KAISEN
TWO MONTHS LATER.
Iread the address three times before I even started the car, like the letters might rearrange themselves if I looked away and looked back.
Truth had sent it that morning with nothing else attached—no explanation, no warmth, just a pin drop and a time.
I’d stared at my phone so long the screen dimmed, and I had to tap it awake again, just to be sure it was real.
My son.
I still thought of it that way, every time, no hesitation. Not the baby. Not a baby. My son.
I was moving before I’d finished my coffee, cane in one hand, keys in the other, jacket only half on.
The cane still embarrassed me some mornings—a grown ass man walking around like somebody’s grandfather—but the doctors said another few months, and I might not need it at all if I kept doing the exercises.
I hated the exercises. I did them anyway because I wasn’t going to walk into that office looking weaker than I already felt.
Amai had done a number on me. Two numbers, really, if I was keeping score, and I was always keeping score where my brother was concerned.
First the knife, low and vicious, meant to maim, not kill—he’d known exactly where to put it to make a point without finishing the job.
Then, the bullet in my side, precise the way everything about him was precise, taking out an organ I apparently didn’t need badly enough to die without.
I’d lost close to twenty pounds I couldn’t afford to lose.
My reflection had started looking like somebody else’s brother, hollow around the eyes, a scar riding low on my ribs that pulled tight whenever I twisted the wrong way.
None of that mattered this morning.
I got in the car fast, twisted wrong reaching for the seatbelt, and felt the pull along my side like a warning shot.
I didn’t care. I put the address into the GPS, even though I already knew the general direction.
Truth had mentioned the practice before, some independent obstetrician she’d found on her own, away from the clinic, away from anything with Landry fingerprints on it, and I pulled out of my driveway before the navigation had even finished calculating the route.
I was going to see my son today.
I don’t think I’d stopped smiling since I read her text.
The drive felt longer than it should have.
Every red light irritated my soul. I found myself doing the math again, the same math I’d been doing for two months straight, ever since Truth stood in my living room and told me the boy was mine—counting weeks, counting how much bigger he’d be, wondering if the ultrasound today would show a face, fingers, something to hold onto besides a heartbeat on a monitor.
I’d already decided he’d have my mother’s eyes.
I’d already decided a hundred things I had no right deciding. I knew that, and I didn’t care.
He was mine to help raise, whether she wanted to hear it phrased that way or not.
That boy was half of me. Nothing Amai did—no bullet, no threat, no throne he thought he was sitting on—was going to change the fact that my blood ran through that child, same as his ran through the girl.
We were even now, in the one way that actually counted.
He might have Truth’s heart tangled up wherever it was tangled, but he didn’t have my son. He never would.
I parked, checked my reflection in the visor mirror out of habit—still hollow, still healing, but presentable—and made my way inside, using the cane less than I probably should have. Moving fast enough that my side pulled again, and I ignored it again.
Truth was already in the waiting room.
And so was Amai.
Of course he was.
I understood that logically—she’d made it clear enough times that this was co-parenting now, that both of us had a claim she intended to honor whether we liked sharing space or not—but understanding something and liking it were two different animals entirely.
My eyes went to Truth first, the way they always did, and something in my chest loosened at the sight of her.
She looked good. Glowing, even, the roundness of her stomach unmistakable now under a soft white dress, her hand resting there the way pregnant women do without seeming to notice they’re doing it.
I didn’t look at Amai. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
“Hey,” I said, crossing the room straight to her, ignoring the chair he was sitting in three feet away like he wasn’t even a fixture in the room. “You look beautiful.”
“Hey, Kaisen.” She said it warm enough, tired around the edges in a way that tracked with everything going on, but warm. “How’s the back?”
“Better every day.” It wasn’t, not really, not in any way that would hold up to scrutiny, but I wasn’t going to complain in front of him. Weakness was currency I didn’t intend to spend here. “I wouldn’t have missed this.”
“I know.”
I felt him watching me. I refused to look. If he wanted acknowledgment, he could ask for it out loud like a man instead of sitting there, radiating whatever quiet, coiled thing he radiated when he wasn’t actively trying to kill somebody.
