Chapter Sixteen
One week later, Siobhan swung Oliver onto her hip before stepping through the glass door Brian held open for them. The humid heat hit hard after the almost two hours they’d spent waiting in the heavily air-conditioned clinic and she knew it was going take forever to get her car to cool off.
Though the actual process hadn’t taken long, several callouts had left them short-staffed, leading to all of the appointments getting backed up. The long wait had been fraught with tension, but they’d both turned down the offer to reschedule. Besides the travel logistics, they needed the results.
Siobhan had spent the last week in a state of emotional turmoil that she wasn’t accustomed to.
Anxiety about the paternity test. Fear of the legal consequences if Brian was Oliver’s father, and pre-results empathy for him and the family if he wasn’t.
And, the entire time, missing Brian on a level that existed separately from Oliver.
She thought about him constantly, and it was wreaking havoc on her sleep.
Now, finally, the swabbing was done. In as little as three days, maybe would become definitively, one way or the other.
Brian shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled at Oliver before looking at Siobhan. “Are you up for some i-c-e c-r-e-a-m?”
It was thoughtful of him to spell it out, giving her the option of saying no without disappointing Oliver, which she appreciated. Not getting ice cream once the idea was put in her son’s head would definitely kick off an impressive meltdown.
She’d had to leave work around lunchtime for this appointment, which hadn’t pleased her boss coming so soon after a short-notice week off, and she’d planned to spend any remaining time in the day to go through the clothes and toys Oliver had outgrown.
“It’s okay if you don’t have time or whatever,” Brian said when she didn’t answer right away. “I just thought it would be a nice treat for him after having to wait in there so long.”
“No, you’re right. I think we’ve all earned a treat.”
Was it a good idea? Probably not. While they were probably going to have to co-parent together, the three of them spending time together wasn’t necessary. And after the sparks and kisses between them at the campground, it wasn’t advisable.
Just know I want to.
The memory of those words, spoken in his low and husky voice, still played on a loop in her mind at the most inconvenient times.
But they had ice cream at a cute little shop Brian found on his phone. Oliver dominated the conversation, talking about daycare and Auntie Robin and a dog he saw that looked like Stella but was kind of mean.
It felt to Siobhan as if they were both deliberately focusing all of their attention on Oliver.
There were a few glances between them, but no lingering.
No cheeky grins and no flirtation. They were in the real world now, and in this world, they were now in a waiting game to see if their lives were changed and bound together forever.
Brian walked them back to where she’d parked, which she expected, and he was the one who lifted Oliver into his car seat. She watched him do the buckle, which he did correctly. After bopping his fingertip on Oliver’s nose to make him giggle, he looked at Siobhan over the roof of her car.
“So we’ll talk soon, I guess.”
She nodded, not sure what else there was to say. “Thank you for the ice cream.”
When he walked away, his hands were in his pockets and his shoulders slightly hunched, and she wanted to run after him. He looked like a man who needed a hug, but it wasn’t her place to comfort him. And Oliver was getting impatient in his car seat. She drove home and tried not to think about Brian.
It didn’t work.
* * *
She was in the tiny break room designated for people who weren’t dedicated enough to eat at their desks, about to put a forkful of a slightly sad-looking salad into her mouth, when she opened her email app and her gaze caught on the name Brian Kowalski in a message between an email from a retailer promising her twenty percent off and a newsletter from the library. It was a forwarded email from the lab.
Her gut response was that she didn’t want to know right now—not when she still had half a day of work to get through. And there was no way she could claim she didn’t feel well and leave. She was already on thin ice there.
But sitting at her desk all afternoon with the email hanging over her, unread, wasn’t going to happen, either. She needed to know. After setting down her fork, she clicked on the email.
Brian had not only forwarded the email and the report with the results, but he’d added a note.
Hey, Siobhan. I wanted to call you and talk to you in person, but I know you’re at work and it didn’t seem like the sort of thing for a text.
I assume if you’re going through your email, you’re not in the middle of something, and I know you’ll want to see the results for yourself.
I guess we should talk, so if you could give me a call after work, I’d appreciate it. Brian.
With trembling hands, she scanned the report that confirmed Brian was, in fact, Oliver’s biological father. Even though it was the expected result, it shook her and she spent the rest of her lunch break staring at her uneaten salad, trying to process how their lives were going to change now.
Unable to wrap her head around it, she sent back a simple reply—I’ll call you around six—tossed her salad, and went back to her desk.
Maybe she should have congratulated him or something.
Surprise, it’s a boy! But the more it sank in that she was actually going to have to share her son with Brian forever, the more the numbness settled in.
* * *
Brian had no idea what to do with himself.
He couldn’t sit still, but he also screwed up everything he touched.
Even though the campground was busy, with a lot of campers arriving early for the long Labor Day weekend, Rob had told him to stop helping after he directed a long camper to a short site and they’d played hell getting it back out.
