Chapter 13
Simone was laid up with me on the couch with her legs across my lap and something playing on the TV that neither one of us was really watching.
It was one of those afternoons where nothing was important other than us spending quality time.
No plans, no obligations, just her and me in the house doing nothing and I really loved this shit.
It had been a week and a half since I first met Amara at Riverside Park.
Sandra had let me see her one more time since then.
This time, I took my moms because I needed her set of eyes to tell me what I already knew.
Immediately, my mom fell in love with that baby.
This time was a shorter visit, more controlled, Sandra watching everything we did like she was waiting for me to make a wrong move.
I knew she was uncomfortable with me bringing my moms, but I didn’t give a damn.
Amara had run to me when she saw me coming and that was all I needed to know about where I stood with my daughter.
My daughter.
I was still getting used to saying that even just in my head. She took a liking to my moms immediately too.
Sandra had loosened up a little during that second visit once she saw how much love my moms held for a baby she didn’t even know.
Sandra’s change in demeanor was just enough to tell me something real.
She said she had always had doubts about who Amara’s father was but she never pushed it because things with her husband were stable and she didn’t want to mess up everything she had built.
I understood that even if I didn’t agree with it.
She had made a choice to protect her life.
I just happened to be the consequence of that choice showing up four years late.
“Deon, that baby is the most beautiful little girl I’ve ever seen.
I know she’s yours, I can feel it in my soul that she belongs to us.
I want to be happy, but my heart hurts for Simone.
What will you do if she doesn’t take it well?
” My mom asked as we left the park and got into the car to leave. Her question sat on me heavy.
“If she loves me, and is the woman I’m supposed to make my wife, she’s accept everything that comes with me.
If not, I’ll have to respect where she stands.
But if that baby is mine, I can’t ignore that or change it.
” I responded and the weight of all this hit me.
Simone didn’t deserve to be hurt, even if it wasn’t intentional.
Since that day, my mom talks about Amara all day, every day. I’m sure she’s told the world, that she’s a grandma, and we still don’t even know for sure.
—
I thought about Amara’s face on the swings.
The way she grabbed my hand without hesitating.
The way she talked — full sentences, direct, more put together than any three year old had any business being.
She had looked at me at the end of that second visit and asked me if I was her daddy for real this time and not just in her dreams.
I had told her yes, but I knew that her mom was liking going to coach her to forget anything I had said on that visit.
I smiled to myself sitting there on that couch.
“What you smiling at,” Simone said without looking up from her phone.
“Nothing. Just thinking.”
“About what?” She asked with her brows raised.
“Just about how good life is. I’ve been getting blessed left and right. You the biggest one.”
She looked up at me and something in her face softened, she put her phone down and shifted closer to me. I put my arm around her and she laid her head on my chest and we stayed like that.
This was what I had been working toward my whole life without knowing it. Not the money or the reputation or any of the things I had chased coming up. Just this. A woman who made everything feel right.
The DNA results were supposed to arrive in two more days.
I had a plan. I was gonna see what it said, then I was going to sit Simone down and tell her everything on my own terms before she had a chance to be blindsided by it.
I had been rehearsing that conversation in my head every night for a week.
I knew what I was going to say. I knew how I was going to say it.
I had thought through every version of how she might react and I had a response ready for all of them.
In the middle of the movie, we got a knock at my door.
Simone got up to answer it, then I heard her open the door and say something to whoever was on the other side. Shortly after, she close it. Then I heard the sound of paper. Then footsteps.
She came back into the living room holding an envelope.
She was looking at it with a confused look on her face.
I saw the return address from the couch.
DNA Diagnostics Center.
My whole body went cold.
The tracking had said two more days. Two more days and I would have had it in my hands before she ever saw it.
I had paid for expedited results and put my own address on the form because I wasn’t thinking clearly when I submitted it.
Now I sat here regretting not mailing it to my moms address.
I had been carefully managing the timing, but now the results were sitting in Simone’s hand in the middle of my living room.
