I leaned away from his touch, speaking before I really thought about what I was doing. “You two are close?”
“He’s more like my brother. We grew up together.”
I glanced around the room we’d demolished, seeing it with new eyes.
“Not here. Our parents, they’re siblings. They bought houses here in Mesa only a couple blocks away from each other after my dad left and his mom died.”
“I’m sorry.”
Chase leaned his head against the wall. “I’m not. His dad was a better father than my own ever was. I don’t remember his mom, but mine loves him like he’s her own. We had it all right.” I felt Chase’s eyes on me and I met them. “Sometimes your family isn’t what you want them to be, but you end up with something better. I did.”
I pushed to my feet, dusting myself off as much as I could. Chase stood too and we started picking our way out of the apartment and back down the stairs.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, it’s fine.” If I’d been crying over a lost grandfather earlier instead of a philandering father and secret brother—a brother Chase was deeply connected to—his words might have had their desired effect. “Maybe you’re right. Either way, this helped.” I looked up at him when we reached the broken window in the basement. “Really.”
“Anytime.”
I smiled a little and looked away. Just like with Brandon, I needed to stay away from Chase. If he knew who I was, he wouldn’t be offering me anything.
“Or not.”
“It’s just that between school and softball, I don’t have a ton of free time.”And you have no idea who I am, and the brother I just found wouldn’t want me and the bomb I represent anywhere near you, I added silently.
“Ah.”
“And I live in Apache Junction.” It was a lame excuse considering my house in AJ was only thirty minutes away, but I wasn’t able to tell him the real reason I was blowing him off.
“Dana, it’s okay.”
“Sorry.” And I meant it. I took the bat he held out to me and slid it and mine outside. Before I could consider the best way to get myself up and out, Chase knelt down and laced his hands together for me to step on.
“Don’t be. It was a fun night. For what it’s worth, I hope you get to meet your grandfather sometime.”
“Yeah. I’m rethinking that. I don’t think I want to know the answers to the questions I have.” What I really wanted was to go back and undo that whole day, the results, meeting Brandon, all of it. But I couldn’t.
Chase boosted me easily through the window, then pulled himself through, being careful to avoid the glass that had cut him the first time. We walked toward our vehicles, which were mostly wrapped in the shadow of the apartment building. There were streetlights, but they’d either been broken or else forgotten along with the rest of the neighborhood, because they failed to turn on. The moon was shining, though, and it illuminated more than I wanted to see of Chase because I still had to walk away. I already knew I’d have liked to see more of him, which was all the more reason not to linger. Standing beside my car, this time under a star-pricked sky with my heart still hurting but my body no longer consumed by it, I reached for my door and looked one last time at Chase approaching his.
“You kind of saved me tonight.”
Chase stopped, keys in hand. “Well, I’d have been screwed without your bat.”
I laughed a little and opened my door.
“Take care, Dana.”
“You too.”
* * *
I got home and went upstairs to my room with an excuse over my shoulder that I had a headache. The farther I’d driven away from Chase and the apartment building, the more real the day had become, until my head really was pounding. It got worse as I lay on my bed, sleep not even remotely attainable. I curled onto my side. Every part of me was aching to act, to do something, but for once I couldn’t bring myself to move. There was pain in every direction, and nowhere to retreat. I could hear my parents downstairs, working late, their voices dancing around each other with dips of occasional laughter. The sounds, so normal and carefree, spurred me from my bed. I stopped inches from my bedroom door, my hand wrapping around the knob, but I didn’t turn it. I couldn’t go downstairs and look Dad in the eye and tell him I knew. I couldn’t watch Mom’s face, because I knew, as much as she loved me, she wouldn’t believe it. I’d seen the results and stared into my brother’s face, and part of me still wrestled with disbelief.
Underneath all the horror and denial, Brandon and I had said basically the same thing to each other: how could this be true? The facts went against everything I knew, everything he claimed to know too. So how?
I’d told Chase I didn’t want answers, and I didn’t, but my insomnia meant I needed them. My insides were tearing themselves apart, flinging emotions at me faster than I could process. I had to talk to Brandon again. He had to be feeling the same emotional schizophrenia, he just had to.
I opened my laptop on my bed, logged back on to DNA Detective and clicked on Dad’s results. Brandon’s match was gone. Dad’s highest match was now a predicted fourth cousin. My brows pinched together as I checked again, then a third time. There was no record of Brandon at all. I dove for my purse, upended the contents on my bed, then froze, remembering that Dad’s results weren’t there. Brandon had left with them still crumpled in his fist. My only hard copy. And he’d deleted the rest.
