by Alexa Land
That took me by surprise. “Why do you ask?”
He turned to look at me. “I know you haven’t been having sex, because the walls of this apartment are pretty thin and if you messed around, I’d hear you.”
“Which is exactly why we haven’t been messing around.”
“You’re both working all the time, too. You never see each other, and that can’t be good. I get why you have to, you’re trying to afford our own place, and Finn’s working a ton because he has to kiss his boss’s butt after almost getting fired. But it can’t be good for you two.”
When Finn had gone to his captain to ask for his job back, he’d gotten yelled at for an hour, but had been reinstated. He’d been told if he stepped out of line again, he’d be fired immediately, and his punishment was a demotion on the roster. That meant he got all the crappy shifts and was expected to step up and cover any gaps in the schedule, so he almost always worked double shifts. It was all my fault, too. None of it would have happened if I hadn’t fallen apart and he’d had to come help me.
I told my brother, “Just because we haven’t been able to spend time together doesn’t mean we don’t care about each other.”
He watched me for a moment, then said, “If you did break up, he’d take Elijah with him, wouldn’t he, since he’s gonna end up as his legal guardian.”
“Okay, first of all, you’re the only one that’s talking about us breaking up. And even if, God forbid, Finn and I actually split up, we’d never try to keep you and Elijah apart.”
He chewed his lower lip for a moment, then asked, “What if Elijah breaks up with me? What happens then? Are we supposed to just, like, pretend to be brothers and keep living together? Because that’d be super weird.”
“I really don’t know what we’d do in that situation, but you know what? There are enough real things in life to worry about without also worrying about the what-ifs. If that did happen, and I’m not saying it’s going to, then we’d deal with it. But until then, there’s really no point in dwelling on things that haven’t happened and probably never will.”
Colt mulled that over for a while, then gave me a little half-smile. “That’s good advice. You’re really smart.”
I pushed myself to my feet and said, “Tell that to my high school equivalency classes. They’re making me feel like an idiot.”
His smile widened. “Sometimes it’s super obvious that we’re brothers. We’re both totally in the same boat, aren’t we?”
“Pretty much. Are you hungry? I’ll make you a grilled cheese sandwich while you do your homework.”
“Thanks. I’m starving.” That didn’t surprise me. He was always hungry and ate like a grizzly bear, but had barely put on a pound. I crossed the apartment to make him a sandwich, my nap long-forgotten.
When I brought it to him with a glass of milk a few minutes later, he glanced at it and said, “Don’t we have any coke?”
“Oh, come on! Don’t make me go all parental on you and lecture you about nutrition,” I said as I sat back on the couch.
He thought about that for a moment, then said, “I know you’re only ten years older than me and my brother and all, but you’re the closest thing I’m ever gonna have to a dad. So, I guess I don’t mind so much when you act like a parent. It shows you care about me.”
I grinned at that as he tucked into the sandwich, devouring the first triangle in three bites. After a while I asked, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but did Mom ever mention anything to you about who your biological father is?”
“No. Whenever I asked about it, she’d always get real defensive and angry. I could never figure out why. I took a look at my birth certificate, but all it says under father is ‘unknown’. I always wondered if she really didn’t know, or if she just wouldn’t tell me. Seems like if she didn’t know, she wouldn’t have acted like it was some big secret.” He chugged down half the milk, then went to work on the rest of the sandwich.
The phone rang and I glanced at Finn’s name on the screen as I picked it up. I answered with, “Hey. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Fine. Um, could you come down to the station, Chance?”
“Sure. Why?”
“There’s someone here to see you.”
“Who is it?”
“I kind of think you need to see for yourself.”
“Is it Zachary? Was he arrested? Is he okay?”
“It’s not Zachary. Please, just come down here.”
I raised an eyebrow at that, but said, “Alright, I’ll be there in about twenty or thirty minutes, depending on the busses, unless you think I need to hurry and take a cab.”
“You don’t need to hurry. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”
“Alright, I’m on my way. Will you still be there? I know you’re supposed to be out on patrol today,” I said as I stuffed my feet back into my sneakers.
“I’m definitely going to stick around for this.”
After we said goodbye and disconnected, I looked down at myself. I was still wearing my work shirt, which was green and said ‘Nolan’s’ across the front in big, white letters (I always liked that, since it was Finn’s last name, too). I’d managed not to spill anything on myself during the lunch shift, which I took as a sign that I was getting better at waiting tables. I decided I was good to go and told Colt, “I need to go down to Finn’s police station. I won’t be long, especially since I start work again in ninety minutes.”
“Why’re you going down there?”
“Someone wants to see me. Finn didn’t say who.”
Colt got to his feet and said, “I want to go along.”
“Why?”
“We can hang out and visit on the bus. You’ll be working all night, so I’ll barely see you.”
“Except for the fact that you and Eli will be setting up shop in one of my booths for three or four hours and ordering everything off the menu, just like every night,” I said with a smile. I actually loved the fact that they did that.
“Except for that. Let’s go.”
“Alright.”
