I drove to Marcus’s apartment across town and sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes before I called him.
He answered on the second ring.
“Mom?
You okay?”
“Can I come up?”
“Yeah, of course.”
He met me at the door with that worried look he’s had since he was a boy—the one that says he already knows something’s wrong and he’s trying to figure out how to fix it.
I sat down on his couch and told him what I’d found.
Eli.
Marcus didn’t say anything for a long moment.
He just sat there with his hands folded, looking at the floor.
And that was when I knew.
“You already knew,” I said.
He looked up at me, and his eyes were wet.
“Mom—”
“How long?”
He swallowed hard.
“Two years,” he said.
“About two years.”
I felt the room tilt.
“Two years,” I repeated.
“Dad took me to a ballgame,” he said.
“He brought a kid with him.
Said it was a coworker’s son.
Eli.
He was maybe nine then.
And I didn’t think anything of it at first.
But then I saw the way Dad looked at him.
The way he talked to him.
He bought him a glove.
He knew exactly what he liked on his hot dog.
He knew his shoe size.”
Marcus rubbed his face with his hand.
“I asked him about it after.
He said Eli was the son of a woman he used to work with.
He said he was just helping out.
But I knew, Mom.
I could tell by the way he said it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked at me then, and his face crumpled.
“Because I didn’t want to break you,” he said.
“You were already so tired all the time.
You were taking care of Grandma, and you were worried about your own tests, and I just—I thought if I told you, it would kill you.
I thought maybe it wasn’t my place.”
“It was your place,” I said, and my voice came out sharper than I meant it to.
“It was your place to tell me.”
“I know,” he said.
“I know that now.”
We sat there in the quiet for a while.
I thought about all the Sunday dinners Marcus had come to, all the times he’d hugged me goodbye at the door, all the times he’d looked at me like he was carrying something heavy.
He had been carrying this.
My own son had been protecting me from a truth I could have used.
And I understood why.
I did.
But it still hurt.
“There’s something else,” Marcus said finally.
I looked at him.
“Dad told Eli he’d bring you to meet him,” he said.
“Last spring.
He told Eli you were going to come.
Eli was so excited.
He told me about it at the ballgame.
He said his dad was finally going to bring his other family together.”
I felt my breath catch.
“He told Eli that?”
“Yeah,” Marcus said.
“And then it didn’t happen.
Dad made some excuse.
Eli was crushed.
I could see it on his face.”
I sat there with my hands in my lap and tried to make sense of it.
Quincy had been promising that boy a life with me in it.
He had been telling Eli that I was coming.
And he had never said a word to me.
I thought about the paternity test again, the one Marissa had ordered.
Maybe it wasn’t only about proving Eli was Quincy’s.
Maybe it was about proving something else entirely.
“Mom?”
Marcus said.
“I’m okay,” I said, though I wasn’t.
I stood up and hugged him, and he held on to me the way he used to when he was small.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I know,” I said.
On the drive home, I kept thinking about Eli.
About a boy who had been told I was coming to meet him.
And about how I had to decide what to do with that.
Chapter 6 – The Test Marissa Didn’t Need
The next morning I went back to the DNA testing center.
I didn’t have an appointment.
I just walked in and asked to speak to the counselor who had handled Marissa’s case.
Her name was Denise, and she remembered me from the day before.
She looked surprised to see me again.
I told her I needed to understand something.
“Why did Marissa order a paternity test,” I asked, “if my husband had already admitted he was the father?”
Denise folded her hands on the desk.
“I can’t discuss another client’s case in detail,” she said.
“But I can tell you that the test was requested in March.
And that the client had been in twice before to ask about the process.”
“Twice before,” I repeated.
