Her Secret Son

by Hannah Mary McKinnon

  “I got the best grade,” Logan said. “Mr. Shapran thinks Cookie’s a good subject.” With his chest puffed out, I could’ve sworn his expression was precisely Grace’s. He bent over and picked up the puppy, who panted and squirmed, making him giggle. “Can I eat? I’m starving.”

  His frame had started to fill out a little, and I wondered what would happen to his body if my suspicions were true. Would I tell him? If I found out Grace wasn’t his mom, would I say anything at all? I’d promised to protect him. Did that also mean from her? As he washed his hands, I continued to observe his every move, and put a plate of crackers and cheese in front of him when he sat down. There had to be a different explanation. Something I’d missed.

  “Logan,” I said. “What do know about your dad?” He looked at me, stuffed a cracker in his mouth, but didn’t answer. “It’s okay,” I continued with a nod and a smile. “You can tell me.”

  He hesitated a while longer, ate another cracker. Crumbs landed on his sleeve and he brushed them off. “Mom said he wasn’t nice. She said she’s glad you’re my dad, not him.”

  “Me, too.” When he looked away, my smile quickly faded. What was I doing, pressing him for information, trying to find answers to questions he didn’t know existed?

  We played some cards after dinner, and when Logan went to bed I opened the envelope from Lisa, read her note again.

  You need to be sure.

  No, I really didn’t, I decided, and shoved it to the back of the drawer again. I’d sort out the house in the morning, tackle the laundry mountain before it turned into Everest, go food shopping and ask Lisa to refer me to her construction contacts. Harlan had left another message a few days ago, wondering if I’d made progress with the birth certificate. I’d call him back, make something up, tell him the project was on hold until I’d sorted out a job. Maybe he could refer me, too. Yes, I convinced myself, I’d take control wherever I could and ignore the rest.

  * * *

  My perfect intentions unraveled the next morning when the phone rang an hour after Logan left for school, my heart sinking when I heard Mr. Shapran’s voice.

  “Don’t worry, Logan’s not hurt,” he said, “but he punched Dylan for no apparent reason and broke his lip. Dylan will be fine, thankfully, but it would be best if you picked Logan up.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. He’s very upset. Honestly, I think you should take him home for the day, if at all possible.” Mr. Shapran paused. “I had to call Dylan’s parents. They’re insisting I involve the principal. I’m seeing Mr. Searle later this afternoon.”

  I wondered how many more piles of steaming shit life could possibly shovel on top of my head, wanted to drive my fists into the wall, knock the plasterboard straight into the den. Instead I gritted my teeth, said, “I’ll leave right now.”

  Forty minutes later we were back at the house. Logan had his head in his hands, cried quietly at the kitchen table as I shouted at him, unceremoniously ranting at a grieving seven-year-old boy, my voice an unstoppable crescendo, the blood whooshing in my ears.

  “You might be suspended, Logan, do you get that?” I yelled. “And what will I do then? You have no right to punch people, ever. This is unacceptable, completely unacceptable. Who do you think you are, picking on Dylan? What gave you the right? You can’t do this. You’ve got to learn how to control your anger.”

  Oh, I saw the irony in what I was doing, and for the briefest of moments my rage dissipated. But when I saw Cookie pissing on the floor, I shouted at her, too. I pointed a finger at Logan, more words spewing from my mouth as if it were a fiery volcano, and for the very first time I wished I’d never met Grace, never fallen in love with her and her doe-eyed boy.

  Later, much later, when Logan was in bed, I cried, too, self-loathing, guilt and shame washing over me in sickening waves. I sat in the den, whispering soft apologies to Grace as well, and instead of pushing the memories of her away to save my heart, this time I rolled back the barbed wire and let them in.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  With my thirtieth birthday looming, my health back on track and Ivan helping me land the job with Ronnie and Leila, it seemed my life had inched its way toward some much needed—but still wobbly—stability. Which was exactly why I’d fobbed Ivan off when he offered to introduce me to a girl he’d met at a local bookstore, particularly when he told me she had a kid.

