Chapter 20
Jalen heard quick footsteps coming down the hall, and Kodi was in her doorway a few seconds later, waving what they used as a house phone around in her hand. She raised an eyebrow at her little sister.
“I think this is the man Landon was talking to,” Kodi breathed out.
Jalen held her hand out for the phone, and in typical Kodi fashion, her little sister answered the phone herself, placing the phone on speaker.
“Hello,” Kodi spoke.
“Hey, are you okay? I haven’t heard from you.”
“Um, yeah, I’m fine.”
“You sound different. Are you alright, Farrah?”
Jalen and Kodi looked at one another, and Jalen knew they were both thinking the same thing. Why was this man using one of their middle names? His accent was a bit thick, so she couldn’t be sure which name he was using.
“I’m fine. Why are you calling me that?” Kodi asked.
“Because it’s your name?” he questioned as if he was just as confused as the two of them now stood. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he then inquired.
“Okay, I’m going to come clean with you. I think you’ve been talking to my little sister. Not to me,” Kodi said, and Jalen looked at her as if she was crazy. Why would she say that before they discovered who this man was?
“I’m confused, so you aren’t, Farrah?” he asked.
“Are you saying Farrah or Varah?” Kodi questioned, and Jalen was wondering the same thing.
“Farrah,” he responded.
“Spell it?” Kodi requested.
“V-a-r-a-h.”
“That’s…me,” Kodi said in surprise, and Jalen immediately put two and two together.
This man’s accent made it hard to tell which name he had been saying, and all this time, he must have thought he’d been speaking to Kodi Varah Hollis, and instead, he had been speaking to Landon Farrah Hollis. Their middle names were far too similar.
“Hey, you don’t know me. Kodi and Landon are my younger sisters. I’m Jalen.”
“Nice to finally speak to you. I’m Vega,” the man supplied.
Finally, speak to me, Jalen thought, and she was not fond of this place of confusion she had found herself in.
“Is there any way we could meet somewhere and talk?” she requested.
She had several questions for this man, who had been speaking to her little sister.
By mistake, it would have seemed. Jalen’s heart sank a little because this was going to crush Landon, and looking at Kodi at the moment, she found that her younger sister seemed to be in mild shock.
“Of course. I’m still in town. You name the place and I’ll be there.”
Jalen thought for a moment before giving him the name of a coffee shop that she thought would be the best place to meet him, and asked if he would be free at 5, which was in an hour and a half. When he’d agreed, they ended the call.
She said nothing as she watched the wheels seem to turn in Kodi’s head.
She wanted to give her ample time to process what she was feeling, and Jalen knew that could take days if not months for most. Kodi was not most. Since they were younger, she had this ability to settle her emotions pretty quickly, and Jalen hated it because it stemmed from the treatment of their mother.
“Landon’s going to be so upset,” Kodi said after several long minutes.
“Yes, but how do you feel?”
“About?” she questioned with a raised brow.
“Well, Landon thought this man was her dad. Now that we know he thought he was speaking to you, that means he might be yours.”
“He’s probably just some old pervert that’s not even going to show up to your meeting,” Kodi stated with a shrug.
“Okay,” she replied because she knew Kodi had decided for the moment. “Do me a favor, though. Don’t tell Landon until I’ve spoken with him.”
Kodi nodded, handing Jalen the phone before standing and walking out of her room. Exhaling, she looked down at the material she’d been studying and decided it was enough for the day. There was no way she’d be able to focus on it now.
Jalen sat at the table outside the coffee shop with her hot tea.
The weather was becoming colder the closer they got to Christmas, but she wanted to sit outside to feel more comfortable around the unknown man.
She’d shown up fifteen minutes early. That way, she could watch those who entered the shop and try to determine who he was before he saw her.
She’d sent him a text when she’d first arrived from the phone he’d been communicating with Landon on. She told him he could grab some coffee if he wanted and meet her out on the patio area, and that she would be in an olive-colored sweater.
It was close to five, and she hadn’t seen many men walk in and out of the shop. At least not any that would be old enough to be someone’s father.
“It seems scoping each other out was both of our first priorities.” She heard a voice say from behind her, and she turned to find a man standing there.
Jalen couldn’t help but look him up and down. If she had to guess, she would say he was in his early forties. He was wearing a black jacket, and Jalen immediately remembered that she’d seen him sitting in the patio's corner when she’d walked out. His words now made sense to her.
“Can I sit?” he questioned, gesturing at the seat across from her.
“Please,” she responded with a nod.
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” he told her. “I asked Varah when a good time for us all to sit down and talk would be, but she said you were fine with her speaking to me. Though I understand now that I was speaking to the wrong person the entire time?” he asked.
Jalen nodded, thinking of the best way to give him the information. “Yes, you were talking to Landon. Not Kodi.”
She watched as he furrowed his brow. She’d wondered on the entire car ride how he hadn’t caught on to the difference in first names, even with their middle names sounding similar, and asked.
“How did you find Kodi, Varah?” she questioned.
“I did a genealogy and DNA test a few months back. I was working on a case of two cousins who could have actually been siblings, and it made me wonder if I had any out there. So, imagine my surprise when the results came back, my DNA matched a strand on someone else’s, and that they were my daughter. ”
Jalen nodded. That was what she’d thought.
Last year, Kodi’s science class had done something similar.
