PART 2: THE WOMAN IN THE PICTURE AND THE SECRET MY HUSBAND NEVER EXPECTED ME TO FIND
“…your sister, Duane.”
The words landed between us like a glass dropped on a kitchen floor.
My husband blinked once. Then twice.
“What?”
“Don’t insult me by pretending you didn’t hear.”
“Lita, you’re jumping to conclusions.”
“Am I? Because the clerk described a woman with shoulder-length red hair, a butterfly tattoo on her wrist, and a little girl who looks exactly like she did at that age. There is only one woman I know who fits that description.”
My younger sister, Marissa.
Thirty-four years old. Divorced. Mother of a seven-year-old daughter named Sophie. And the same sister who had been telling me for six months that she was barely surviving financially.
Duane rubbed his forehead.
“It’s not what you think.”
I almost laughed.
“Then tell me what I should think.”
He stood up and walked toward the refrigerator, opened it, stared inside, and closed it without taking anything.
That was Duane’s favorite trick. Moving around whenever he needed time to invent an answer.
“Marissa needed help,” he finally said.
“Help with what?”
“Her bills.”
“And you decided to steal forty dollars a week from your wife to help her?”
“I wasn’t stealing. It’s household money.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
He said nothing.
I leaned forward.
“And why did you tell the gas station clerk you were buying something for your girl?”
His expression changed.
Only slightly.
But after seventeen years of marriage, I knew that look.
Fear.
“She asked me not to tell you,” he whispered.
That sentence hurt more than I expected.
Because it meant there was a secret between my husband and my sister, and I was the only person in my own marriage who wasn’t allowed to know it.
“What exactly did she ask you not to tell me?”
Duane pulled out a chair.
“Lita, please. Don’t make this bigger than it is.”
I opened my notebook.
“Eight hundred and eighty dollars missing from my tips. Four thousand dollars in lottery winnings. Three extra shifts I worked because you lied about the truck. I’d say it’s already pretty big.”
He stared at the notebook.
“How long have you been keeping that?”
“Eleven years.”
His mouth opened slightly.
I could almost see him calculating how many other things I might have written down.
“Where’s the money, Duane?”
He swallowed.
“I gave it to Marissa.”
“All four thousand?”
“Most of it.”
“How much is most?”
“Thirty-five hundred.”
“And the other five hundred?”
He looked toward the hallway.
“Duane.”
“I bought something.”
“For whom?”
No answer.
I closed the notebook.
“Fine. I’ll ask Marissa myself.”
I reached for my phone.
He moved so quickly that his chair scraped across the floor.
“Don’t call her!”
I froze.
It wasn’t the volume of his voice that frightened me.
It was the desperation.
“Why not?”
“Because Sophie doesn’t know.”
I stared at him.
“Doesn’t know what?”
His eyes shifted toward the kitchen window.
“Nothing. Forget I said that.”
I stood.
“Duane, you have exactly ten seconds to explain why my niece is involved in whatever you’ve been hiding.”
He shook his head.
“I promised Marissa.”
I picked up my car keys.
“Then you can keep your promise. I’m going to her house.”
He reached for my arm, but I stepped away before he touched me.
“Lita, please.”
I looked directly at him.
“Did you give my sister money because she’s struggling, or because you’re hiding something from me?”
He couldn’t answer.
And suddenly, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to.
I drove twenty minutes to Marissa’s little rental house on the edge of town.
Her porch light was on.
Her car was in the driveway.
And Duane’s truck was parked beside it.
I stopped so suddenly that my tires crunched against the gravel.
He had followed me.
But that wasn’t the strange part.
The strange part was that he was already standing on her porch, speaking through the screen door.
I couldn’t hear everything.
Only Marissa’s voice.
“You promised she would never find out!”
I stayed beside my car.
Duane lowered his voice.
Then Marissa said something that made my stomach turn.
“You should have told her before Sophie started asking questions!”
I walked toward them.
“Questions about what?”
Both of them turned.
Marissa went pale.
Duane looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him.
My sister stepped outside and pulled the screen door shut behind her.
“Lita, you shouldn’t be here.”
I stared at her.
“Funny. My husband said almost the same thing.”
She folded her arms.
“Whatever he told you, there’s an explanation.”
“Good. I’d love to hear one.”
Marissa looked at Duane.
He looked at the driveway.
And I realized these two had practiced keeping secrets together for so long that neither knew what to do when I stopped cooperating.
“Did he give you thirty-five hundred dollars?” I asked.
Marissa closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Did you know he took money out of my tips every week?”
Her eyes opened.
“What?”
“Forty dollars. Every Sunday. Twenty-two weeks.”
She turned toward him.
“Duane, you told me that was your overtime money.”
For the first time that night, I believed her surprise.
But only for a moment.
“Then tell me why you needed the money,” I said.
Marissa began twisting the silver bracelet around her wrist.
A bracelet I had given her for her thirtieth birthday.
“Because I was trying to fix something.”
“What?”
She swallowed.
