enough, Mr. Aarden was on one side of Mrs. Cohen, and this mystery guy was sitting right on her other side.

Ava and I looked at each other. As if thinking the same thing as me, she said, ‘Any ideas on how we can find out some info about this guy?’

‘I don’t know. We could always call your mom and just ask her, right?’ I suggested. To me, it seemed like the best way to get answers.

‘She’s at a really fancy charity ball in New York tonight where they’re auctioning off a few of her dresses,’ Ava said. ‘She won’t answer her phone while she’s there.’

‘Well, we can’t call my dad, either, since he’s still unreachable for a few days,’ I said.

But there was someone else who might be able to help us. Someone else who had been in all of the photos from that night, someone who might know who this mystery guy was and what might have gone down at the reunion.

‘I think it’s time I take you to see Mack’s shack,’ I said. ‘Maybe Dr. Aarden can help us.’

IT WAS STILL RAINING when Ava, Elyse, and I drove up to Mack’s house in my truck. It was already eight-thirty at night and more than likely, Dr. Aarden was already in bed since he had brain surgeries that started early in the mornings. But I continued driving toward the modern-style mansion where I’d spent thousands of hours hanging out at with my best friend.

‘So this is Mack’s shack?’ Ava asked as the second biggest house in Eden Falls came into view. She pressed her forehead against the passenger window, her mouth open as she took in the massive house that was lit up by spotlights placed throughout the beautifully landscaped property.

‘This is it.’ I pulled around the curved driveway and parked my truck in front of the path that led to the huge front door. ‘Ready to go?’ I glanced at Ava beside me and then at Elyse who sat behind her.

‘Ready,’ they said together.

All three of us climbed out immediately, eager to solve this mystery. I wasn’t exactly sure where Elyse stood with the whole idea of my dad being their father and me being their brother, but from how quickly Ava walked up the cement path under her sister’s umbrella, I got the feeling that Ava was just as anxious as I was to prove that my dad couldn’t be her father.

We could only hope that was what Dr. Aarden would help us figure out.

Under the protection of the front porch, we closed our umbrellas and propped them beside the rocking chair close to the front door. Then with my heart in my throat, I knocked.

Mack opened the door about thirty seconds later. When he saw us, he stepped back, obviously not expecting us at his house this late. ‘Hey, guys.’ He blinked his dark-brown eyes a few times. ‘What are you doing here?’

I cleared my throat. ‘We’re, uh…’ I scratched at a spot behind my ear, not sure I really wanted to tell Mack why we were here. Then I said, ‘We were hoping to talk to your dad. Is he around?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Mack stepped back to let us inside and then glanced behind him. ‘Let me go find him. I think he and my mom were just watching Finding Your Soulmate . He’ll probably be happy to get out of watching it.’

I chuckled at the thought of Dr. Aarden watching the reality dating show with Mrs. Aarden. It was weird to picture a neurosurgeon watching a show where a guy dated thirty different women at once, but I guess it really shouldn’t surprise me too much. Dr. Aarden was the kind of husband who would do anything for his wife—even before her cancer came back, he’d done things like that for her.

We only had to wait about a minute before Dr. Aarden appeared in the entryway, wearing a white V-neck shirt and gray sweatpants.

‘Hey, Carter.’ He smiled when he saw me. ‘Mack says you and your friends needed to talk to me.’ He glanced at the twins with a curious expression. ‘Hi, I’m Mack’s dad, Brendon Aarden.’ He held out his hand to Elyse and Ava. ‘I’m not sure we’ve met before.’

Elyse shook his hand first. ‘I’m Elyse,’ she said.

‘And I’m Ava.’ Ava did the same. ‘We just started going to school with Mack this year.’

‘It’s nice to meet you,’ Dr. Aarden said to the twins. Then hooking his thumb over his shoulder, he said, ‘Would you like to sit down?’

‘Sure, that would be great,’ Ava said.

We followed Dr. Aarden into the great room just off the entryway. He took a seat on one couch and the twins and I squished together on the couch across from him.

‘So, what can I do for you three?’ Dr. Aarden asked, leaning his tall frame against the couch. He’d played basketball in college and had been drafted to play for the NBA, but after Mrs. Aarden was diagnosed with her first brain tumor when she was pregnant with Mack, Dr. Aarden rethought his career choices and ended up going to medical school. He’d been doing his residency at a hospital in New Haven when I first came to Eden Falls and was now one of the best neurosurgeons in the world.

‘We were hoping you could help us figure something out,’ I said, deciding to just jump right into it since it was getting late and I knew he probably had an early morning. ‘You see, my friends have been trying to solve a puzzle and we were wondering if you might have some of the answers they’re looking for.’

‘Okay.’ Dr. Aarden ran his thumb and index finger across his chin. ‘So, what is this puzzle that you’re trying to solve?’

I looked at Ava and Elyse, figuring it was best for one of them to take over.

