"What? They are old! That can't be news to them!" Tony made an aggrieved face at his older brother, who sighed as if he'd given up hope of teaching Tony any manners.
"I had noticed age was creeping up on me," Lola said, amused. "Is your partner here, Tony? Chase said you had one."
"No, she stayed in Pittsburgh with the kids. I got Steph in Buffalo and we have to drive back after breakfast because if I'm not home for Sammy's choir performance tonight, I'll be Tony the Tortured For The Rest Of My Life."
"Sammy?" Lola's heart lifted at the name, and she found herself smiling at the younger Todd brother.
"Our daughter. She's seven and the gravitational center of my universe. Named after Dad, obviously."
"That's wonderful. I hope I get to meet her someday."
"Probably this summer. We usually come out here for a few weeks. Did I hear you say something about breakfast, Chase?" Tony looked hopeful.
"Not for half an hour!"
"Uh-huh. Maybe I'll just go down to the kitchen…" Tony sidled by and followed the admittedly-tantalizing scent of bacon coming from the back of the house.
"Stephanie," Chase told Lola, "won't be at the breakfast table until thirty seconds before the plates get cleared, because she eats like a—" He broke off, looking pained, then, dryly, said, "Bird. And yes, she is one."
"There are bird shifters?" Lola's eyes widened. "Somehow I'd sort of decided you must all be mammals."
"That would make sense, wouldn't it? But no. Steph's a kestrel. She turns this big," he said, making a space of about ten vertical inches between his hands, "and is furious about it."
Lola blinked in the general direction of the bedrooms. "She's quite tall, though, isn't she? How does she shift that small?" Stephaniewastall, closer to six feet than not, and model-slender from what Lola had seen of her.
Chase shrugged. "Magic. She can get bigger, too, but her natural shift size is small and it annoys her endlessly."
"But I thought Sam said shifters tended to be bigger than their true animal counterparts?"
"Theytendto," Chase agreed. "But Stephanie's small for a female kestrel. You'll probably see, eventually." He grinned suddenly. "She and Tony used to chase each other all over the house when we were kids. They wreckedeverything."
"It sounds like a really wonderful family," Lola murmured. "I'm so happy for all of you."
"Garius can help." Sam returned in triumph, waving his phone. "He'd said something about his line of shifters, which made me think he knew more about the lines than he was letting on, and he'll send someone over to do a private DNA test."
Chase's eyebrows shot up. "Why do you need a DNA test? You two aren't going to have kids, are you? You're seventy years old, for God's sake!"
Sam looked as though he thought he should have watched his mouth, or at least the company he was in, and cast Lola a guilty glance before trying for a reassuring smile at Chase. "No, we're not. But it's, ah." He glanced at Lola again, and at her small nod, tried again. "It's possible we already did. Or. I mean. It's. Um."
"We did have a child," Lola interrupted gently. "Fifty years ago, give or take. We think that the hospital I was at had a nurse who was a shifter, and when it was clear I didn't know that my son's fatherwasa shifter…we think they may have taken the child for what they believed was probably his own safety."
"Holy shit." Chase took a few steps backward and sat hard on a couch, staring up at Sam. "You mean we might have another…brother? Out there? A biological one? I mean, to you?"
"Not out there," Sam said cautiously. "There aren't that many fox shifters, Chase."
"Oh my God. You don't think he'sdead?" Sheer horror wrote itself large over Chase's features before collapsing into wide-eyed understanding. "Oh. What. No. No way? You don't think he's—me? What would the odds be?"
"There were only half a dozen people who fostered shifter kids on the whole East coast when I started," Sam said carefully. "You were—well, Lola's son was—born in Chicago. It's a long way, but we know you worked your way east through your first few years. And you were born in Aurora."
"Aurora's not Chicago," Chase said feebly. "When…what?" His hazel gaze went to Lola, who sat across from him, heart in her throat.
"My son was born on February fifteenth in a small Chicago charity hospital run by nuns. His name was Samuel Charles Johnson. Sam says your birth certificate says you were born in Aurora two days later, and that you're Charles Richard Smith." She felt her smile falter. "I chose Johnson as my new last name back then because it was so common, and Smith is even more common, so it…it almost adds up. And youarea fox shifter."
"And Noah Brannigan thought I looked like you," Chase said to Sam, blankly.
"You also look something like Lola's daughter Jennifer," Sam said, as cautiously as Lola had spoken. "It's a lot, Chase, I know. It might be impossible. We might be chasing a dream. But…Garius Beren's foundation can offer a DNA test that won't be exposed to true human laboratories, so if you wanted to find out…"
"I—yes. I mean, yes, but—but Dad, if I am, I don't want that to kill the others. None of us ever wanted anything more than to really be your kids?—"