  “But I know you two would hit it off,” he said. “Really. She’s great.”

  “Thanks, mate, but I don’t need somebody else’s problem,” I’d said. “I’ve still got enough of my own, and I bet you she needs none of those in her life.”

  “How’s the program going?” he said, his voice low to ensure nobody else in the locker room heard. “You still going to meetings?”

  I nodded. “Three times a week.”

  “Still off the booze?”

  “Yeah. I’m done this time. I mean, really done.”

  “I get it,” Ivan said. “But you don’t have to do this alone. And maybe this girl—”

  “Why don’t you ask her out?” I said with a laugh.

  He grinned. “I’ve got my eye on someone else. Anyway, she said I’m friend material.”

  That comment led to me teasing him for the next twenty minutes because Ivan certainly was not used to being stuck in the buddy zone. He’d given me her number anyway, and I popped it in my jacket pocket, forgot all about it within a few days.

  The next Saturday afternoon I sat in the window seat of a coffee shop I’d dashed into when the clouds, heavy and looming all day, finally burst open, throwing an icy-cold April downpour onto the city.

  As I held on to my steaming cup of tea, trying to warm up, a stroller outside caught my eye, its fabric cover a sun-bleached, peachy hue. One of the double plastic wheels on the front spun left and right like a break-dancer, and the kid in the seat, dressed in a pair of green corduroy pants, a sheepskin jacket and a stripy hat with moose ears, clutched the remains of a soggy-looking cookie in his hands.

  When I looked up, I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman pushing the stroller. Her red curls bounced past her shoulders, some stuck to her face thanks to the rain, and her hands gripped the stroller’s handle so hard, her knuckles had paled. Her brown suede ankle boots had salt stains, her infinite, jean-clad legs disappeared underneath the thigh-long coat she’d pulled in at her tiny waist and her turquoise scarf flapped around her neck. The stony expression on her face sent the message that everyone should get the hell out of her way. Despite her uninviting glare, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, her wide eyes and Hollywood lips pulling me in. I watched her move to cross the street, turning her head and checking for traffic, but, in doing so, missing the pothole in front of her. The stroller lurched and sank to the left as a front wheel vanished into the underbelly of the road.

  At first I thought it was a matter of her lifting the stroller out and plowing on, but the buggy now had only three wheels; the fourth snapped clean off. No one else noticed, much less attempted to help. Everyone was too busy holding plastic shopping bags, shiny briefcases or whatever else they could find above their heads.

  Without as much as throwing her hands in the air, the red-haired woman picked up the broken wheel and put it under her arm, ignoring the stream of horns from harried drivers reminding her their light had turned green.

  That’s what did it for me, her serene “it’s just another day” attitude. I abandoned my cup on the table, yanked the coffee shop door open and jogged over. By this point she’d almost steered the broken stroller to the other side of the road, talking to her kid in a low voice.

  “...and we’ll be home soon,” she said. “It’s only a bit of rain, baby.”

  “Can I help?” When she looked up, my feet stopped working properly, as if I’d magically donned clown shoes. I forced myself to blink. “Uh, here.” I took the damaged piece of st
roller from her. “Let me.”

  “Thank you.” Her voice was quiet, soft as a hug. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Can you believe the weather?” Christ, any minute now I’d win the pathetic prat prize.

  She looked down at the stroller, stroked the boy’s cheek as he grinned up at me. “I don’t mind the rain. We think it brings good things.”

  Sounded intriguing, but a car horn blared, a reminder we were still in the driver’s way.

  “We should move before they flatten us,” I said, and we navigated the stroller under the black-and-silver awning of a trendy-looking French restaurant called Chez Marc, managing to avoid the incessant rain from above, but unable to stop it from bouncing off the pavement, speckling our shoes.

  “Thanks again,” she said. “I really hoped I’d be home before the storm.”

  “Do you live close by?”

  “Oh, no, but I’ll be fine. The bus stop isn’t far.”

  “Are you sure? I could help you get wherever you’re going.”

