Chapter 38
Thirty-eight
Ewan knocked on the door of his sister’s house, and Joe came out.
‘I heard about what happened,’ Joe said sympathetically. ‘What a mess.’
‘I need to speak with Kenzie,’ Ewan said.
‘Sorry, mate. She’s not here.’
‘What?’
‘There was a late flight . Floss offered to drive her.’
Ewan felt a punch of betrayal. ‘Why would she do that?’
Joe shrugged a large shoulder. ‘Kenzie was pretty upset.’
‘Floss should have told me.’
‘There wasn’t really time. Besides, Kenzie wouldn’t be talked out of it. Maybe giving things a bit of space wouldn’t hurt.’
Ewan ran his hand through his hair and let out a frustrated curse.
He’d wanted to talk all this over with Kenzie, try and understand what happened.
He should have just told her that he believed her, even if he wasn’t sure how a DNA test could be wrong.
Instead, he was still in shock and there’d been too many questions and emotions running through his head that he hadn’t been able to get the right words out when she’d clearly been needing him to say them.
‘Floss’ll be back in a couple of hours. Why don’t you come in and have a beer while you wait for her?’
He had nothing better to do. He sure as hell wasn’t going back over to the main house with his old man still in there. He reluctantly followed Joe inside, suddenly feeling years older and a whole lot wearier.
‘Bloody idiots,’ Jack stormed late the next evening, when he, Sam and Kenzie were seated at the dining table.
It had been a long day of waiting in airports and connecting flights to return to Burrumba to pick up her car.
‘How could they even think she wasn’t his kid?
Blind Freddy could see the resemblance.’
‘The report said otherwise.’ Kenzie sighed, wishing she was already in bed, but knowing, despite her fatigue, she probably wouldn’t be able to sleep. There were too many things swirling around in her head.
‘There’s no point in going over it all now,’ her mother said gently. ‘It’s been a long day. A good night’s sleep will do everyone the world of good.’
She smiled faintly at her mother and nodded.
The moment she walked into her parents’ home, she’d felt all the past thirty-odd hours drain away as she’d been wrapped up tightly in a warm, comforting hug, feeling exactly like she was six years old and coming home from a bad day at school. Home made everything feel better.
Poppy had been put in bed hours ago, clutching Mr Percival, and Kenzie stood under the hot spray of water from the shower, letting it ease the tight knots in her shoulders and neck.
It seemed surreal, everything that had unfolded, like the froth in a glass of beer, rising too fast to contain it and overflowing without end.
She’d turned her phone off after notifying her mother she was on her way home.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone. There had been a few missed calls from Ewan, which she ignored—there was nothing else to say.
He didn’t believe her and she was too exhausted and heartbroken to bother defending herself.
She fought off fresh tears when she thought about how she was going to explain to Poppy why Ewan was suddenly not around. How could she tell her Ewan no longer believed he was her daddy?
This was worse than if he’d decided not to be part of Poppy’s life—and exactly what she’d been afraid of: getting to know him only to lose him. She wasn’t even sure she was talking about Poppy anymore … her own heart was shattered as well.
Tomorrow, she planned on heading back to the Gold Coast. They’d already been gone too long. What they needed was some familiar routine, just the two of them, back to what they were used to before Ewan bloody Campbell had come crashing into their lives.
The next morning, Ewan woke up on the lounge to the sound of cartoons playing quietly on the TV and cracked open one eye to see his two nephews seated on the opposite lounge, eating toast as they watched their shows.
‘Uncle Ewan’s awake,’ Angus called, as he took a bite of his toast before looking back at the screen.
‘Ah, good. I’ve got breakfast ready. Come out to the kitchen,’ his sister said, sticking her head around the corner.
He looked over at the coffee table and realised someone must have cleaned up. Before he’d fallen asleep, there’d been a line-up of empty beer cans there. As he sat up slowly, he winced, his headache beating steadily in time with his pulse. Ouch.
After splashing his face with water in the bathroom, he felt marginally better—at least better enough to face his sister out in the kitchen.
‘You’ve looked better,’ she said without any sign of sympathy.
‘Thanks.’
‘Why men think drinking their sorrows away will help anything is beyond me.’ She shrugged.
‘I wasn’t planning to. Your husband kept plying me with alcohol.’
‘You’re a big boy now. You could have said no at any time.’
Fair point. ‘What took you so long, anyway. I was waiting up for you to get back.’
‘I made a stop to see an old friend on the way home.’
‘Why?’
‘Because something was really wrong about that whole DNA test thing, and it was driving me mad. You remember Mary Bishop from school?’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head as he accepted a plate of bacon and eggs.