A nurse called Truth’s name before I had to find out whether the silence would hold.
Dr. Broussard was a tall woman with steady hands and the kind of face that gave away nothing until she wanted it to.
She glanced between the three of us as we filed into the room—Truth settling onto the exam table, me easing onto the chair against the wall because standing too long had started to punish me, and Amai taking the other chair on the opposite side like we’d choreographed staying as far apart from each other as the room allowed.
“Both fathers,” Dr. Broussard said, not quite a question, her eyes moving to Truth like she was checking that this was really what Truth wanted and not something she’d been talked into.
“Both fathers,” Truth confirmed.
“Alright.” The doctor’s expression didn’t judge, didn’t linger on it, just filed it away the way I imagined she filed away everything unusual that walked through her door.
“After everything you’ve been through, I want you to know you didn’t have to do this.
But if this is what you want, we’ll proceed. ”
“This is what I want.”
Dr. Broussard nodded and pulled the ultrasound machine closer, snapping on a pair of gloves with the efficient, unhurried motion of someone who’d done this ten thousand times.
I leaned forward in my chair despite the cane leaning against my knee, because I didn’t want to miss a second of it.
I’d missed the first ultrasound. I’d missed weeks of this pregnancy, locked in a concrete hole in the ground while my own brother decided what I deserved to know and when I deserved to know it. I wasn’t missing this one.
Truth lay back, lifted the hem of her dress, and Dr. Broussard squeezed the gel onto her stomach, the sound of it small and wet in the quiet room. She pressed the wand down, and the screen beside the table flickered to life.
I watched Truth’s face instead of the screen at first. I always watched her face first—some instinct in me needing to read her before I trusted anything else in the room. I saw something cross it almost immediately. A small furrow. A stillness that hadn’t been there a second before.
“Everything okay?” I asked before I could stop myself. Before I even knew what I was asking about.
“Give me a second,” Dr. Broussard said. Her voice had changed too. Not alarmed. Focused. The kind of focus that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up before I understood why.
She moved the wand. Adjusted the angle. Moved it again, slower this time, her eyes locked on the monitor with an intensity that hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago.
“What is it?” Truth’s voice had gone tight, thin.
“I’m just getting a good look,” Dr. Broussard said, which wasn’t an answer. It was the kind of thing doctors said right before they said something you didn’t want to hear.
I looked at the screen now. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be seeing—all of it looked like static and shadow to me, gray shapes swimming in gray water—but I could see the shape of a heartbeat flickering somewhere in there, steady, small, alive.
One shape.
I frowned. I didn’t say anything yet. I told myself I was wrong, that I didn’t know how to read an ultrasound, and that this was exactly the kind of thing a person without medical training panicked over for no reason.
Dr. Broussard shifted the wand to Truth’s other side.
Pressed deeper. Angled it up, then down, methodical, searching, the kind of searching that had a specific shape to it once you recognized what it looked like—the shape of somebody looking for something that should be there and isn’t turning up where it’s supposed to be.
“Dr. Broussard.” Truth’s voice cracked slightly on the name.
“I need a minute, Truth.” Not unkind. Just quiet. Focused in a way that had stopped sounding routine.
I felt my pulse climbing, my palms damp against my knees. I glanced across the room, and, for the first time since I’d walked in, I looked directly at Amai.
He was already leaning forward, his whole body rigid, his eyes fixed on the screen with an intensity that mirrored whatever was happening in my own chest. Whatever he felt about me, about all of this, about the war we were still circling each other inside of—none of it was on his face right now.
There was only the same thing I felt, the thing neither of us wanted to be the one to say out loud.
Dr. Broussard set the wand down for just a second, adjusted a setting on the machine, and picked it back up.
Pressed again. Searched again. The room had gone so quiet I could hear the machine humming, could hear Truth’s breath coming faster and shallower on the table, could hear my own heartbeat behind my ears like something trying to get out.
“There’s only one heartbeat,” Dr. Broussard finally said.