  She looked at me, head tilted to one side, probably trying to decide if I was a crazy ax murderer. For a split second I almost hoped she wouldn’t take me up on my offer. Ronnie wasn’t due to pay me until next week, my truck was too low on gas to get far and I certainly couldn’t afford a cab. Except by that point I’d have given this woman my jacket, the shirt off my back and anything else she asked for, too.

  “Well, I’d better get going,” she said. “Bye.”

  “Wait,” I said quickly. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? Or a tea? Juice for your son?”

  She looked at me, her brow furrowed. “I don’t think—”

  “We could dry off.” I pointed at the coffee shop. “Until the rain stops. Look, I’m not some nutter, honestly.”

  Her lips twitched. “Nutter...?”

  “A crazy person,” I said with a laugh. “But I’m soaked and a cup of tea works wonders in the rain. Trust me. I grew up in England.”

  She looked at the gray clouds rolling past in the sky. As if on cue, the rain spattered down harder, bigger, fatter drops making thud-thud noises on the awning, bouncing off the ground, bypassing our shoes this time and aiming for our knees.

  “I quite fancy a bagel, too,” I said with what I hoped was a charming shrug.

  “Toasted, with lots of cream cheese?” She smiled, careful, wary, almost as if she’d forgotten how to do it, but then she shivered, rubbed her arms. “Is it true English rain is worse than ours?”

  “Oh, yeah. That stuff seeps into your bones and sticks to them for weeks.”

  “Do you live there? In England?”

  “No, we moved here when I was a teen.”

  “To get away from the bone-sticking rain?”

  I laughed again. “It’s not all bad. It has its charms.”

  She hesitated a little longer, seemingly letting her next words form slowly in her mouth, maybe considering them a third and fourth time before saying, “A coffee would be nice. Will you tell me more about England?”

  “I’d love to. I’m Josh, by the way.”

  “Grace,” she answered. “And this is Logan.”

  A bell went off in my head and I dug around in my pocket, pulled out the crinkled piece of paper with the phone number. “This might sound odd, but do you know a guy, well, a giant really, called Ivan?”

  She looked at the piece of paper in my hand. “You’re that Josh? Ivan’s friend?”

  “Pleased to officially meet you.” I held out my hand.

  I knew as soon as our fingers touched. Right there in the miserable, chilly April rain, I knew I’d spend the rest of my life with the girl who had fiery-red curls and green eyes, an air of mystery and a button-nosed son. Except I’d been wrong. It hadn’t been the rest of my life, not even close, and most of what we’d had, quite possibly, had meant nothing to her at all.

  As I sat alone in the den, resurfacing from the memory, my heart wrapped itself in another protective layer, shielding me from Grace. I couldn’t ignore this. Any of it. Not anymore.

  “I’m going to find out the truth,” I whispered, the path forward crystallizing in my mind. “I promise you, Grace, I’m going to know everything.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I clutched the envelope that contained the cheek swab from Logan—which I’d taken Monday morning under pretext of checking his teeth—Grace’s toothbrush and hair. The pain I’d felt from touching her things, that I was somehow poisoning them with my doubt, or her me with her lies, had taken my breath away. As I let her silky strands glide across my fingers, it was too much to bear, almost, almost, making me change my mind.

  “You sure about this?” Lisa said when I arrived at her office unannounced, looking like a hobo, making the receptionist jump as I skulked out of the elevator in dirty jeans and a baggy T-shirt. “We can leave it until you’re certain you’re ready.”

  I slid the envelope across her desk, no longer able to hold on to it. As I stuffed my hands in my jeans, I turned away and looked out of the window at the clear blue skies, the buds already visible on the trees in the park below. “Yeah. Let’s get it over with.”

  Lisa texted after she’d dropped the samples off at her friend’s lab, and I called my sister twice a day, every day, despite her reassuring me she’d tell me as soon as she heard. Now that I’d made the decision to have the test done, I wanted the results yesterday, then kept telling myself it was irrelevant anyway, because of course Logan was Grace’s kid.

