His mom was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee in front of her, and he probably should have seen that coming. At least he would have been wearing more than a pair of boxer briefs.
“Be right back,” he muttered, and then he retraced his steps to his bedroom.
Brian had been so focused on whether Siobhan had left, he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone in the house. When he and Stella were at their actual home, almost two hours south, they lived alone. He and his brothers all settled withintwenty minutes or so of their parents, who were outside of Concord, though Rob had given up his apartment to be at the campground year-round. Family visits were usually planned—or at least announced—in advance, though, after Joey came very close to catching their mom and dad having fun on the couch.
During the spring, when they were working nonstop to get the campground ready to open, he and his brothers had all stayed in the house together. They didn’t care that it was small and in desperate need of renovation—they just wanted a place to sleep at night. Then Joey and Danny had gone home, and Rob had moved into the camper with Hannah. When Brian went home for the winter, they’d stay in the house. That was the plan, anyway.
Rob and Hannah were actually staying in the house now, with Joey and his wife and daughter staying in the camper. It was a merry-go-round of lodging, and with his entire family present, Brian should have been prepared for literally anybody to be in the house. And he might have been if he wasn’t looking for Siobhan’s car.
After getting dressed and making a pit stop in the bathroom, he opened the door to let Stella out and poured himself a cup of coffee. He had no idea where Rob and Hannah were. They’d either gone out early or been exiled by their mother, who obviously wanted to talk to him.
“Today should be fun,” she said as soon as he sat down. “I didn’t sleep well, and I know you and Siobhan didn’t, either. Your father, of course, copes by sleeping, so he’s well rested. But it’s already hot today and most of us could use a nap.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“As far as I know, she hasn’t come out of the camper yet.” She shrugged. “But that doesn’t mean anything.Maybe she’s packing, or maybe she’s the mother of an active toddler and knows that as soon as she lets him outside, she doesn’t get to rest until he drops from exhaustion. All we can do is wait and see what she decides.”
“I hope they stay.”
“Me too, honey.” She sipped her coffee, and then after a few seconds of silence, shook her head. “I don’t know how it fell through the cracks. Even though she lied about who the father was, the date of the divorce decree and the birth certificate should have flagged the authorities during the adoption process. Sure, most couples probably aren’t intimate in the period leading up to filing for divorce, but doing a paternity test to eliminate the man she was married to at the time of conception is standard procedure, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Mom.” He leaned back in his chair, hands wrapped around the warm mug. “I’m sure she didn’t tell anybody she was pregnant until after it was finalized and yes, the dates should have been flagged because there’s a window around a divorce in which the husband is the presumed father. So maybe it’s two different systems or something got entered incorrectly, or maybe it just got overlooked. Somebody dropped the ball, but this is where we are now.”
“It has to be quite a shock for Siobhan. Shereallydidn’t like you very much.”
He snorted. “That’s an understatement. And you used the past tense there, but she’s not going to magically like me now. If anything, she might even like me less.”
“I think the feeling was mutual. Certainly none of us have been her biggest fans. But that was in the past and we’re going to let bygones be bygones because there’sOliver to consider. We arenotgoing to pull that child in different directions.”
“Mom, you can’t…” Brian couldn’t figure out what to say next, so he paused and scrubbed his hands over his face to buy himself a few seconds to think. “It’s complicated.”
“It certainly is.”
“Until we get a paternity test done, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get too emotionally invested—for any of us to get too attached. Sure, she’s been handling it okay, but she’s also up here in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by us. For all we know, she’s as good an actor as her sister, and she’ll be on the phone with a lawyer before she’s five miles down the road. I might have to fight just to get a court order for a paternity test, and who knows how longthatwould take.”
“You’ll both need lawyers no matter what because, as you said, it’s complicated. That doesn’t mean it’s a fight, though. It just means there’s a legal knot that needs untangling. Don’t go borrowing trouble.” She sipped her coffee and then smiled at him over the rim. “But if she chooses to make it a fight, we’ll win. No matter how long it takes.”
“Custody Battle of Doom,” he muttered, and his mother snorted. “Where is everybody, anyway?”
“Setting up for breakfast.” She drained the last of her coffee and stood. “Speaking of, I should probably get out there. I just wanted a quiet minute with you before the day starts.”
Brian stood and after his mom put her mug in the sink, he stepped forward and opened his arms. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held him close. As he had since the day he was tall enough to do it, he rested his cheek on the top of her head and just breathed.
She didn’t fuss. She just quietly held him while hisbreathing and his heart rate gently slowed. His parents really did give the best hugs. Over the years, he’d figured out his dad’s hugs often gave him strength and his mom’s gave him comfort, but they both made him feel like everything would be okay.
Once his body was relaxed and his mind somewhat calm, he kissed the top of her head and she let him go.
Then she cupped his face in her hands. “Come have something to eat.”
“You know I don’t like eating when I first wake up. I’m going to get some stuff done and then I’ll grab a bowl of cereal. That’ll hold me until lunch. But do me a favor and keep an eye on Stella? She’ll convince every single person out there that nobody has given her bacon and she doesn’t know when to quit.”
“I seem to recall saying the same thing about you once, when you were very little.”
The grin she gave him over his shoulder before walking out the door made him laugh, and he was still smiling when he poured a second cup of coffee to take with him to the campground office in the store.
He spent an hour there, chipping away at some of the smaller tasks on the to-do list that tended to get overlooked. None of them were particularly urgent, but he didn’t want to be outside if Siobhan and Oliver left. One, he didn’t want her to feel like he was pressuring her in any way. She’d had her world turned upside down, too—finding out her son’s dad was a man she couldn’t stand probably sucked—and he was going to give her space even if it killed him.
And secondly, he wasn’t sure how it would feel to watch that car drive out of the campground with Oliverin the back seat, but he knew it wouldn’t feel great. He’d rather not watch it happen.
