The sting of rejection Sarah had felt, even as a pre-teen when her mom first felt fit to explain it a bit more, was enough that Sarah had never asked about him anymore. It wasn’t worth the pain. She’d never had any desire, even now as an adult, to try and find him.

Sarah pulled over into an empty school parking lot, needing to look Sydney in the face now. She thought it odd that he’d drive all this way out of the blue just to surprise her. The last time he’d showed up unannounced was when he wanted to talk to her in person because it was a pretty heavy subject.

“Why?” she asked, turning the car off.

Sydney smiled sweetly, another bad sign that this was not good. She knew him well enough to know that was his attempt to calm her. Her pulling over and parking was obviously a sign to him that she was getting anxious.

“My mom got a weird phone call a few weeks ago from a woman fishing for information about you. She wouldn’t tell my mom how she got our number. When my mom first told me, I thought maybe the woman had gotten it from when you used to list our number as a reference that year we applied everywhere for seasonal jobs or maybe from when it was your emergency contact number. My parents are probably the last people on the planet who not only still have a landline but have the same original number they’ve always had.

“My mom wouldn’t give her any information only that you moved away years ago and didn’t even tell her to what state. It made my mom nervous because she said the lady was really digging, more than just a telemarketer, so . . .” He rolled his eyes with a smirk. “My mom hung up on her.”

“Did the lady give a name or say why she’s looking for me?” Sarah asked curiously.

“No, it never got that far, and she never called back. My mom hadn’t even mentioned it to me until I’d been home a few days, and even then I didn’t think she was much more than a telemarketer too, so I didn’t bother telling you.” He paused as if to think for a moment.

Sarah waited not so patiently, wondering how this had anything to do with her dad.

“The other day a man showed up at our door. He said he was your father and he’s trying to find you—has been for years.”

He paused again when he saw Sarah’s eyes open wide. Her heart spiked, but she wasn’t sure what to think. Sydney didn’t seem excited. It felt as if he were being really careful about this and he hadn’t wanted to say anything in front of her mom. Why?

“His story was a lot different from the one you’d told me about him, Lynn. According to him, he said he and your mom were together for a while when you were a baby. He said they had a falling out and she left one day without a trace.”

With her brows pinched now, Sarah took in everything he’d just told her. “How did he track me down to your house?”

Sydney pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “He said he found the address online, but that didn’t make sense to me because he said it was the only address he’d found for you guys. He didn’t have any of the other places you and your mom lived before you settled in Flagstaff, not even the apartment you lived in there—only my house. At first, like I said, I thought it was my parents’ landline. I figured they did a reverse look up and found it. But the more I thought about it later, I got a different theory. He said he’d given up looking for you until recently when your brother started asking about you.”

“My brother?” Sarah’s heart thudded.

Sydney nodded but frowned. “That was his first stumble. He said you have a younger brother he had with someone else after your mom left, but he said his son is twenty-one. I didn’t wanna tip him off and tell him you’re only twenty.”

Incredibly, Sarah felt a little disappointed. The thought of actually having a sibling out there somewhere excited her a little. Regardless of what her father must be like or that he’d never been interested in her, the possibility that there was a brother out there who was asking about and interested in her had excited her for a fleeting moment.

“He messed up on something else too. Because he said the trail he’d been on to find you ended at my place, I pretended to know you a long time ago but said I hadn’t heard from you in years. I told him I’d do my best to see what I could do to try and reach someone who might know where you are now, and I asked him to leave me whatever info he had on you. All he had was your first and last name. Your birth date was off by a year, and he said you didn’t have a middle name.”

Sarah stared at Sydney, perplexed and not sure what to make of all this. She shook her head.

“Don’t get mad okay, Lynni? But I wasn’t even gonna tell you about it,” he started to say.

“What? Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because at the time all these other things popped in my head. Maybe when your mom took the money from her employer it wasn’t the first time she’d done it and someone else was trying to track her down. I didn’t want to worry you, but the more I think about it the more I’m convinced, even with all the wrong facts he had, he is your dad.”

Sarah’s mouth nearly fell open. “Why? You said yourself he doesn’t even know my birthday or my middle name.”

Sydney’s lip pulled to the side. “I don’t know why he’d get that all wrong, but even my mom agreed. She says my dad’s been known to forget what year I was born too, and a man forgetting his own kid’s middle name, even one who’s raised them the whole time”—he smirked—“sadly isn’t so unheard of. Since he hasn’t seen or heard anything about you in nearly twenty years, it could just be that he forgot.”