Chương 6
"It's a big kitchen."
"Mom's kitchen was smaller."
Adrian handed him a bowl.
Theo kept the coffee mug.
After a minute he asked, "Are you mad at Aunt Claire?"
"Yes."
"Are you mad at us?"
Adrian leaned against the counter.
"No."
"You looked mad at everybody."
"That's fair."
Theo ate one piece of cereal at a time.
Adrian asked, "Did your mom tell you about me?"
"A little."
"What did she say?"
Theo shrugged.
"That you didn't know us."
Adrian waited.
"Anything else?"
"She said grown-ups made a very bad mess before we were born."
That sounded like Rebecca.
At least Adrian imagined it did.
"Did she say I didn't want you?"
Theo took another piece of cereal.
"No."
Adrian looked away.
The eastern windows had begun turning gray.
Theo said, "Aunt Claire said maybe you would."
"Would what?"
"Not want us."
Adrian's fingers tightened around the edge of the counter.
"What do you think?"
Theo's eyes moved to his face.
"I don't know you."
There was no cruelty in it.
That made the answer clean.
Adrian nodded.
"That's true."
Theo pushed the mug away.
"Can we go home today?"
Adrian had spent half the night imagining how to keep them.
The boy wanted to leave.
"Yes."
Theo looked suspicious.
"Really?"
"Really."
"All of us?"
Adrian's throat tightened.
"All of you."
At nine, he canceled every meeting he had for the week.
At nine-thirty, Dana told him to put half of them back.
"You have a company."
"I have sons."
"You had a company yesterday too."
"I didn't know about the sons yesterday."
"And today you are trying to rebuild six years in one calendar notification."
Adrian looked at her through the video screen.
"I hate when you speak in slogans."
"I hate when rich clients think abandoning work is proof of emotional growth."
He almost ended the call.
Dana continued.
"Keep your schedule lighter. Don't blow up your life to demonstrate commitment to children who do not yet trust you. Stability is boring. Try boring."
He kept one board meeting and a construction review.
Everything else disappeared.
The independent DNA testing happened that afternoon in a quiet medical office Dana selected.
The boys hated the cheek swabs.
Jack accused the technician of trying to steal his spit.
Miles asked whether DNA could tell which of them had broken Rebecca's lamp last Christmas.
Owen wanted to know whether Adrian's DNA meant he would also develop asthma.
The technician, wisely, answered none of those questions beyond what she could actually know.
Adrian gave his sample.
Watching the sealed collection kit leave the room felt less dramatic than the cream envelope.
It also felt more real.
There were signatures.
Witnesses.
Bar codes.
Procedures.
No one asked him to believe anything because of his name.
Afterward Nina drove the boys back to Connecticut.
Adrian followed in his own car.
Claire rode with Dana.
Nobody suggested she ride with him.
Rebecca's house sat on a street with basketball hoops at driveways and recycling bins tipped sideways by wind. There was chalk on the sidewalk. A bicycle lay on somebody's lawn.
Adrian's car looked ridiculous there.
The boys poured out of Nina's SUV before the engine was fully off.
"Slow down," Nina called.
Nobody slowed down.
They ran into a pale blue house with a dented mailbox.
Adrian stood by the curb.
Claire came up beside him.
He did not look at her.
"She knew you were coming someday," Claire said.
"Rebecca?"
"Yes."
"Apparently everyone knew except me."
Claire absorbed that.
Inside, the house smelled faintly of laundry detergent and tomato sauce.
There were four backpacks on hooks.
Four pairs of sneakers near the stairs.
A school calendar covered the refrigerator. Somebody had circled Thursday and written MILES—DENTIST in blue marker.
Adrian touched nothing.
Theo showed him the living room.
Miles showed him a model airplane.
Jack showed him a crack in the wall that, according to Jack, Daniel had promised to fix and had not.
Owen did not show him anything.
Adrian eventually found him sitting on the bottom step.
"You okay?"
Owen nodded.
"Do you want me to leave?"
A pause.
"No."
Adrian sat one step below him.
They listened to the others argue over whether Adrian should see their bedroom.
After a while Owen asked, "Do you have brothers?"
"No."
"That's bad."
Adrian glanced at him.
"Is it?"
"Sometimes."
Owen picked at the seam of his sock.
"Mostly it's good."
The DNA confirmation came two days later.
Probability of paternity exceeded 99.99 percent for each child.
Dana called Adrian at 7:12 in the morning.
He was already awake.
He had barely slept.
"They're yours biologically," she said.
He sat on the edge of his bed.
He expected the confirmation to produce something decisive.
Instead, he felt tired.
"Okay."
Dana waited.
"That's it?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know. Clients usually have more words."
"Send me the report."
She did.
Adrian read all four pages.
Then he went to work.
Dana had been right about boring.
At three that afternoon she called again.
This time her voice was different.
"We got part of the adoption record."
Adrian closed his office door.
"And?"
"Claire signed an affidavit identifying the father as unknown."
"I know."
"There's an attachment."
"What attachment?"
"A notice from Peter Sloane's office certifying that reasonable efforts to identify and notify the biological father were unsuccessful."
Adrian laughed.
"Reasonable."
"There's more."
He stopped.
"The file references correspondence with your personal representative."
"Who?"
"It doesn't name him in the adoption copy."
"My father."
"Maybe."
"Dana."
"I said maybe because that's the word lawyers use before evidence."
Adrian stood at the window.
Thirty stories below, pedestrians moved along Madison Avenue.
"What evidence do you want?"
"Family-office archives."
Those archives were harder to obtain than Adrian expected.
Not because he lacked access.
Because Graham did not fight like a guilty man in a movie.
May you like
He fought like a man who had spent forty years designing systems.
The family office claimed records older than five years had been transferred to an off-site vendor.
