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“What does Roman Tate have to do with anything?”
“Come on, Mark. We’re over. We both know it. The affair—”
Mark’s eyebrow shot up. “What affair?”
“The affair!” Anne waved a hand. “The reason we’re getting divorced. One of the reasons, I should say.”
“I’m not having an affair. I never have. Anne, I—”
“Do you think I’m stupid? Where do you go on Tuesday nights?”
Mark closed his eyes. “I thought you knew.”
“I do know,” Anne said. “I saw her. The girl you’re seeing.”
“You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not dating anyone. Harmony Feliz is my daughter.”
Anne felt the bottle of beer slipping from her fingers. She steadied it, then tapped her fingers against the glass and stared at her feet. The cement was patchy and broken. Weeds crept up through the crumbled bits. One tiny flower bloomed beneath the table despite the odds stacked against it.
“Excuse me?” she finally managed.
“Harmony is eighteen years old,” Mark explained. “When I met you, I was seeing her mother, Angelina. We’d been…intimate several times.”
“I never knew.”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it was relevant.” Mark looked sheepish. “I mean, you and I weren’t exclusive at that point, or at least I didn’t think so. Angelina and I dated for a few months, but after my third date with you, I knew I had to choose one.”
Anne’s throat went dry.
“I was young and stupid. I’m not proud of any of this,” Mark said. “I saw Angelina once or twice more. We’d been going together off and on for a while, but it was never serious. We saw each other between other relationships. We were just—”
“You were fuck buddies.”
“A bit harsh, but if that’s what you want to call it, I suppose I can’t argue.”
“Did she know the situation?” Anne asked. “Was she in it for the sex, or had she fallen in love?”
“We knew what we were. Neither one of us was pretending it was anything more than that.”
“You’re sure?” The knowledge of Penny’s unreciprocated relationship with Roman was still fresh in Anne’s mind. “Sometimes wires get crossed. It never ends well.”
Mark shot her a darkly frustrated look. “After you and I went away to Morro Bay for a weekend, I made up my mind.”
“So while we were cuddled up in that cute little bed-and-breakfast and you first told me that you loved me,” Anne said, feeling sick to her stomach, “I wasn’t the only one you were dating?”
“After that, you were. I never saw Angelina again,” Mark pleaded. “I swear to you. I called her from our hotel room while you were showering and broke up with her. We never spoke again.”
Anne waited patiently, her insides fluttering with anxiety. She didn’t want to hear what Mark had to say next, but she needed to know. She’d gone this far. There was no turning back.
“Angelina died last year.” Mark raised his beer to his lips, took a sip. “I only found out when a young woman contacted me via Facebook.”
“Harmony.”
“She’d done some digging into her past. Apparently, her mother had never told her that her father—the man Angelina ended up marrying—wasn’t her biological father.”
“If her mother never told her, how did she find out?”
Mark gave a snort. “Going through her mother’s things, she found a wedding photo of her parents. She was two years old in the photo, and it got her wondering.”
