"Did you tell Fantino about us?" she asked him, playing his own trick back at him.
Question for question. No answers in evidence.
"I did not, and I regret that. Maybe he would have confided in me if I had."
"Why do you think neither of them named me as guardian, or even co-guardian, of Jo-Jo in the event they were both incapacitated?" She didn't say dead, because she wasnotsaying that out loud.
Not with both of them still on some form of life support.
Carlo waited to answer, so she knew he was doing her the courtesy of really thinking about it. "I do not know. They made us both godparents. Why not name us both guardians?"
"Because they assumed I wouldn't drop everything to be here for them." She didn't wonder why they hadn't changed the wills they'd had drawn up when they'd gotten married.
There'd been no reason to believe two young, healthy people needed to update their will, even after she'd come to stay and care for Jo-Jo. They'd all believed everything would work out for Joyce.
It had. And then it hadn't.
It hurt more than she could express that Joyce, the one person she'd believed was hertruefamily, the only one in her family who loved Annette, had not seen her as a good bet as her daughter's guardian.
"Perhaps your father influenced her. He seems to see through a cracked lens when looking at you."
"Not cracked, just not the same color as the one he has for his biological children."
Carlo went still, his expression unreadable in the dark. "What do you mean?"
CHAPTER 12
Unwilling to have this conversation without being able to see his reaction to her words, Annette reached out and turned on the lamp by the bed.
Then she sat up, pulling the bedding up to cover her naked breasts. Not because she was embarrassed by her nudity with him. How could she be? However, she didn't want this discussion derailed by sex. It was something she should have talked about with him five years ago.
"I'm adopted."
Carlo stared at her, his jaw going slack for the first time in their acquaintance. "Say again."
"I'm adopted," she repeated.
Sitting up, he made a visible effort to regain his usual composure. "And you have found this out recently?"
"I've always known." Then she explained about her father giving her to his brother when he wanted to remarry after her mother's death. "He paid my Father and Mother a monthly stipend for my care until I turned 18."
"That explains you having to work your way through university." There was something strange in Carlo's tone.
He was right though. She'd always known her parents wouldn't pay for it and Annette had worked hard to get a scholarship to make college even possible for her. She'd done it too. "They let me live in their home until I graduated."
"Generous of them." Sarcasm dripped from every word.
Annette shrugged. "I thought it was at the time. I knew I wasn't wanted, not by my biological father, not by them. Anything they were willing to give me felt like a gift."
"So, you tried to make a place for yourself by being useful."
The Cinderella complex the media had made such a meal of. He was right. "Not exactly. My mom didn't like the way I dressed, or how gauche I was with important people, so she'd send me back into the kitchen to make myself useful. None of us really had chores growing up, other than cleaning our rooms really. Only somehow, I always ended up doing stuff that Lynette didn't want to and Joyce was too young to do well. A last-minute cleanup of the guest bathroom before important visitors, and the like."
"But your parents had staff to do that sort of thing."
"Yes. But she kept the staff busy and my mom resented me. It didn't matter to her that the money she and Dad got for taking care of me was more than a nominal stipend, or that it made it possible for Dad to build his business."
"You never told me any of this."