“That’s certainly your right. Normally, you know I would never tell you not to do something that you want to do, but…”

“But what? Surely, you can’t be telling me that you agree with him.”

“I’m not saying that.” She smiled. “And don’t call me Shirley.”

I burst into giggles. Trust Marj to pacify me with a stupid-ass joke.

“See, I knew I could make you laugh. Let’s go to the kitchen and have a glass of wine. We’ll talk this out.”

While Felicia was busy in the kitchen getting dinner ready, Marj poured two glasses of wine, and we went out onto the deck.

“Now,” Marj said. “Spill it. What the hell is going on?”

I sighed. “I wish I knew.” I looked down at my glass of wine and swirled the liquid a little. “He told me he loved me today.”

“Oh my God, that’s fantastic!” Marj clapped her hands. “I don’t believe it.”

“I didn’t either. I mean, I believe it, I just couldn’t believe he said it.”

“Did you say it back?”

“I actually said it first.”

“Wow.”

“I told him he didn’t have to say it back. That I understood if he couldn’t, and it was okay, but I just needed him to know how I felt.”

Marj took sip of wine. “Talon wouldn’t say he loved you unless he meant it.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I didn’t push it. I didn’t even mention it. I didn’t ask him to repeat it. I just wanted to savor it, and I didn’t want to give him any chance to take it back.”

“It’s weird to think about…you and Talon.”

“I know.” I understood what she meant. Her brother and her best friend—it had to be strange for her. But even more strange was the fact that Talon was so…walled off.

Time to change the subject. I hadn’t yet told Marj about her birth certificate and what I had learned from Wendy Madigan. I bit my lip for a minute and then took a sip of wine. I couldn’t tell her that Larry was investigating her and her family.

I took in a breath and then exhaled. “By the way, I was doing some routine investigation at work last week when I came across an article in the local paper when Talon returned three years ago.”

“Yeah, there was quite a to-do about it,” she said.

“How come you never told me he was such a hero?”

“He wanted us all to keep it quiet. He begged us to. I’m still not sure why, but I felt I owed it to him. It was his story to tell, not mine.”

Ryan had said those exact words to me when I went to him months ago, asking him about Talon. It wasn’t his story to tell.

What story? Was Ryan talking about Talon’s heroism? About his time in the military? I had no idea.

“I thought we didn’t have secrets, Marj.”

Her cheeks pinked. I had embarrassed her.

“I know, Jade, but Talon felt so strongly about this…”

“You don’t need to explain. And I haven’t forgotten that I just kept a whopper from you up until about a week ago.”

She smiled.

“Anyway, when I read the story, I got to thinking about those documents we had found. So I did a database search for your birth certificate, and the weird part is that your birth certificate shows you only as Marjorie Steel. This is the official document at the Colorado records department.”

“Okay, then why does the one downstairs say my first name is Angela?”

“Well, I researched that a little. There was a name at the bottom of the article about Talon, Wendy Madigan. She used to be a field correspondent for NNN. Do you recognize the name?”

“Wendy Madigan? No, I don’t.”

I wasn’t about to divulge the fact that her father had engaged in a decades-long affair with the former newswoman. True, we weren’t supposed to have secrets, but that… Marj wasn’t ready for that.

“I called her because I was curious why the news story was only shared locally. Turns out she had used her clout to keep it out of the national news at Jonah’s request.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“Anyway, I asked her about your birth certificate, and she told me quite a tale.”

I quickly relayed what Wendy had said about Marjorie’s mother naming her Angela and then removing the name when she survived.

“No kidding? I was premature?”

“You didn’t know?”

She shook her head. “You sure can’t tell to look at me. I’m damn near six feet tall.”

“Were you ever small for your age?”

“Nope, always the tallest girl in the class. God, it was painful before the guys in school shot up. And even after, I was still taller than half of them.”

I smiled. “You were always the most gorgeous too, I bet.” But I had to change the subject yet again. “I know this is a hard topic for you, but what exactly do you know about your mother?”

“I don’t know a lot. At least not firsthand, because I don’t remember her. I’ve seen pictures of course, and I look a little bit like her, though I have my dad’s coloring, same as the boys, but my face is shaped like hers, and my lips.”

I nodded.

“I know she was troubled. I mean, why else would she have killed herself?”

I nodded again. Marj was probably not the best person to be asking about Daphne Steel. The boys remembered her and would be able to tell me more. But so far, they had been tight-lipped about anything concerning family.

“Crazy,” Marj continued. “So I was supposed to die?”

“Yeah, and I’m sure glad you didn’t.”

“Me too.”

We laughed together and drank some more wine.

“Out of curiosity,” I said, “I also checked out your parents’ marriage certificate. The official version in the Colorado database says your mom’s maiden name was Warren, like you guys always thought.”

“That is curious.”

I swallowed a mouthful of wine. “I don’t really know what to make of it all. Somebody somewhere got into the records database, probably a long time ago, and made those changes in the permanent records. It had to be someone pretty high up in the government to have that access.”