Not vaguely.
Enough that I immediately understood what she was thinking.
“Look at us,” she said.
“People can look alike.”
She swiped to another screen.
“He filmed a movie in our county sixteen years ago.”
I stared at her.
“That would’ve been when I was conceived.”
My stomach dropped.
“You think this man is your father?”
“I know he is.”
“Lily, I have never met him.”
She laughed bitterly.
“You expect me to believe this is coincidence?”
She held the phone closer.
Same eyes.
Same smile.
Same slight tilt of the head.
I reached over and straightened a crooked picture frame.
Lily immediately noticed.
“There.”
“What?”
“That’s what you do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You clean things whenever I ask about Dad.”
I stopped moving.
“That’s how I know you’re hiding something.”
“I’m not hiding Max.”
“You told me my father abandoned us.”
“He did.”
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hid him because he was famous.”
“That isn’t what happened.”
Her voice broke.
“You let me spend fifteen years thinking my father didn’t want me when maybe he never even knew I existed.”
“Lily—”
“You took my father away from me.”
“No.”
“I’ll never forgive you.”
I tried explaining that resemblance was not proof.
That Max had filmed in our area, but so had many other people.
That I had never met him.
She refused to believe me.
Finally, I told her everything I had avoided for years.
How I called her real father until he changed his number.
How I mailed letters that came back unopened.
How I waited.
How I kept hoping.
How much it had hurt.
“I didn’t tell you because those memories still hurt me,” I admitted. “Not because Max is your father.”
Lily didn’t believe a word.
After that, the distance between us settled into
the house.
She stopped coming into the kitchen while I cooked.
She carried dinner upstairs.
Whenever I passed her room, I heard Max’s interviews playing through the door.
Once, I knocked.
“Want to watch one together?”
“No.”
“Maybe it would help if—”