“Gutta.” Her voice was different. Flat in a way it had never been with me. “What is this.”
I stood up.
“Put it down and let me talk to you—”
“What is this? Tell me right the hell now!”
“Simone, please just sit down and give me that.”
“I ASKED YOU A QUESTION.” Her voice cracked on the last word and she caught it and pulled it back while she stood there looking at me waiting.
I had nothing. Everything I had rehearsed for a week was gone.
“Open it in front of me, because you better pray this a DNA test for you and your father!” she said. She walked over and held it out and her hand was shaking.
“Just let me explain first. You gotta hear me out.” I was nervous than a muthafucka.
“No.” She took a step closer. “You open this right now in front of me! You keep saying to hear you out, but you not saying shit. Now, I’m fearing the worst and to ease my nerves open it now, or I’m about to.”
I took the envelope.
I stood there holding it and looked at her face. I wanted to say something that would soften what was about to happen and there was nothing. There was no part of this of this that was soft. I damn sure wasn’t expecting this today.
“I need you to know that I love you,” I said. “Before you read anything I need you to know that.”
She snatched the envelope out of my hand and tore it open. She was clearly tired of playing around with my ass.
She pulled the papers out and I watched her eyes move across the page.
I watched her face go through something I couldn’t explain.
She read it once. Then she read it again.
Then she looked up at me and her eyes were full and welling with tears, and her jaw was tight, but was holding herself together by nothing.
CASE INFORMATION
Case Number: DDC-54892173
ALLEGED FATHER: Deon Rodgers
CHILD: Amara—
MOTHER: [Not Tested]
TEST PERFORMED
Paternity Test – Legal DNA Analysis
LABORATORY FINDINGS
The DNA profiles obtained from the tested parties were compared at multiple genetic loci. Deon Rodgers cannot be excluded as the biological father of Amara—.
Combined Paternity Index (CPI): 8,942,731 to 1
Probability of Paternity: 99.9999%
CONCLUSION
Based on the genetic markers analyzed, the probability of paternity indicates that Deon Rodgers is the biological father of Amara.
TESTED PARTIES
The papers fell from her hands and dropped to her side.
She stood there and didn’t say anything and the silence in that living room was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life.
Then she held out her hand.
“Give me your phone.”
“Simone, why? I’ve never cheat on you I swear. I just found out about this baby not even a month ago, and it was before you.”
“Give me your phone Gutta.”
I unlocked it and put it in her hand and she went straight to my photos without hesitation and scrolled. I knew the exact second she found it because she stopped completely. She turned the phone around and showed me the picture of Amara on the swings at Riverside Park.
“Is this her?”
I didn’t answer.
“IS THIS THE BABY?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the picture for a long moment. Then she looked at me with the saddest expression that damn near broke me.
“I saw this picture the other day when I used your phone to play a game,” she said quiet.
“And I told myself I was being paranoid. I told myself it was somebody else’s kid.
A cousin. A friend’s baby. Something.” She set the phone down on the couch arm.
“But that baby looks just like you and I already knew it in my spirit, I just didn’t want to say it out loud because saying it out loud made it real.
” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Who is the mother?”
“Somebody I dealt with before you and I were ever together. One night, that’s all it was.
I never knew a baby came from it. I didn’t know that little girl existed until the day she bumped into me in the grocery store when we were shopping together.
” I took a step toward her. “I swear to you on everything I love that I did not know.”
“The grocery store?” She looked at me.
“When we were at the grocery store together weeks ago and you said that little girl looked just like me that it was scary. I didn’t know she existed til that day. Remember that next morning, I jumped up out of my sleep paranoid, and wouldn’t tell you what was wrong.”
“Yes. I remember all of that. That’s what you were hiding?”
“Yeah, that’s part of it. Hell, the biggest part of it. I promise I was going to tell you as soon as I knew for sure.”
“That’s what that text was about. Somebody sending me that message telling me you had a secret.”
I didn’t say anything.