  For the next week I tried to keep myself busy by helping Mrs. Banks with her yard—for which she insisted on paying me despite my protests—went for a couple of runs with Cookie and headed to the boxing club, where I pounded a punching bag so hard, I almost broke my wrists. More time got killed by surfing the web for jobs and applying for a handful. I helped Logan with his homework and school projects, talked to him about Dylan, was relieved to hear they’d been getting along. And then, early Tuesday morning as I walked around the grocery store trying to make what had been a weekly food budget stretch to two, Lisa’s number flashed on my phone.

  “Josh? Can you talk? I...I got the results.”

  The tremble in her voice gave it away, and my half-filled basket of groceries clattered to the floor, the three tomatoes bouncing across the shiny floor. “Jesus Christ, Lisa. Are you sure? Maybe your friend made a mistake? Maybe she—”

  “She ran the tests three times,” Lisa said. “I can’t believe it...”

  Even though I’d played out this conversation in my head a thousand times, nothing had prepared me for the pain, the anger that assaulted my insides, leaving me smack in the middle of the shop, stuttering, “But, but, maybe they’re...I don’t know...cousins, distant ones, or—”

  “Josh,” Lisa said gently. “I’m so, so sorry. They’re not related. At all.”

  My breath came in ragged puffs, the aisle of fresh produce closing in on me. I wanted to let out the scream that had grown in my belly for weeks now, but the only thing that came was a strangled, “What do I do now?” When she didn’t answer I said it again, louder this time. “Lisa. What the hell do I do?”

  “I...I don’t... I’m sorry, Josh. I didn’t think...” She exhaled, the emotion in her voice dripping through the phone. “I thought you were wrong. I was so bloody sure you were wrong.”

  Tears stung my eyes, and I swiped at them as I pretended to ignore the elderly gentleman in a black cap staring at me as he tentatively reached for a head of lettuce. I forced air into my lungs through my nose, expelled it from my mouth, tried to stop my head from spinning. The only result was my heart racing even harder, so fast it was in danger of exploding in my chest like a bloody, rage-filled grenade.

  “He’s your kid,” I heard Lisa say, the phone still somehow pressed to my ear despite the fact my arms had gone numb. “Yours. You’ve spent every day with him for the past fi
ve years. He calls you dad. You. Who else is going to take care of him?”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” she said as a jolly announcement about the low, low, low price of beef came on over the speaker. “Where are you?”

  “Picking up some goddamn groceries,” I said, “’cos life goes on, right?”

  “Okay, listen,” she said. “I’m calling Ivan. We’re coming over to your place and—”

  “No, Lisa. I can’t ask you to drop everything—”

  “You’re not asking, and there’s no way I’m leaving you alone. I should never have told you over the phone, but I was so shocked and—”

  “Shocked doesn’t even begin—”

  “—if the three of us put our heads together we can figure this out. I’m heading over now so go straight home, Josh, please? Forget the groceries. I’ll go shopping for you later.”

  I nodded, mumbled a thank you and hung up, tried hard not to look at the shelves of beer as I strode past, trying to leave my nemesis, and all her pretty sisters, behind.

  Lisa and Ivan arrived within the hour, both in full caretaker, roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-this-done mode, and I was grateful. My brain hadn’t yet managed to accept Logan wasn’t Grace’s biological child, let alone process the implications. After Lisa fed Cookie and settled her in the den, we headed to the kitchen and sat at the table.

  “I made a few calls on the way over,” Ivan said, pulling out a notepad filled with scribbles. When he caught my look he said, “Don’t worry, I didn’t mention names.”

  “Thanks, man,” I whispered. “And you, Lisa. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “It’s okay.” Lisa gave my hand a squeeze and turned to Ivan. “What did you find out?”

  “Well, the adoption angle seems the most logical, right?” Ivan said, and we nodded. “Except if Grace adopted Logan in Maine, there would’ve been an amended birth certificate with her name on it, and that means Harlan would’ve got a copy when he wrote to Vital Records.” He took a breath. “I was thinking maybe she adopted him here, in Albany.”