Sam rolled over, propping his head on his hand and smiling down at her. "Do you want to live in Detroit? I'll move to Detroit if you want to live there."
"You would hate Detroit." Lola rocked her head back and forth. "Well, maybe not hate it, but it's certainly not as quiet as Virtue, and it would be much riskier for you to be a fox there. No, I just hadn't thought about the logistics of all this. I got swept up in the moment." She smiled up at him. "I intend to stay swept up in the moment for the rest of my life."
He grinned. "With the occasional touch-down in reality to realize this is bonkers."
"Only long enough to figure out how to get my things packed and moved back to Virtue," she promised. Then she sighed and scooted closer. Sam dropped onto his back and slid his arm around her shoulders, warm and comforting. Very quietly, she said, "It's not really possible, is it? That Chase…?"
Her husband took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "I have what I thought was his original birth certificate. His name is Charles Richard Smith on it, which is only one right name out of three…"
"What's the birth date?"
"February seventeenth. The year is right," Sam said softly.
Lola pressed her mouth against his shoulder. "Our Samuel was born on the fifteenth, but…if the name was changed, changing the birth date…no wonder I couldn't find him, Sam. If your Chase really is our Samuel, if they changed all of that, no wonder I couldn't find him. Why would they do that?"
She shook her head even as she asked: the answer was obvious. It wassoshe couldn't find him. A single mother with no job or prospects and no idea her child was a shifter? Even she could see how a shifter working for the system might think it was safer to change the baby's information so he couldn't be found. "But you said he didn't come to you until he was almost seven?"
"Just a little past seven." Sam tightened his arm around her shoulders. "He'd bounced around the system before then, not out of anybody's maliciousness. It's just how it worked. Works, often, even now. And I didn't start fostering until that year. My parents died the year before, and like I said, I was a little directionless until I was approached about fostering shifter kids. Then I had to spend a while getting set up for it, legally, emotionally, physically with the house… I knew I would be getting Chase a few weeks before he arrived, but there wasn't any information about his birth family, except that his mother had had to give him up."
Lola growled deep in her throat, and Sam kissed her hair. "I know. If he's really our son…I'm sorry, Lola."
"How are we supposed to approach this with him?" she asked as the growl faded away. "I assume there's not a safe database for shifters to test DNA with, and he didn't have a convenient fox-shaped birthmark to identify him by."
Sam sat up again, dislodging her as he blinked with astonishment. Lola sat up, too, blinking at him in turn. "What? What are you thinking?"
"That I might actually know someone who could provide that safe DNA test. Except dammit, they were leaving town yesterday! Where's my phone!" Sam hopped out of bed, snagging a pair of shorts and pulling them on as he marched out of the bedroom calling, "Chase? Chase, do you have the number for those investors yesterday? Garius and Conri?"
Lola flopped back into the soft bed, snickering, and said, "Thisisbonkers," to the ceiling. Imagining her future with Sam a lifetime ago had never included live-in staff, or a secretary who kept track of things like peoples' phone numbers. Still amused, she got out of bed, found a dressing gown, and followed Sam through the house.
Chase appeared, fully dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, carrying a phone and looking embarrassed at running into Lola in her dressing gown, although Sam and his shorts didn't seem to bother the younger man at all. "Here you go, Mr Todd."
Sam said, "For heaven's sake," a bit absently, and Chase ducked a grin toward the floor, giving Lola the sense that he called Sam 'Mr Todd' for just that reaction. Sam also said, "Thank you," and Chase looked up again with a nod and a smile.
"Of course. Is everything all right?"
"It's fine," Lola assured him, then cast a glance at Sam, who lifted a finger, asking her to hold off. Instead of bringing up the awkward topic of Chase's possible parentage, she asked, "Is everyone else still here?"
"Ellen had a deposition this morning, so she had to fly back late last night, but Tony and Steph are here, and your daughter was going to stay at Chef Charlee's last night, I think. She thinks you're crazy."
Lola's eyebrows flew up. "Jennifer or Charlee? Oh, well, Jenny's always thought I was a bit mad. She had some reason, honestly. I didn't like talking about my youth and I think she built it up as this big mysterious story in her head, and…well, I've sort of proved her right, haven't I."
Chase crooked a smile at her. "Don't take this wrong, but yes, you have. By the way, breakfast will be on the table in half an hour. If you want to eat, I'd recommend getting there promptly. Tony still takes the lion's share, even though he's forty and no longer growing."
"…is that because he's a lion?" Lola asked cautiously. "Or is it rude to ask?"
"Hah! It's a little rude to ask, but you're actually family now, so it's fine. He's a tiger, actually, which earned him no end of grief when we were kids."
"I—oh, no." Lola clapped a hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh out loud. "I don't suppose he's especially fond of a particular kind of sweetened breakfast cereal?"
"Tragically for him, helovesit. I'm amazed he didn't insist we call him Anthony, though."
"I hate being called Anthony even more than I hate being Tony the Tiger," Tony said, coming through a door from the east wing and toweling his sandy red hair. He was blue-eyed, taller than Chase, and looked as if he'd spent a lot of time working on a sunburn over his lifetime: he had that ruddy, never-quite-tan color that redheads sometimes got, and a sprinkling of gold scruff along his jaw. "I didn't really get to meet you yesterday, Lola. I'm Tony. I hope you and Dad live happily ever after."
"Thank you. So do I, and it's nice to meet you properly, too. This has all been very sudden, I know."
"Well, fated mates." Tony waved a hand through the air. "Why waste time, when you know? Especially when you're old."
"Tony!"
