Chapter 28: The Result

The email came on Thursday at nine in the morning, and Byron read it standing at the kitchen counter.

Cal sat at the table with a bowl of cereal he hadn't touched.

Poppy was on my hip, trying to take the spoon out of my hand.

"It says probability of paternity," Byron said.

He stopped.

"Read it," said Cal.

"Ninety-nine point nine nine percent."

Nobody moved.

Byron put the phone down on the counter very carefully, and he turned around.

"You're mine," he said, in a voice I had heard him use once, in a delivery room.

Cal nodded.

He pushed the cereal bowl an inch to the left and an inch back.

"Okay," he said. "So that's a yes."

"It's a yes."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do now."

"Neither do I," said Byron.

"Da," said Poppy, and pointed at him.

Cal looked at her, and then at Byron, and he made a sound that was half a laugh.

"She's got the same eyes," he said. "I noticed it at the party. I thought I was imagining it."

"She's your sister," I said.

"I know." He pressed his hand against his mouth. "I mean, I know now."

He got up and went out to the porch, and Byron started after him, and I put a hand on his arm.

"Give him a minute," I said. "Then go."

He waited a few breaths, standing in the kitchen, and then he went out.

I saw them through the window.

Byron sat on the step a careful two feet from his son, and neither of them looked at the other.

Tara came that night, straight from her shift, still in her scrubs under the fleece.

She stood on my porch with her keys in her fist and her son's duffel bag over her shoulder.

"He called me at ten every night," she said. "He said it was a yes before the email came."

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