Nine #2
Roger smiled at Valerie, making her feel as if they were in this together. “Well, uh. She’s my daughter.” He stumbled a bit over the word, then coughed.
It was in this moment that Valerie realized she hadn’t been entirely sure if Roger was serious about going through with this whole fake-daughter thing. Her stomach dropped, knowing there was officially no backing out of this journey that could take her anywhere.
Penny paused, then forced a laugh, as if an important client made a slightly off-color joke. “Really, Roger. That’s too much even for your usual juvenile humor, and not very nice for poor Nico’s little friend.” She gave Valerie a pitying half smile.
“It’s not a joke,” said Roger. “When I asked if you knew about what I found in Dad’s files, I said I thought I had a daughter. It turns out I do. Or me and Yvette do. Valerie.”
Penny gave Valerie a narrow searching look and she didn’t know whether to appear solemn or cheerful. She suspected the resultant hybrid expression made her look ill. “Valerie Peng,” Penny said slowly. “The incompetent planner for Dad’s memorial.”
“I’m very sorry for what happened,” Valerie whispered, her mouth dry.
Penny’s face was tight. “Roger, I’d like a word with you. In private. The girl can stay here with Nico.”
“After we meet the rest of the family.” He held out his arm to Valerie in a polite, courtly gesture.
“Roger, I said—”
“And I said later.”
Valerie took the opportunity to grab some deep and grounding breaths to try to get into character as she took Roger’s arm.
She was Valerie Peng/Badgerton. She had recently found out about a long-lost father, and it was reasonable to be shy.
She didn’t need to be the most charming person in the room, or the most interesting.
All she needed to do was listen and be agreeable.
She’d spent the last year with Jake and most of her childhood channeling that energy. It was basically her default.
The Mariposa room was through a door off the main space, and she could see the hazy figures of the gathered family, touched by the golden-hour light streaming through the windows.
Like the rest of the house, the room was a stunning homage to how money and design could sanitize the experience of living.
The spacious screened room had a fireplace and a ladder hung with neatly folded wool Hudson’s Bay blankets on the polished brass rungs near a small sleek wine fridge.
Sage green provided pops of color among the chestnut leather furniture.
The space felt like it was intended for casual hangouts, but there was no evidence of people lounging, of upturned books left partially read, or rugs askew after getting kicked by bare feet. The room had style but no heart.
Valerie followed Roger through the door and the figures resolved into people.
First up was an older, portlier, balder, and sweatier version of Roger, who stood with a tumbler of pale-brown liquid that could be ginger ale, but judging from the flush on his neck, was probably whiskey.
Valerie mentally checked her Badgerton dossier.
This must be David, making the small gaunt woman beside him wearing a flowing black pantsuit Jennifer.
She was fussing with the magazines on the table and casting anxious looks at the glass in her husband’s hand.
A younger blond woman, who was more of a mood board than a person, stood taking selfies by the window wearing this week’s trending woven mini-wrap, and Valerie recognized her as the one filming her reactions at Malcolm’s memorial.
Fernie. Through the process of elimination, that made Brayden the tanned young man slouched shirtless in a chair, bent over his phone.
A cyber-tribal tattoo wrapped around a gym-toned bicep.
Finally there was a woman eating an apple in the corner. Alice Morton, Peter’s widow, was a tall sandy-haired woman in her mid-forties with deep laugh lines by her eyes. Her moccasins were so worn they looked like her own feet.
Roger cleared his throat.
“Everyone,” he said a little too loudly. “I have someone for you to meet.”
Each face turned to him with the forbearing but polite expression of an adult obliged to listen to a child play an instrument they are just learning.
“This is Valerie.” His voice rose on the end like a question.
“Roger claims this woman is his daughter,” said Penny in a deliberate monotone that spoke volumes about her personal perspective. “Yvette was her mother.”
“Yvette,” said David, as if the name was a bizarrely unfamiliar combination of letters. “Yvette. Wait, the thing you asked us about from Dad’s files? About the Chinese chick from the Lakeview?”
Roger rocked back on his heels. “I asked if you knew about Yvette being pregnant and Dad paying her family to leave town, so if that’s what you mean by the thing, yes.”
“Which none of us here did,” interjected Penny.
“Where’d you find her?” asked David suspiciously.
“I met Valerie completely by coincidence.”
“Before or after she ruined Dad’s memorial?” asked Penny.
“After. Once I saw how much she looked like Yvette, we talked and realized that Yvette put Valerie up for adoption as a baby.” Roger rushed this massive collection of lies a bit, but Valerie thought that could be excused as stress.
He’d told Nico, who had told Valerie, that he was keeping the private investigator secret, as Penny and David would go ballistic at the idea of a stranger prying into family business.
Valerie felt this was suspicious behavior in itself.
“Hold on,” David said. “Didn’t you say Yvette or someone was in touch twenty years ago to get money? Now you’re saying the kid was adopted before that, as a baby? Is that right? So who’s the liar, that person or this one in front of us?”
Valerie knew he was referring to her, but David helpfully jabbed his finger in her face to clarify who he meant.
“It looks like they might have not been truthful the second time.” Roger gave their prepared excuse.
“Really,” said Penny, frowning.
“No way.” Fernie held up her phone to capture the moment, then tilted her head and widened her eyes at the screen.
Penny’s wordless exasperation filled the room and Jenn winced after one look at her sister-in-law’s face. “Fernie, put away that phone. This is private.”
Fernie obeyed her mother with a sour expression. “My followers live for drama.”
“What followers?” asked Brayden from the depths of his leather chair. “You only have a thousand.”