‘She and I were thick as thieves growing up. Anyway,’ she said when he continued to show no recognition of who she was talking about, ‘she’s a genetic engineer, so I figured I might be able to pick her brain about the whole thing.’
‘And? Did it help?’
Floss took a sip of coffee. ‘It raised a whole heap of new questions.’
‘Like?’
‘Like, for instance, that particular test is done with cheek swab samples.’
‘I never did a cheek swab. I’m pretty sure I would have noticed,’ he said.
‘That’s what I thought. So I confronted Dad.’
‘What?’ Ewan said, his knife and fork poised mid-air.
‘Last night when I got home. I know,’ she said wearily as he opened his mouth, ‘I should have waited for you, but I saw that you’d been drinking and figured that probably wouldn’t have helped anything. So I made the call.’
‘What happened?’
‘I told him I’d had the report looked over by a professional and that I knew he was lying. He denied it of course, for a while, but then he admitted that he’d supplied the cheek swab, which I’d kind of figured, after talking with Mary.’
‘What?’
‘I know … crazy. But it guaranteed the result he was after.’
‘I just don’t understand why he did it.’
‘I think he genuinely believed he was protecting the family legacy. Losing his own inheritance—the whole betrayal from his own father—it’s been what drives him.
He came over here to start his own line—continue the family legacy so to speak.
Arran was supposed to inherit this place,’ she said, shrugging.
‘There was never any secret about it. Despite the fact I was the eldest, it was always his intention to pass this place down to the first-born son.’
‘It’s freaking archaic,’ Ewan muttered.
‘Yep, but that’s our stubborn father.’ They sipped their coffee in silence, both mulling over their own thoughts.
‘I still don’t get why he’d consider anything I do as a risk. I’m not even in the will anymore, despite the fact I’m technically the oldest son now,’ he scoffed.
‘Knowing how headstrong he is about family tradition, do you really believe he’s written his only surviving son out of his will?’ Floss asked doubtfully.
Ewan gave a grunt under his breath.
‘He could see you were in love with Kenzie and that you weren’t going to question that Poppy was your child.
But he was adamant that Kenzie’s story didn’t add up and convinced she had her eye on the inheritance, so just to be on the safe side he fixed the test. The only thing he has any control over is Laire-Mor. ’
‘He’s crazy.’
‘He’s driven,’ Floss said.
‘You’re defending him?’ Ewan asked, frowning at his sister.
‘Seriously? I’ve grown up as the daughter—pretty useless for anything in his eyes.
However, I’ve managed to produce two legitimate male heirs,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Of course, I don’t condone his narrow-minded ideals.
I’m just pointing out that this goes deeper than the fact we think he’s crazy.
These are his honest-to-God beliefs. This is how he was brought up and what he had drummed into him from his grandfather.
Then to have his own father turn out to be some weak, lovesick pushover who married a woman who ended up destroying generations of family history—it’s shaped who he is today. ’
Ewan let his sister’s words sink in. On some level it made sense, but it was still hard to believe. He’d known his old man was ruthless, but this was a whole new low.
The phone rang and Floss picked it up. ‘Oh good, it’s Mary. I updated her after Dad’s revelation last night. Hi, Mary! Hang on, my brother’s here, I’ll put you on speaker.’
‘Oh, hi! Okay, so, I got your text this morning, and this puts an interesting spin on things.’
‘How so?’ Floss asked, resting one hip against the kitchen bench as she sipped her coffee.
‘I don’t think your father provided the sample either.’
‘What do you mean? He said he did,’ Floss said with a frown.
‘Well, going on the theory that we know Ewan is the child’s father, if Callum gave the sample, it would have still had certain markers with at least some of the same alleles, because his DNA and Ewan’s would share certain markers.
But the alleles don’t match at two different genetic markers in the results table, meaning it couldn’t have been Callum’s specimen.
If it was, then there would have been a combined paternity index of greater than 1000 indicated, and there wasn’t. ’
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Ewan said, perplexed. ‘Why would he lie about using his own sample? Who else would he have got to do it?’
‘There is one other consideration … but it would make things really uncomfortable and more than a little messy,’ Mary warned.
‘My father falsified his grandchild’s unauthorised DNA test. We’re way beyond messy and uncomfortable,’ Floss said dryly.
Mary made a doubtful sound before continuing, sounding slightly reluctant, ‘If he did supply the sample, then the bigger mystery is why his DNA doesn’t match up with Ewan’s.’
Ewan felt he must have misunderstood what she was implying. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked slowly.
‘I’m saying that if that sample was Callum’s DNA, then he doesn’t share common markers with you. Meaning he can’t possibly be related to you, Ewan. It would mean that Callum isn’t your biological father.’