It didn’t work.
* * *
She was in the tiny break room designated for people who weren’t dedicated enough to eat at their desks, about to put a forkful of a slightly sad-looking salad into her mouth, when she opened her email app and her gaze caught on the nameBrian Kowalskiin a message between an email from a retailer promising her twenty percent off and a newsletter from the library. It was a forwarded email from the lab.
Her gut response was that she didn’t want to know right now—not when she still had half a day of work to get through. And there was no way she could claim she didn’t feel well and leave. She was already on thin ice there.
But sitting at her desk all afternoon with the email hanging over her, unread, wasn’t going to happen, either. She needed to know. After setting down her fork, she clicked on the email.
Brian had not only forwarded the email and the report with the results, but he’d added a note.
Hey, Siobhan. I wanted to call you and talk to you in person, but I know you’re at work and it didn’t seem like the sort of thing for a text. I assume if you’re going through your email, you’re not in the middle of something, and I know you’ll want to see the results for yourself. I guess we should talk, so if you could give me a call after work, I’d appreciate it. Brian.
With trembling hands, she scanned the report that confirmed Brian was, in fact, Oliver’s biological father. Even though it was the expected result, it shook her and she spent the rest of her lunch break staring at her uneaten salad, trying to process how their lives were going to change now.
Unable to wrap her head around it, she sent back a simple reply—I’ll call you around six—tossed her salad, and went back to her desk. Maybe she should have congratulated him or something.Surprise, it’s a boy!But the more it sank in that she was actually going to have to share her son with Brian forever, the more the numbness settled in.
* * *
Brian had no idea what to do with himself. He couldn’t sit still, but he also screwed up everything he touched. Even though the campground was busy, with a lot of campers arriving early for the long Labor Day weekend, Rob had told him to stop helping after he directed a longcamper to a short site and they’d played hell getting it back out.
Leading up to the moment he clicked on the report, he’d thought he was prepared for the results. Believing something and having it proven beyond a reasonable doubt landed differently, he guessed, because he’d ended up sitting with his head between his knees, trying to breathe while Stella anxiously licked his face.
He’d told Rob and Hannah first, since they’d been in the store and were the reason he’d been sitting in a chair and not lying on the floor. Then he’d called his parents. His mom had put him on speakerphone so he could tell them together.
She got a little weepy, but they both stayed calm for the most part. And they agreed his next step should be a conversation with Siobhan, away from the rest of the family. There was a legal process in their future, but ideally, they’d go through it as partners and not as adversaries.
Once he’d informed his parents, he told the rest of the family via the massive group chat.
He’d followed Rob’s advice and let the conversation run its course. Once the notifications slowed to reasonable, he read them all and sent a blanket thank-you and a promise to keep them updated.
With that done, there was nothing to do but wait for Siobhan to call.
“Maybe you should start heading south.” Rob flopped in the chair and took a long draw from his tumbler’s straw. “You said she’s going to call around six? If you leave now, you’ll be home by then. If you wait too long, you’ll be on the road when she calls.”
“I’m not going home. It’s a long holiday weekend.”
“Hannah and I can handle the campground. She canmanage the store and I’ll run around and deliver firewood and yell at people who break the rules. It’ll be fun.”
Brian sat in the chair facing his brother, and Stella curled up on her bed with a sigh of relief. “I know youcanhandle it. But with Joey not coming up because they’re getting Nora ready to start school and Danny writing, you’d be doing all the heavy lifting and that wasn’t the idea behind the four of us buying the campground together.”
“Do you remember when I was going to let Hannah walk out of my life for that exact same reason—my responsibility to you guys and this campground—and you told me you’d all let it go under before you let me throw away my chance at a future with her?” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking Brian in the eye. “You have an almost two-year-old son, Brian. Ason. It’s going to take you a minute to process that, and you and Siobhan have a lot to talk about. It’s okay to step out for a bit. We’ve got you.”
Brian nodded slowly, knowing his brother was right.
“And think of Stella,” Rob continued. “She hates it when the campground’s totally full of strangers and she’d much rather hang out at home.”
“When I went home after the wedding week, I think she slept about twenty out of the first twenty-four hours. The family wore her out.”
“They wore us all out.” Rob took another sip of his water before pushing himself to his feet. “Hit the road.”
He and Stella pulled up in front of his garage with fifteen minutes to spare. The dog was elated to be home and immediately started a grid search, searching for any smells that hadn’t been there when she left.
Brian had time to carry some stuff inside and use thebathroom, and then his phone vibrated in his pocket. He took a deep breath, checked the caller ID to make sure it was Siobhan and not his mother or grandmother, and answered it.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” she replied, and then they were silent for a long moment. “You okay?”