Leading up to the moment he clicked on the report, he’d thought he was prepared for the results.
Believing something and having it proven beyond a reasonable doubt landed differently, he guessed, because he’d ended up sitting with his head between his knees, trying to breathe while Stella anxiously licked his face.
He’d told Rob and Hannah first, since they’d been in the store and were the reason he’d been sitting in a chair and not lying on the floor. Then he’d called his parents. His mom had put him on speakerphone so he could tell them together.
She got a little weepy, but they both stayed calm for the most part. And they agreed his next step should be a conversation with Siobhan, away from the rest of the family. There was a legal process in their future, but ideally, they’d go through it as partners and not as adversaries.
Once he’d informed his parents, he told the rest of the family via the massive group chat.
He’d followed Rob’s advice and let the conversation run its course. Once the notifications slowed to reasonable, he read them all and sent a blanket thank-you and a promise to keep them updated.
With that done, there was nothing to do but wait for Siobhan to call.
“Maybe you should start heading south.” Rob flopped in the chair and took a long draw from his tumbler’s straw. “You said she’s going to call around six? If you leave now, you’ll be home by then. If you wait too long, you’ll be on the road when she calls.”
“I’m not going home. It’s a long holiday weekend.”
“Hannah and I can handle the campground. She can manage the store and I’ll run around and deliver firewood and yell at people who break the rules. It’ll be fun.”
Brian sat in the chair facing his brother, and Stella curled up on her bed with a sigh of relief.
“I know you can handle it. But with Joey not coming up because they’re getting Nora ready to start school and Danny writing, you’d be doing all the heavy lifting and that wasn’t the idea behind the four of us buying the campground together. ”
“Do you remember when I was going to let Hannah walk out of my life for that exact same reason—my responsibility to you guys and this campground—and you told me you’d all let it go under before you let me throw away my chance at a future with her?
” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking Brian in the eye.
“You have an almost two-year-old son, Brian. A son. It’s going to take you a minute to process that, and you and Siobhan have a lot to talk about.
It’s okay to step out for a bit. We’ve got you. ”
Brian nodded slowly, knowing his brother was right.
“And think of Stella,” Rob continued. “She hates it when the campground’s totally full of strangers and she’d much rather hang out at home.”
“When I went home after the wedding week, I think she slept about twenty out of the first twenty-four hours. The family wore her out.”
“They wore us all out.” Rob took another sip of his water before pushing himself to his feet. “Hit the road.”
He and Stella pulled up in front of his garage with fifteen minutes to spare. The dog was elated to be home and immediately started a grid search, searching for any smells that hadn’t been there when she left.
Brian had time to carry some stuff inside and use the bathroom, and then his phone vibrated in his pocket. He took a deep breath, checked the caller ID to make sure it was Siobhan and not his mother or grandmother, and answered it.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” she replied, and then they were silent for a long moment. “You okay?”
“I think so. You?”
“I think so.” Her sigh was loud in his ear. “I mean, I think we all knew it. But somehow it being official is just so…”
“Official?”
“Yeah. So what now?”
She asked the question he’d been asking himself since he read the results, but still didn’t have an answer for. “I don’t know. But I do know I’d like for us to get together. I need to see him again.”
“There’s no way I’m driving all the way back to the campground on a holiday weekend,” she said. “I don’t know if you want to make the drive this weekend, either.”
“I’m not at the campground. I came home today, so I’m a little over an hour north of you now. Maybe an hour and a half with traffic. I can come to you if you want.”
“We can drive that, and Oliver and Stella would probably have more fun at your house than in my apartment. And I should probably see where you live, I guess?”
Because of visitation, he thought, his stomach tightening. So much was going to change. “Any day that works for you.”
She was quiet for a moment, and he let her think. “I told Robin we’d go out with her on Sunday, and I have Monday off, but that’s a big traffic day. Is tomorrow too soon?”
“Tomorrow’s perfect.” One night. He probably wouldn’t sleep at all, but it was only one night until he saw them again. “I know he’s little, but did you tell him anything yet?”
“No, I didn’t. I think it will make more sense to him if you’re physically there to associate the word with.”
Daddy. Brian put his hand over his stomach and blew out a breath. “Yeah. That makes sense.”
“Just text me your address so I have it in my phone. And he usually likes nuggets as a long-drive treat, so if we get there around noon, he’ll have eaten and be in a good mood.”
“That sounds great. The GPS on my house is pretty accurate so your phone should bring you right here, but if you have any issues, just call me.”
“Okay. We’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
Once they hung up, Brian sat on his back step and watched Stella run around the yard. She’d found the trail of something she didn’t think should have been in the yard, and she was sniffing the grass furiously.
It made him smile, but it wasn’t enough to quell the turmoil churning inside of him. He was somebody’s father. Oliver’s father.
Daddy.