“Something I did a long time ago.”
Duane stepped forward.
“Marissa, don’t.”
She turned on him.
“Stop telling me what to do!”
The screen door opened behind her.
Sophie stood there in pink pajamas, clutching a stuffed rabbit.
“Aunt Lita?”
My heart softened immediately.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
She smiled and ran toward me.
I knelt to hug her.
But when she stepped back, she looked past me at Duane.
“Uncle Duane, did you bring the papers?”
Everything went silent.
Marissa grabbed the screen door.
“Sophie, honey, go inside.”
“But Mom said Uncle Duane was going to help us find out.”
“Inside. Now.”
Sophie looked confused.
Then she turned toward me.
“Aunt Lita, did Mommy tell you about the man in the picture?”
I felt a chill.
“What man, sweetheart?”
“The one from before I was born.”
Marissa made a small, broken sound.
Sophie continued innocently.
“Mommy said he might be my real daddy.”
I looked at Marissa.
Then at Duane.
Neither spoke.
My chest tightened so painfully that I had to put a hand against the porch railing.
Because for seven years, Marissa had told everyone that Sophie’s father was a man named Aaron who moved to Arizona before the baby was born.
I had never met Aaron.
No one in our family had.
And suddenly, a hundred tiny memories began arranging themselves into a picture I didn’t want to see.
Duane insisting we attend every one of Sophie’s birthdays.
Duane paying for her kindergarten supplies.
Duane remembering her doctor’s appointments when he couldn’t remember our wedding anniversary.
And Marissa calling him whenever something went wrong.
I looked at my husband.
“Tell me Sophie isn’t your daughter.”
His face crumpled.
Marissa covered her mouth.
I waited.
One second.
Five.
Ten.
Finally, Duane whispered, “I don’t know.”
The world seemed to tilt.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Marissa started crying.
“It was one mistake, Lita. Years ago. We were both drinking, and we never thought…”
I took one step backward.
Then another.
I remembered that summer.
Seven years ago.
My mother had been in the hospital after a stroke.
I had worked double shifts to help cover her bills.
Duane had told me he was working overtime.
Marissa had been staying at our house because she was supposedly between apartments.
I remembered coming home one night and finding them in the kitchen together.
They stopped talking when I entered.
I had thought nothing of it.
They were family.
My husband.
My sister.
The two people I believed would never deliberately hurt me.
“How long?” I asked.
Marissa shook her head.
“It only happened once.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Duane whispered, “Lita…”
“HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN SOPHIE MIGHT BE YOUR DAUGHTER?”
Marissa wiped her face.
“Since I found out I was pregnant.”
I stared at her.
“Seven years?”
She nodded.
Seven years.
Seven birthdays.
Seven Christmas mornings.
Seven years of me buying presents for a little girl I loved while her mother and my husband shared a secret about her.
I looked at Duane.
“And the lottery money?”
Marissa struggled to speak.
“I wanted a private paternity test. Duane agreed to pay for it. But then I found out I had some old debts that needed clearing before I could afford to move, and he gave me the winnings.”
I frowned.
“Move where?”
She looked away.
“Out of state.”
My stomach sank.
“You were planning to leave with Sophie?”
Neither answered.
“And the five hundred dollars?” I asked Duane.
He rubbed both hands across his face.
“The test. I paid for it.”
I froze.
“You already took a paternity test?”
He nodded.
“When?”
“Last month.”
“And?”
He looked at Marissa.
She shook her head desperately.
“Duane, please.”
I stepped between them.
“No. You don’t get to decide what I know anymore.”
Duane took a folded envelope from his jacket pocket.
It was white, with a laboratory logo printed in blue.
He held it like it weighed fifty pounds.
“The results came yesterday.”
I extended my hand.
“Give it to me.”
He hesitated.
I didn’t move.
Finally, he handed over the envelope.
Inside was a two-page report.
My hands trembled so badly that I could barely separate the pages.
I found the section labeled PATERNITY PROBABILITY.
I read the number.
Then I read it again.
And what I saw made me grab the porch railing to keep myself upright.
Because the report didn’t just answer whether Duane was Sophie’s father.
There was another name listed under the tested individuals.
A name that had no business being there.
My own.
Carlotta Bennett.
I looked up slowly.
“Duane,” I whispered, “why is MY name on this DNA report?”
Marissa stopped crying.
Duane’s face turned gray.
And for the first time that night, my husband looked genuinely terrified.
Not because I had discovered his affair.
Not because I knew about the stolen money.
But because I had just uncovered something neither of them had ever intended me to see.
I turned the page.
At the bottom, beneath the laboratory’s findings, was a statement that made my blood run cold.
“Additional biological relationship identified. Further verification recommended.”
I looked at my sister.
She was staring at the floor.
“Marissa,” I said quietly, “what exactly have you been hiding about Sophie?”
She raised her head.
And the words she whispered next changed everything.
“Lita… before I tell you, there’s something you need to know about the night Mom had her stroke.”….
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3…
