“Yep.”
She’d always wanted real cousins, like Cillian’s girls had. Cillian had five siblings, and Leanne had three. All of them had kids, so the girls were cousin-rich on both sides.
“And you already know them.”
“I do?” Tabby asked, petting Rocco’s head.
“Yep, and you met your aunts and your uncle.”
She turned her head around and looked up at me, her eyes wider than the pancakes she’d just eaten. “Is it Poppy?”
“How did you know?” he asked.
“You called her sis, and that’s like sister, and that would mean that she’s my aunt!”
That’s right, he had. “I did. Yes. She is your aunt, andso are Pippa, Phoebe, and Lina, and Liam is your uncle, and we are going to see them all today at the wedding.”
Tabby spent the rest of the time getting her hair done talking about all the fun things she was going to do with her ‘real’ cousins. His oldest sister Paulina had a fourteen-year-old daughter, Zoya, and twelve-year-old twins, Rohan and Ravi, with her husband Ramesh, who was a heart surgeon. His middle sister Pippa and her husband Roger, who was also in the tech space and had been long before Deacon, there was quite an age gap—he was regularly referred to as a Zaddy and was a multi-billionaire, so his sister was not getting the short end of the stick—had a son Freddie who was six. His youngest sister Phoebe and her husband Duane, who worked in bioengineering, had an almost one-year-old, Bristol, and she had an eight-year-old named Finley, and Duane, had ten-year-old twins, Ezra and Elan, from a previous relationship.
Deacon felt silly for having worried that any of his siblings might have wanted something from him. Liam was an emergency room doctor who just opened up his own practice in town. Poppy was probably the most at loose ends, but she had her shit together, too. She’d been an X-ray tech but decided to quit to go back to school to finish her master’s degree in occupational therapy.
Michael Davies might have been a cheating son of a bitch, but his genes did produce successful kids.
“Alright, ladybug, let’s go!” he announced after he snapped a butterfly barrette next to her half-ponytail. They said goodbye to Rocco, grabbed their jackets, gloves, and scarves and were out the door.
For some reason on the drive over to Liam and Frankie’s, Deacon felt nervous. He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like he was meeting all of these people for the first time. His daughter was not suffering the same trepidation.Tabby hummed in the back seat, her pink dress bunched in her lap, the shiny Mary Janes kicking her booster seat along to the pop song playing on the radio.
She was practically vibrating out of her chair. She couldn’t wait to arrive and go see her cousins and her aunts and uncles. Honestly, he couldn’t be happier for her. It was what he’d wanted for her. The reason he’d finally decided to take the leap and move was because they had no one in Seattle. No family. No close friends. Just his business, We-C-U, which he could run from anywhere.
It was an app where people who were disabled or needed extra help for something, maybe just someone to talk to, signed up, and then they were matched with an expert or volunteer. It could be as simple as someone visually impaired getting on a Facetime with a sighted person to help them find a lost item, or someone who is lonely talking to someone for half an hour. Or if a kid needs help with a math problem, then they can go online with a tutor. Or if a parent of a sick kid was being dicked around by their insurance company, they can call the medical support staff and find out what their options were. Or maybe someone was lonely and wanted to have to have company while they were cooking, they could get on a Facetime. Or if someone just lost their spouse and something broke around the house, and they needed to find how to deal with an insurance claim, they could call or go online and We-C-U would match them with a volunteer or expert to help.
When Deacon came up with the idea in college and told everyone he wanted it to be a free service, everyone said he was crazy. But because of how much publicity it got and how many people paid it forward after it helped them, they’d grown every year. It was now in fifteen countries. It could have grown a lot faster, but because somany people trusted them, Deacon has been so careful not to grow faster than he could personally keep up with keeping systems in place to ensure he could keep the people that used the service safe. So far, there had been very few issues. Mainly because of the proprietary digital oversight and monitoring systems he’d created.
Very few people knew he was the founder and CEO of We-C-U. He never wanted his name associated with it because people associate the St. Claire name with greed and wealth. Some employees knew, the ones who worked at the Seattle offices, not the ones the worked remotely. His parents obviously knew, and Cillian and his family knew, but now he wondered if he should tell his sisters and brother if they asked about his business.
As he pulled up to Liam’s house, it hit him for the first time, this was hisbrother’shouse. He’d come on Thanksgiving, but he honestly still hadn’t put him in that category. He’d catalogued the Davies siblings as though they were rare birds, fascinating but ultimately unrelated, a flock he’d observed from the edges. He’d considered Liam a species and was just one of Michael Davies’ offspring, like he was. It was probably how he’d been able to live in and among them and not say anything for so long. That and he hadn’t really had that many interactions with any of them but Poppy aside from Halloween and Thanksgiving.
But today was different. Today, everyone knew. The cat was out of the bag, the DNA dust had settled, and he was, officially, one of them.
By the time he got out of the car Tabby had already unbuckled herself and hopped out. She was halfway to the porch as he pressed his FOB. “We’re not going in there. We have to follow the signs.”
“Okay, Daddy!” She ran back, and he took her hand.
As he walked around the house and into the backyard,the first person he saw was Poppy. She was standing by the rows of white chairs. Deacon realized then it wasn’t a large wedding and most of the chairs were already filled. There were only about ten rows of five chairs each.
“Poppy!” Tabby let go of his hand, ran up, and launched herself into Poppy’s awaiting arms.
Deacon smiled as Poppy beamed. “I saved you seats.” She quickly ushered them up to the second row, where they sat beside Pastor Harrison’s wife Taylor and their son Owen.
The trio had just taken sat down when they were instructed to, “Please rise” and “Pachelbel's Canon” began to play.
He and Poppy exchanged a look of appreciation for how close he’d cut it. Deacon watched as AJ and Niko escorted their grandma down the aisle. Deacon looked behind him and saw an empty seat. He leaned over to Poppy. “I can move back so AJ can sit here.”
“No.” She shook her head.
AJ and Niko took their place, sitting beside Frankie in the front row, and Deacon hoped that the only reason that Poppy and AJ weren’t sitting together was because he was sitting with his brother and sister and not because Poppy was upset with him over him knowing Deacon’s secret.
Once the wedding was over, he’d speak to her to make sure.