As we headed down the back stairs, he said, “You don’t think it’s something bad, do you? What if the lawyer went to see Finn at work with some bad news about the custody cases?”
“Our lawyer would call us and ask us to come down to his office, no matter what kind of news he had. He really wouldn’t go to the police station.”
“But then who could it be?” Colt asked.
“No clue.”
As we rode the bus across town, I mulled over the same question and kept coming up blank. Why wouldn’t Finn just tell me who it was? I wondered briefly if it was Finn’s dad, if maybe he’d heard his son was gay from another relative and had come to confront him. Even though he’d moved out of their house, Finn had yet to come out to his parents. He kept saying he was going to, but kept finding reasons to put it off. That theory didn’t make a lot of sense, though. Why would his father pick such a public venue?
Duke was at the desk when we got to the station, and greeted my brother and me with, “Hey Chance. Hey Mini Chance. They’re back in the conference room, the one to the left that always smells like nacho cheese. Finn said to send you on back as soon as you got here.”
“Thanks, Duke. Who’s with him?”
The big cop grinned a little and said, “I’m not supposed to tell you anything. I think Finn doesn’t want you to bolt before you hear what that guy has to say.”
I frowned and said, “You’re as bad as he is.” Duke just went on grinning.
Colt and I cut through the police station, past the rows of desks to the long hallway that led to lockup, the break room, and the conference rooms (which all smelled like nacho cheese). When I swung open the door to the conference room on the left, I blurted, “What the fuck?”
Tony Asturias stood there looking nervous as hell. He was sweating through a plaid button-down shirt, which he wore open over a t-shirt, and clutching Bobo, my teddy bear, in both hands. I
snatched the bear from his grasp and handed it to Colt, then stared Asturias down and said, “What are you doing here?” I noticed my camera bag on the table, the one that had been stolen from my car and said, “What the fuck are you doing with my stuff?”
Finn was standing over to my left, and he said, “Maybe you want to take a minute and hear what he has to say, Chance.”
“He already said plenty. He called me an asshole and a gold-digger and told me he wanted nothing to do with me.” I glanced at my boyfriend and asked, “How the fuck did he know where you work, Finn?”
“I gave him a business card when we were in Gala. Just sit down for a minute, Chance, and listen to him. This is important.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and made no move to sit. “What is it?”
Tony cleared his throat and said, “I, uh, I went in and did the paternity test. Actually, I went in the day after you left town. I just…I mean, I was curious. Even though the chances of finding out I had a kid were a million to one, I just needed to know.”
“And?”
He picked up some crumpled papers from the conference table and handed them to me. On top was a letter from the doctor’s office where I’d gone to give a sample. The bottom two sheets were tables with numbers, which made no sense to me. I looked at the letter and one sentence jumped out at me: I can confirm a 99.9 percent probability of paternity based on genetic test results. “Holy shit,” I mumbled.
“What?” Colt asked, and I handed him the papers.
“There’s no way,” I said, staring at Tony as my thoughts and emotions reeled. “We look nothing alike.”
“No, we don’t. You look exactly like your mother,” Asturias said.
“Like you’d remember what she looked like.”
“I do, just a little. Mostly, I remember the photo you showed me. Is this the little boy in the photo, your brother? It must be. You two look so much alike,” Tony said, indicating Colt.
As I walked around Asturias in a wide arc and went to sit down, Colt said, “Yeah, I’m his brother. And shit, according to this, you’re his dad. I think maybe I need to sit down, too.” My brother took the seat beside me and held on to the bear while he looked over all the papers.
“Why did the results take a month to come back from the lab?” I asked, watching Asturias as he went around to the other side of the table and took a seat. Finn stood behind me and put his hands on my shoulders.
“They didn’t,” Tony said. “I had the results in a week. I then made them go back and recheck, because I couldn’t believe it was possible. After the recheck came back with the same results, I had my doctor do a fertility screening, like I’d done when my ex-wife and I were trying to have a baby. It showed the same results as before. The doctor estimated my chances of being able to father a child at somewhere around one percent. I guess…well, I guess you were that one in a hundred, or maybe my stats were a bit better back when I was twenty-two, who knows. But…well, basically, this is kind of a miracle.”
I just sat there, staring at the tabletop, trying to take it all in. Finn said, “Hey Colt, there’s ice cream in the break room. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll get some? I think Chance and Tony might want to talk in private for a few minutes.”
Colt looked at me and I nodded, so he got up and said, “I’m right down the hall if you need me, bro.” He took the bear and the papers with him as he left the room with Finn.
Tony and I sat there for a solid minute, the silence between us thick and uncomfortable. Finally he blurted, “I’m so fucking sorry, Chance. I didn’t know. I had so damn many people coming to me looking for a handout after I got that inheritance, and I was sure you were lying because I believed I couldn’t have kids. My ex-wife and I tried for six years. We went to all kinds of specialists, in Cheyenne, Billings, Denver. She wanted a baby more than anything. We both did. All the tests told us the same thing: I was the problem. But like I said, I was twenty-two when your mom and I hooked up, maybe things were better back then, before a couple decades of drinking and smoking and God knows what else took their toll on me. I don’t know.” He ran out of steam and just sat there for a while before he said, “Say something, Chance.”
