My Son's Father Is the Wrong Brother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Brother
A doctor tells Rosemary her son needs a donor who doesn't exist yet. At her fiance's family dinner she recognizes the scar on his older brother's hand, and follows him into the hallway.
The doctor told me I couldn't be Milo's donor.
"He needs a bone marrow transplant," she said. "Your marrow isn't a match for his."
Milo slept across my lap, three and a half years old.
One arm was wrapped around the stuffed rabbit he'd had since birth.
"Then who is a match?" I asked.
"His father might be a half match. That's risky at his age, and I can't say how risky without his typing."
She set her glasses on the desk.
"The safest donor is a full sibling. A baby with the same two parents, whose cord blood we could save at birth."
"There is no sibling."
"I know." She looked at the chart, then at me. "On his current treatment he has about a year. Find his father, Rosemary."
"I never knew his last name," I said. "I met him once, more than four years ago. I left before he woke up."
"Then start with whatever you remember. Please."
I buckled Milo into his car seat and sat behind the wheel with the engine off.
Then I called my sister.
"I can't make dinner tonight."
"Rosemary, don't you dare."
"The doctor says he has a year. She wants me to find his father."
My sister was quiet.
A cabinet door closed on her end.
"Then you'll find him," she said. "After dinner."
"My son is sick."
"I know he is. Eleanor Hargrove has paid every specialist Milo has ever seen, and her bank holds the loan on our lumberyard. You don't skip a table she set a week ago."
I closed my eyes.
"Wear the green dress," my sister said.
***
Calvin stood when I carried Milo into the private room.
He kissed my cheek and lifted Milo out of my arms and into the high chair.
"There are my two favorite people," he said. "You look beautiful."
"You don't look bad yourself." I made my mouth smile.
Calvin was tall and easy, with light brown hair and a smile that arrived before he spoke.
He had proposed four months in.
I had said yes because Milo needed the Hargroves, and I had grown fond of Calvin because he never made me regret it.
His mother reached across the white tablecloth and took Milo's fingers.
Her silver hair was pinned up, she wore pearls at her throat, and her back never touched the chair.
"There he is," Eleanor said. "And you look pale, darling. Is everything all right at the hospital?"
"Nothing new," I lied. "He's stable."
In ten months Eleanor had asked me about Milo's appetite, his bedtime and his rabbit.
She had never once asked me who his father was.
I had put it down to good manners.
The fourth chair at the table was empty.
"Where is Timothy?" she asked.
"Late," Calvin said. "He's always late."
Eleanor checked her phone. "He works too hard."
My glass stopped halfway to my mouth.
The man in the hotel had told me his first name, and it was Timothy.
It was a common enough name.
I told myself so and set the glass down.
The door opened behind me.
I knew him before he cleared the doorway.
His shoulders were broader than the man I'd left in that suite, and his dark hair was shorter.
He wore a black suit with the collar open.
He had Calvin's coloring, but his jaw was harder and his brows were heavier.
I knew that jaw, because Milo pressed it into my shoulder every night as he fell asleep.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, and sat down without looking at any of us.
"Timothy, this is Rosemary, Calvin's fiancee," Eleanor said. "And this is Milo."
His eyes crossed my face once. "Nice to meet you, Rosemary."
"Nice to meet you," I said, and my voice belonged to someone else.
He glanced at Milo, then signaled the waiter. "Scotch. Neat."
Milo pointed a fork across the table. "Mama, that man is big."
"Inside voice, baby."
"But he is." He held his arms out as wide as they would go.
One corner of Timothy's mouth moved. "You're not wrong, kid."
A waiter set a basket near Timothy and bent toward him.
"The walnut crostini are on your left, sir," the waiter said. "Be careful."
"I know."
"What are the odds?" Calvin said. "Milo has the same allergy. Doesn't he, Rose?"
"Since birth," I said.
I had traced that allergy through every relative I had.
It was the one thing about my son that never came from my side.
Timothy reached past the bread for his scotch, and I saw his left hand.
A thin white scar ran from the base of his thumb to his wrist.
I had kissed that scar in the dark.
He had said he got it at nineteen, a stupid accident, and I had laughed against his skin.
I had wanted to be wrong, and I wasn't.
Calvin was cutting a scallop into small pieces and smiling at his mother.
His ring was on my finger, and his whole family sat around the table.
He had never been anything but good to me.
If this came out wrong, he was the one it would break.
So I stood up.
"Excuse me," I said. "Ladies' room."
Timothy's phone buzzed, and he pushed back his chair. "Merger. Sorry, Mother."
He walked out ahead of me.
I gave him a moment, then followed.
I caught him in the corridor by the coat check, phone at his ear.
He took one look at my face and ended the call.
"Four years ago in October," I said. "The Marlowe Hotel, room 912."
He said nothing.
"You told me you got that scar at nineteen."
He looked at his own hand.
When he looked up, the polite stranger from the dining room was gone.
"How old is your son?" he asked.
"Three and a half."
He glanced down the corridor toward the dining room, where Milo was banging a spoon on his tray.
"Eastbrook Children's, six tomorrow morning," he said. "I want a test before anyone at that table knows."
Then he went back inside, sat down, and asked his mother to pass the bread.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend