Craig didn't sleep much that night. He tossed and turned, and at the stroke of five he gave up on resting and went out to the garage. He hunted around for something to do with his hands and found a sharpening stone. The various pruning loppers he kept hanging on the wall didn't need to be sharpened, but he pulled them all down anyway, one at a time, and ran the stone along the edge of each blade until it was more finely honed than it had been in years, taking his time about it. It wasn't quite six o'clock yet when he finished, and Kara and Zach wouldn't be up until seven, so he wandered out to the shed and found the set of green-handled loppers he had loaned to Ben the day Zach had appeared, the set with the damaged blade.
He sat down on the damp grass with his back against the shed and began to scrape the stone along the chipped metal. The sky was already bright, the sun rising early this time of year, and he could hear neighbors beginning to stir. There was no breeze, but the air was moist, humidified and cooled by Puget Sound.
As he scraped, the chip in the blade diminished gradually. He wished he could scrape away his own problem. Perhaps this second test would resolve it. He liked Zach a lot; he could even wish Zach were his son. But the youngster had sure brought him plenty of trouble now. Had Zach not shown up that fateful evening, Craig would have been sleeping peacefully beside Kara this morning; they had been content then, and confident in one another.
But there was no turning back time or undoing what had been done. Craig understood Kara's confusion; now he could only wait—for the second DNA test, for the results, to see what would happen then. He continued to work the problem before him, slowly wearing down the chip on the blade.
The side door opened and Kara stepped outside in her robe. It was early for her to be awake. "There you are," she said.
"Woke up early," he replied, looking back down at the blade. He couldn't bear to see suspicion and doubt in her eyes, and the anger she had been trying to suppress last night.
She moved through the grass, the dew wetting her bare feet. In spite of the dew, she sat down next to him. She took his hand, stilling the sharpening stone. "I'm going in with you," she told him.
"To the clinic? Why?" he asked. "We won't be there but a minute."
"I'm going to have them test me, too," she said quietly, facing him.
He gaped at her. There was no suspicion in her eyes this morning. Instead, they were weary, and resolute.
"Why?" he said again. "What good will that do?"
"He could be ours."
Craig didn't know whether to laugh or tell her she was crazy. "No, he can't. We talked about that before. The embryos—they were all accounted for, their quality was too poor…"
"I know. At least, I know that's what they told us." There was a subtle anger in her tone, barely audible. "But what if there was one—just one?" Her voice was so low he had to listen closely to hear, even with her sitting right next to him. "They could have given it—could have given Zach—to someone else, some other woman, and she carried him, she gave birth to him. A surrogate mother. He could be ours."
"We didn't give them permission," Craig objected. "They would be shut down the minute it hit the news. Everyone involved would lose their medical licenses."
"And go to prison, I know. But that doesn't make it impossible."
"We saw the pictures of the embryos—the doctor showed us how abnormal they were. He explained why they couldn't attach to the womb, couldn't grow…" Craig's voice failed him.
"He always said he couldn't be a hundred percent certain they would fail. That's why we kept trying."
"What about the blue eyes?"
Kara shrugged wearily. "Some ancient ancestor, I guess. I'm sorry."
Craig felt his heart hammering behind his ribs. At least she wasn't angry at him anymore. He thought through this possibility anew. He didn't like it. The anger underlying her tone began to gather in his belly, too—just the crazy thought that someone might do such a thing to them…and to their son…
Kara was gauging his reaction. She spoke again. "Or maybe there was an error in the DNA test. Maybe they tested your DNA twice, or his, instead of each of yours once. Or they mixed up the names with some other family, a real father and son. But there's only one way to find out for sure. Just—"
Craig moved to face her, waiting.
"Just promise me one thing."
Something shifted in the house, and he looked up, but it was nothing—a wooden beam creaking, a sound magnified by the still morning air. "Promise?" he prompted.
"If he's not ours, we need to find another place for him. Soon."
Craig fought down a sudden, strange surge of emotion. "But—"
"I know," Kara said, placing a finger on his lips. "That's the problem. We're falling in love with him." Her voice rose just a bit with tension. "It's been great, but it will have to end. He'll have to go somewhere else. Otherwise, he'll just break our hearts again. And I don't want that—not for us, not for him. I don't want him here if…"
"If it's going to be like Tiffy."
"Mm-hmm, like Tiffy."
Craig leaned back, resting his head against the shed. "And what do we do if…"
"If he is ours?" Kara finished. She sighed. "I don't know. Love him, I suppose." She grasped a small twig from the grass and snapped it. "And hunt down whoever stole him from us."
*****
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 38