I looked up from the fake wood grain of the conference table and asked, “Why did you come here?”
“Well, to tell you the news. I tried to write you a letter when I found out. I’m no good with writing, though. I tried over and over again but kept having to throw them out. I tried fifty times, actually. I know that because I started with a new legal pad and used it up. I never got farther than half a paragraph.”
“Why? It only would have taken one sentence: ‘Results came back, I’m your dad.’ What’s so hard about that?”
“There was a hell of a lot more to say.”
“Why didn’t the doctor call me and give me this news? My boyfriend’s the one who paid for the test, we should have been notified.”
“I asked Lem not to call you. I wanted the news to come from me.”
“Lem. Of course you and the doctor are on a first-name basis.”
Asturias shrugged and said, “Small town. Lem and I have known each other since kindergarten, aside from the years he went off to college and medical school.”
I sighed at that, then said, “Is there some reason you didn’t just call? Finn’s cell number was on that business card.”
“I started to dial your boyfriend’s number a million times, I have it memorized by now. But it didn’t seem right to tell you over the phone. And then three days ago, I ran into Christine Hanson at the market and she asked me about the results of the paternity test. You and your boyfriend made quite an impression on her. She really seemed concerned, so I told her the truth. And she told me just that morning, she’d recovered your stolen property. It was in the back of this kid’s closet in Gala, his foster mother discovered it when they were packing him up to send him back to juvie.”
I glanced at him. “A kid stole my car?”
“Yeah, Cory Previn, he’s fifteen. He’s no stranger to the police, but that was his first grand theft auto so they hadn’t questioned him when your car went missing. Anyway, she told me she had your stuff, including a really expensive camera, and was concerned about sending it through the mail. I guess, I don’t know. Maybe that was the extra push I needed to come here. I promised I’d return it to you, made arrangements for someone to watch my bar, and drove to California.”
I frowned at that. “The camera costs a fortune. Why would Christine release my property to just anyone?”
Asturias frowned, too. “She didn’t release it to just anyone. She released it to your father.”
For some reason, it didn’t really hit me until he said that. All of a sudden, it felt like all the air had been sucked from the room, and I struggled to draw a breath. I stared at the man sitting across from me, really looked at him. He looked tired. His shoulder-length hair was a mess, his shirt was wrinkled and sweat-stained, and he hadn’t shaved in days. There were lines around his dark eyes, and those eyes were watching me intently. “Fuck,” I said after a minute. “I actually found my dad. You were right where my mom left you. How did you never go anywhere in over twenty-six years?”
“That bar was always a second home to me. Before I was anywhere near old enough to drink, Ernie Washington would let me hang out there when it wasn’t busy and sweep up in exchange for a hot meal and a bit of pocket money. He knew I needed a place to go because my home life sucked. All of Gala knew. There are so few secrets in a small town. Anyway, I’m totally rambling, but you’re right. I never went anywhere. I drank at Washington’s every single night back when I was an alcoholic, and when I dried out, I still drank there, I just switched from Jack Daniels to Pepsi. When Ernie said he planned to retire, I bought the place. Shit, I’m still rambling, but it’s because you’re not saying anything, Chance.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Why’d you come looking for me after all that time?”
&nb
sp; I thought about his question as I went back to studying the fake wood grain of the tabletop. After a minute I said, “I thought about finding you for years, starting when I was little. I guess it made more sense back then. I mean, when I was a kid, I wanted a dad to, you know, do all that dad stuff: take me to baseball games and show me how to shave and ride a bike and take me for ice cream and, shit, I don’t know. What do dads do with their sons? I never had one, so I have no fucking idea. I’m pretty sure I got all of those ideas from an old TV sitcom. I guess…I guess I finally decided to go in search of my dad for that little kid inside me, the one who always felt he missed out.”
He said softly. “I would have tried so hard to be a good dad to you. Why didn’t Janet tell me I had a son? She didn’t even give me a chance to do the right thing.”
“I don’t know.”
“You must have asked her about me since you knew where to find me. What did she say?”
“Not much. I guess I got the impression that she didn’t think you were up to the job.”
He thought about that, then said, “If I was looking at myself through her eyes, I’d probably have thought the same thing. I was well on my way to becoming an alcoholic at twenty-two, couldn’t hold down a job, and spent all my time in a bar. She probably figured no dad at all was better than some unemployed drunk. Still though, shit. I wish I’d known about you.”
“Me, too.” I pushed back from the table and slung the camera bag over my shoulder. “Thanks for bringing my stuff to me. Drive safe going back to Wyoming.”
He stood up too and said as I headed for the door, “Wait, that’s it? You’re leaving?”
“I have to work a second shift at the restaurant tonight, and before that, I have to get my kid brother going on his homework.”
“Hang on. Please?” When I turned to look at him, he said, “I get that this is awkward. I also get that I was a complete dick to you back in Wyoming and you probably can’t stand me now. But, shit Chance. We already missed out on twenty-six years. Are we really going to miss the rest, too?”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”