Ava gave me a quick nod and then turned back to Mack’s dad. She said, ‘This is probably going to sound pretty strange, but for the past several years, my sister and I have been on a sort of quest to figure out who our biological father is. We’ve never had a lot of info to go by since our mom hasn’t ever told us very much, but we’ve been able to find a few clues here and there and have an idea that our father could have been someone she went to the academy with.”

‘Okay.’ Dr. Aarden frowned, not seeming to understand how he played a role in helping them yet. ‘Is your mom someone I would know? I went to the academy, but that was a long, long time ago.’

Elyse nodded. ‘Yes, our mom’s name is Miriam Cohen.’

‘Miriam Cohen?’ Dr. Aarden’s eyes went wide, and he sat up straighter, leaning forward. ‘Your mom is Miriam?’

Ava and Elyse glanced at each other, a look of excitement in their eyes at the prospect of Mack’s father remembering their mother.

‘We found some old photos of our mom with you and your wife and Carter’s dad when we were going through some of the old yearbooks at the school,’ Ava continued. ‘And so we figured that she was friends with you guys back then.’

‘Yes, we were good friends. She and my wife were actually really close back then.’

‘Yeah?’ Elyse asked, her eyes brightening.

‘If my wife wasn’t already in bed resting, I’d bring her out to meet you, but she hasn’t been feeling well lately so…’ he drifted off, and I couldn’t help but notice the look of grief in his golden-brown eyes.

Whenever I asked Mack about how his mom’s health was doing—how the experimental treatments were coming—he made it sound like things were looking up for his mom. But that one look from Dr. Aarden told me that maybe things weren’t going as well as they’d hoped. Maybe Mack was acting more optimistic than he felt because it was better than the reality of things.

‘Oh, you don’t need to get her,’ Ava said. ‘In fact, the only thing we really needed tonight was to see if you knew the name of the guy in this photo with you.’ Ava handed him the paper Elyse had shown us earlier with the photo of Dr. Aarden, my dad, Ms. Cohen, and the random guy we hoped was their father.

Dr. Aarden frowned as he studied the photo. ‘That’s Billy Monaco,’ he said. ‘He graduated with us, but we were never really close in high school.’

‘You weren’t?” Ava asked, her lips pouting with disappointment.

Dr. Aarden shook his head and handed the paper back to Ava. ‘I remember him being really friendly that night, talking to everyone like we’d been the best of friends back in high school, but he was kind of a weird dude.’

‘He was weird?’ Elyse asked, her voice shaking slightly. ‘Like, weird enough that my mom might have a reason to block him from her life?’

Oh.

I caught onto Elyse’s train of thought. Was it possible this Billy Monaco guy was dangerous? And that their mom had never talked about him or involved him in their lives because he was unfit to be around them?

But then Dr. Aarden said, ‘I don’t know if she’d need to do anything like that.’ He glanced between the three of us confusedly. ‘What exactly are you three trying to get at here?’

The girls looked at each other, seeming to have some sort of twin telepathic conversation. But when they didn’t say anything, I said, ‘Do you think it’s possible that Billy could have convinced their mom to sleep with him at all that night?’

‘What?’ Dr. Aarden’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Why in the world would you ask me a question like that?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ava apologized for me. ‘Carter isn’t trying to be inappropriate. It’s just that Elyse and I figured out that we could have been conceived around the time of our mom’s five-year reunion, and so we’re just trying to narrow down our list of suspects to hopefully figure out who our biological father is. Our mom hasn’t been very forthcoming with any details and tries to avoid the topic every time we bring it up, so we were hoping that by doing a little digging around of our own we might solve the mystery.’

But Dr. Aarden didn’t seem to be listening to anything Ava was saying because he just stared at the coffee table between us with a serious expression on his face.

‘Dr. Aarden?’ Ava asked when he didn’t say anything after a moment.

‘You’re Miriam’s actual daughters?’ He looked up. And this time, he seemed to study the twins’ faces more carefully. As if he was trying to see some sort of resemblance between the girls and their mother. He gave his head a slight shake and then asked, ‘And did you say you were Mack’s age?’

‘We didn’t say,’ Elyse answered. ‘But yes, I guess from what Carter tells us, we’re a couple of months younger than your son.’

Mr. Aarden just stared at the twins, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then under his breath, I thought I heard him say, ‘I was told she’d had a miscarriage.’

And with those words, something was triggered in my brain.

Something that I hadn’t thought of since hearing my dad’s conversation in his office a few weeks ago.

My dad had accused a woman for lying about a miscarriage. He told her that he’d done the math, which led him to the conclusion that she’d lied to him about losing her pregnancy. One of the last things I’d heard him ask the person on the other end of the line was ‘if the girls knew.’

And from the past few minutes I could only assume that he’d been asking Miriam Cohen if her twin daughters—her beautiful twin daughters, Ava and Elyse—had known that he was their father.

Even though I hadn’t heard her answer on the other end of the line, didn’t know if she’d even given him an answer, I knew the answer to his question.

The answer was no.

Her daughters had not known who their father was.

Until today.

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