Genuine Lies

in her eyes. Her eyes … not the color, but the shape. Very slowly, he moved his hands up into her hair. Not the shade, but the texture. Her lips trembled. And the mouth …
    “Good Christ.” Still holding her, he stared at her face asif he’d never seen it before. Perhaps he hadn’t, he realized. How else could he have missed the similarities? Oh, they were subtle, but they were there. How could he have loved both of them, and not have seen, not have known? “She told you this herself?”
    “Yes, though I wonder she didn’t have Nina jot it down in a memo. ‘Tell Julia the secret of her birth over dinner. Eight o’clock.’” She broke away then, turned her back on him. “Oh, I hate her for this. Hate her for what she’s stolen from me.” She whirled back, her hair flying out, then settling in a tangle on her shoulders. The trembling was past so that she stood spear-straight in the cool white light of the moon while emotions rolled off her like sweat. “My life, every moment of my life, changed in the flash of an instant. How can anything be the same again?”
    There were no answers. He was still reeling, fighting to take in the single fact she’d shoved at him. The woman he’d loved most of his life was the mother of the woman he wanted to love for the rest of it. “You’re going to have to give me a minute to take this in. I think I know how you must be feeling, but—”
    “No.” The word erupted from her. Indeed, everything about her was hot, on the point of boiling over. Her eyes, her voice, the fists held rigidly at her sides. “You couldn’t even come close. There were times as a child I wondered. It’s only natural, isn’t it? Who were they, those people who hadn’t wanted me? Why had they given me up? What did they look like, sound like? I made up stories—that they had loved each other desperately, but he’d been killed and left her destitute and alone. Or that she’d died in childbirth before he could come back and save her, and me. Lots of sweet, fanciful little stories. But I left them behind, because my parents …” She lifted her hand to cover her eyes for a moment as the pain ripped through her. “They loved me, they wanted me. Being adopted wasn’t something I thought about often. In fact, I’d forget about it for long stretches of time because my life was so normal. But then it would hit me again. When I wascarrying Brandon, I wondered if she’d been scared, like I was. Sad, and scared and lonely.” “Jules—”
    “No, don’t, please.” She retreated instantly, hugging her arms tight against her body in defense. “I don’t want to be held. I don’t want sympathy or understanding.”
    “Then what?”
    “To go back.” Desperation snuck into her voice like a thief. “To be able to go back to before she started to tell me that story. To make her stop. To make her see this was one lie she should live with. Why couldn’t she see? Why couldn’t she see, Paul, that the truth would ruin everything? She’s taken away my identity, scarred my memories, and left me rootless. I don’t know who I am. What I am.”
    “You’re exactly the same person you were an hour ago.”
    “No, don’t you see?” She held her hands out, and they were empty. Like her heritage. “Everything I was was built on that one lie, and all the others that followed it. She had me in secret, under a name she’d borrowed from one of her scripts. Then she walked away, picked up her life exactly where she’d left off. She never even told …” The words shuddered to a halt, then began again on a husky whisper. “Victor. Victor Flannigan’s my father.”
    That was the only thing that didn’t surprise Paul. He took her hand, found it stiff and icy to the touch. He curled her fingers closed inside his as if to warm them. “He doesn’t know?”
    She could only shake her head. His face seemed pale in the moonlight, his eyes dark. Did he know? she wondered. Did he know he was looking at a stranger? “God, Paul, what has she done? What has she done to all of us?”
    So he held her, despite her resistance. “I don’t know what the consequences are, Julia. But I know whatever you’re feeling now, you’ll get through it. You survived your parents’ divorce, their deaths, bringing Brandon into the world without a father.”
    She shut her eyes tight, hoping to erase the afterimage of Eve’s face—with tears just beginning to spill out, leaving onlyhope and needs behind. “How can I