“Actually, it goes back thirty years,” McCall said. “Back to the night you were born. There was another baby born within minutes of you.”
A chill snaked up his spine. “You aren’t going to tell me that the babies somehow got switched by mistake.”
“No. Not by mistake.”
He laughed, shaking his head. This was not happening. He’d tried to imagine what his mother could have possibly had to tell him. Never in all his imagination could he have conjured up this.
“You’re telling me Marie wasn’t my mother?”
The sheriff nodded.
“Then who the hell—”
“The other woman in labor that night was Virginia Winchester.”
“Bull,” he said pushing to his feet.
“I know this is hard to hear.”
“You have no idea.”
McCall smiled at that. “Oh, I think I might be the one person in town who really does understand. I went for twenty-seven years wondering who I was.”
Jace knew what she was saying was true. She’d been like the true black sheep of the family, since no one in the Winchester branch of the family tree acknowledged that she even existed.
“Virginia Winchester?” he said, trying to calm down.
“My aunt. She was pregnant with Jordan McCormick’s son. Virginia’s been gone the past twenty-seven years and has only recently returned to town.”
So he was the child of Virginia Winchester and Jordan McCormick. “They weren’t married?”
She shook her head. “Jordan’s mother was against the relationship. There has always been bad blood between the Winchesters and McCormicks. I have no idea why. But Joanna McCormick was afraid that once the baby was born, her son Jordan would marry my aunt. That is apparently why she paid a woman posing as a nurse to switch the babies.”
Jace shook his head in disbelief. “What happened to my mother’s … Marie’s baby?”
“Marie had a difficult pregnancy, and an even more difficult labor, apparently,” McCall said. “At her advanced age, she knew the risks. From what I’ve found out, she was lucky that the pregnancy didn’t kill her. As it was, her baby died two days after it was born.”
He closed his eyes, thinking of all the times his mother had told him about how badly she’d wanted a baby, how hard it had been and how lucky she was to get him. She’d known the babies had been switched. Maybe not at first, but later …
“I’m sorry, Jace, but Joanna McCormick confessed. So did your uncle.”
His eyes flew open. “My uncle?”
“It’s complicated,” she said and waited for him to lower himself back into his chair. “I can only tell you what we’ve been able to piece together from the last people to see Audie alive. Thirty years ago, he’d been dating a woman posing as a nurse. He knew she was going to switch the babies and obviously must have known that Marie’s baby wasn’t doing well. We don’t believe he knew that Joanna McCormick had already paid the woman to make the switch. When she changed her mind and switched the babies back, he …”
Jace felt his heart drop. “No.”
“He killed her and switched the babies. I’m sure he did it because he knew it was his sister’s last chance to have a baby. Unfortunately the woman’s sister—”
“He killed her, as well?”
McCall nodded.
Jace was on his feet again, pacing the floor. He raked a hand through this thick, dark hair and swore.
“This isn’t possible.” Jace felt sick. He couldn’t quit thinking about all the times his mother had told him that he’d been a blessing from God. Well, not exactly a blessing from God, as it turned out. “You have any proof of this?”
“Because it became a criminal investigation, the baby Virginia Winchester buried was exhumed. DNA tests confirmed that the child was Marie Dennison’s.”
Jace looked away. “Did my mother know?”
“It all came out after she died,” McCall said. “I don’t think she knew what her brother had done.”
Or she’d known from that moment thirty years ago when a nurse had put the baby in her arms—and said nothing?
Jace hated to think how long she had known he wasn’t the son she’d conceived. Long enough that she’d wanted to tell him before she died, of that he was certain.
“This is really a hell of a thing to drop on someone,” he said. “What am I supposed to do with this information?”
McCall shook her head. “Virginia Winchester is your mother. What you decide to do with the information is up to you.”
He rubbed a hand over his face.
“She’s staying out at the ranch with my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother?” He remembered stories about the reclusive Pepper Winchester. Since when had she acknowledged that McCall was her granddaughter?
McCall smiled. “Like I said, a lot has happened since you left town.”
“Apparently.”
“I’m sorry you had to come back to this along with everything else.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“If there is anything I can do …”
“So, I guess you and I are …”
“Cousins,” McCall said.
“You’ll understand if I’m not excited about being a Winchester.”
She smiled. “Call me if you need anything.”
He left, stopping outside on the sidewalk to breathe. The news had him more than a little rattled. It was as if nothing in his past had been as he’d thought it. Not his mother. Not even his uncle Audie. Most especially, not himself.
Jace walked three doors down to the Range Rider Bar, shoved open the door and stepped into the dim, cool darkness. He needed a drink.
As he took a stool at the bar, the young female bartender smiled at him. “What would you like?”
“Beer. Whatever you have on tap.” He’d never been a drinker. As she walked away, he realized he should have ordered something stronger. He glanced in the mirror behind the bar, taking in the three patrons on stools at the other end, glad to see that he didn’t recognize anyone—nor did they seem to know him.
When the bartender brought his beer, he stared into the depths of his glass and tried to take in what McCall had told him.
Audie murdered two women and took his own life? He thought of his uncle, a prickly loner who only softened when he was around his sister Marie and Jace. But he would never have guessed the man capable of murder.
“Holy hell,” he breathed and took a long drink of the beer.
Marie Dennison wasn’t his mother. Instead Virginia Winchester was? He’d never laid eyes on the woman.
Nor did he plan to, he thought as he took another drink. He’d get the only mother he’d known and Audie buried. Then he would get the hell out of here.
He thought about his family ranch to the north of town, where he’d been raised. He’d put it up for sale. That way there would be no reason to ever come back here.
He finished his beer, feeling a little better. First the mortuary, then a real estate office. With