At midnight, the clock rang. Joan was on the edge of the bed with her knees embraced very tightly. Her dorm room quietly felt weighty, suffocating. Her heart raced at every sigh of breeze through the slightly open window and every creak of the wood. Try as she might, she couldn't get over the shouting of Mrs. Harris the previous day.
"You don't know who he is! "
The Legacy Locket; Joan opened her drawer and removed the aged, patinated locket her mother had once given her. Though she had always worn it for sentimental reasons, tonight it felt like a representation of something secretive—something crucial.
She opened it gradually.
Contained inside were a man she didn't know and a blurry shot of her mother. He had Alex's same piercing eyes.
She shook her fingers.
She muttered, "No, no, this can't be."
Her spiral thinking was interrupted by a knock at the door. Fast she replaced the locket into the drawer and erected it. Almost 12:30 a.m—who could it be?
The door swung open.
Alex;
His gaze turned red. We need to have a discussion.
Looking damaged, like a man falling apart, Joan turned aside and let him in unspoken.
"She said some things that... I really have no idea where to start," he said. "My mom phoned."
Joan sat across from him, "What did she say?"
She told me that the man I thought was my father is not my biological parent. She claimed he was a man she had married to another man. "His voice cracked; Joan... the name she gave me was Harris, somebody she left behind after some scandal."
Joan's breath stuck in her throat.
"She said Mr. Harris was my real father. Your dad."
The room rotated around me.
"Not at all," Joan murmured. "That can't really be true."
Still, subconsciously, she already sensed part of it. The parts were snapping together, cold and accurate. Their familiarities, their bond, their protective impulses—that all balanced a frightening kind of sense.
Alex was standing and shaking his head." I don't want to believe it." I love you Joan! This is not how I've ever loved anyone. Yet if it turns out to be so…
He shattered totally.
She completed it for him by saying, 'we're siblings.'
In hush, they stared at each other; both realizing the reality they had been trying to avoid had lastly dragged itself into the light.
With his jaw clenched, Alex said, "I need proof; I will not leave till I am certain."
Slowly Joan nodded; then we will find it.
But even as she said it, she knew—whatever they uncovered would change everything.
Joan and Alex drove in a quiet ride the next morning to Joan's family estate. Mrs. Harris was gone on a journey, which gave them a chance to peruse her personal library undisturbed, a painful mix of hope and desperation. The animosity between them was stifling.
With her old key, Joan opened the side door and brought Alex across the quiet corridors of the Harris estate.
Joan headed first to the tall drawer cabinet labeled Personal Files in the dimly lit room full of old books and papers.
Alex checked the desk by raising old pictures, albums and documents. Joan whispered very softly after a few minutes.
Addressed to "Joan Harris – Open if truth must be known," she pulled out a heavy yellow envelope.
She opened it to find her hands twitching.
In her mother's handwriting, eighteen years before there was a letter in it. She read in a loud voice:
"Jane, my best.
The truth can no longer remain buried if you are reading this.
Many years before, I fell in with a guy I should never have liked, Matthew Swan. We were stupid young people. Already married to your father, who had started to emotionally distance me. Matthew got me to live once more.
You came into the world nine months after I last saw him. I believed you were his belonging until a paternity check showed otherwise. You're Harris.
Matthew, however, married under duress and fathered another child soon after.
That kid is Alexander Swan.
The letter was dropped by Joan. Her respiration caught. Alex moved closer to read over her head.
"Hold on," he murmured. "So... we are not brother and sister?"
Snatching the letter back flipped the page.
I tucked the test results behind the family photo in my bedroom in the wall safe. Should there ever be a
I doubt you have to go there."
Silently Joan and Alex bolted for the room. She pulled the large portrait off the wall. Joan's hands trembled as she keyed the code—her birthday. Behind it was a little wall safe.
The door swung upon.
One envelope was stored inside and marked Paternity Results - Joan Harris.
Joan ripped it open; her breathing was labored.
Alex looked next to her as her eyes ran over the document.
Opposite.
The father was neither Matthew Swan.
Tearing down her face, she turned back at Alex.
Eyes wide, Alex stepped back. At then... we are not related.
She whispered, "No, we are not."
Their reactions were a mix of disbelief and relief. They were secure; blood relationships didn't condemn their love.
But as they hugged the door banged open.
Mrs. Harris stood in the doorway, her face white and her hands trembling.
"You unlocked the safe," she murmured.
Still clutching the papers, Joan rose; you deceive us.
Mrs. Harris shook her head. "I was trying to save you from more than you realize."
"Protect us from what?" Alex queried, squinting.
Mrs. Harris wavered.
There is a different secret. Even worse than the first." going".
A long pause spread about the room like a black shadow.
Mrs Harris turned her attention to Joan, her lips shaking.
Your dad didn't only let Matthew's child go; he decimated him. And now his son has returned. Looking at you. But, Joan felt startled.
"Who?" She murmured retorts.
Mrs. Harris faces Alex.
"Him."
Alex's countenance hardened. With astonishment, Jane staggered back. The revelation floated in the atmosphere like a sentence of death.
Alex whispered inquiringly highly
Mrs. Harris came forward. "You're not only Matthew's son, you're the cause of everything about to collapse."