As long as the students had consent from their parents or legal guardians, they could participate, and Jalen had signed the permission slip.
It wasn’t until Kodi got her results back that they noticed the company doing the study had left her first name off.
“You said you were working on a case?”
“I’m a private investigator,” he informed her, and that answered her next question of how he would have found the phone number he’d been talking to Landon on.
It was listed under Kodi’s name. It had been first added to the plan for Kodi and was under her name, but later her little sister had gotten on her own, Jalen decided to use it as a house phone.
“I feel horrible,” he said. “Your sister, Landon, right? She was so excited to be talking to me, and it turns out that I’m not even her father.”
“Landon is going to be upset, but like most kids, she’s resilient. In time, I know she’ll get over it,” Jalen told him before taking a sip of her tea. “I am curious why you didn’t reach out to me instead of continuing the conversation with her, regardless of whether you thought it was Kodi.”
“Custody records are difficult to unseal. I didn’t have your information.
So, when I couldn’t get it, and after doing the math, I realized that by law, I didn’t need your consent to reach out to Varah, eh Kodi, because she’s of the age that by law this decision could be made by her.
I did, however, request that we meet, and she didn’t want that to happen. Or, well, Landon didn’t.”
“She has it in her head that I wouldn’t want her meeting her father, and she’s honestly sort of right,” Jalen told him. She saw no reason to lie to this man.
“Is there a particular reason?” he asked. “If I’m not overstepping.”
“I remember the type of men that my mother used to deal with. I don’t think any of them are father material.” He raised a brow at her. “No offense,” she added. “Though, I don’t remember you. Then again, there were several men that I never knew my mother was being intimate with.”
“Your mother is Valerie, right?”
“Unfortunately, but how’d you guess?” Jalen assumed that he’d been with plenty of women in his life and wondered how he remembered one from eighteen years ago.
“You favor her a lot. Hard to forget a face that pretty,” he told her, and she watched as his eyes took on a far-off look. As if he were remembering. If she didn’t know any better, she would say this man had loved her mother at one point.
“I know that second part was a compliment, but the first is an insult,” she told him.
Though Jalen knew she looked a lot like her egg donor, she in no way wanted to hear it from anyone. That was akin to slapping her in the face.
Vega studied her for a moment, and he must have decided that her mother was a sore spot for her, which she was, and moved on.
“Is there a way we could not tell Landon I’m not her father?”
“Why would we not tell her?”
“I feel awful about the situation that I’ve put her in, but also, I could be her father.”
“Say what?” she questioned, bringing the cup down that was halfway to her lips.
“Valerie and I had an unhealthy, toxic, on-and-off relationship for years. Every time we saw each other, we fell back into one another until I cut it off about nine years ago. I had a feeling she was lying to me. I wanted stability, to have a family. Which she apparently had. The family part, and she never told me.”
“You’re not a good private investigator if you didn’t know that,” Jalen said, and she had honestly meant to just think it.
Vega laughed. “I was in the Bolivian military back then, and then working in security when I came to the States. I hadn’t even thought of becoming a private investigator.
I’ve actually only been one for the past six or seven years, and I told myself I’d never look for her because I was happier without the arguments. ”
“Trust me, I know. My egg donor is an Olympic gold medalist at arguing and neglect,” she told him, taking a sip of her tea.
“So, nine years ago, is when you cut her loose. That means you could actually be three of my sister’s father,” she informed him, though she was more so thinking aloud.
“The twins just turned six, so that rules them out, but Kodi, Landon, and Mikal are seventeen, fourteen, and ten.”
Vega hummed. “How old are you, Jalen?” he questioned.
“Twenty-four.”
“Then four of you,” he countered, and Jalen almost spat her tea out.
“Come again.”
“I first met Valerie when I was nineteen, and she visited Bolivia with some friends. I’d just joined the services the year before.”
Jalen shook her head. “No, that’s…how old are you now?”
“Forty-four.”
Jalen sat still for what felt like several long minutes, taking in the information she had been given.
Not only was Vega saying there was a possibility that he could be Landon’s father, but from the time he’d stopped seeing her mother, he could also be Mikal’s.
Now, he was telling her that there was a possibility that he was hers.
Had her mother really continued going back to this man?
Jalen wanted to doubt it because it meant that she cared about someone, and it had not been her children, especially since she seemed to always run from the responsibility of them. She had also never seen her egg donor go back to a single man she’d cut off.
“I know this is a lot to take in, but I’m more than willing to take a DNA test, and if I’m not, I have the resources to help, if you want to know,” Vega spoke.
“I need some time to process this, and to talk to Kodi and see what she wants to do,” Jalen informed him because she was being overloaded.
“Take your time. A lot of my work I can do from just about anywhere, and I plan on being in town for the next couple of weeks.” He pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her. “These are the results that led me to find Kodi,” he told her.
She gripped them in her hand before nodding and standing. “It was nice to meet you, Vega. I hadn’t expected you to be, well, you. I thought you’d be some old pervert,” she said honestly.
Vega chuckled. “Is that why you picked a coffee shop across from the police station?” he asked as he inclined his head towards the building.
“Yes, this place is a notorious hangout for them as well.” She held out her hand, and he shook it. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Take your time,” he responded, and Jalen went to her car, slid in, and stared out the windshield. What the hell?