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“Where is she right now?” I ask.
“She’s with her grandmother. My mom.”
I start laughing, uncontrollably, manic tears leaving the corners of my eyes. Taking the cloth napkin, I dab my cheeks, but the tears still stream down as my laughter fills the restaurant. Other patrons turn their heads to look.
“What’s so funny?” Emily’s face mirrors my own mixture of confusion and rage.
“My mother asked me this morning when I would make her a grandmother. She manifested it,” I choke out between the giggles. Taking a deep breath, I calm down and take another sip. The bourbon churns in my stomach, ripping up the lining, making me hollow. I haven’t really eaten anything today, but I doubt I could stomach anything right now.
Everything about this situation feels like a punch to the gut.
“Are you married?” Emily asks.
“I have a girlfriend.”
Emily’s face falls. “Okay.”
“You?”
“I have a boyfriend,” she whispers. “Burke.”
The gnaw in my stomach morphs to nausea. I take another sip. “When can I meet her? Olive?”
“Are you staying in town?” Emily asks.
“Now I am.” My tone is harsh, but I don’t care.
“Okay. Let’s plan for tomorrow. You can come to the brewery.”
I clench my jaw and knock my fist on the table. “Are you going to tell her? We’re going to tell her? That I’m her father?”
Emily’s face crumples as she traces an invisible circle with her fingernail on the tablecloth. We both stare at the same spot on the table. “You can meet her, but we can’t tell her. Not yet, anyway.”
I cough against my fist and grab my phone. “Excuse me. I have to make some calls and rearrange some appointments for tomorrow.”
“Okay. I’ll be here. Drinking.”
Standing up with force, the chair tilts violently from my body. My hands shake as I unlock my phone, scrolling for my mother’s number. My thumb hovers over her contact.
Focus on the call. Focus on the step immediately in front of me.
My mother can’t know right now. I need time to process this. To figure out what the fuck I’m going to do. My parents will try to fix this, and this is something I need to fix, without their input.
The phone rings three times before my mom answers. “Hi, Button. What’s going on? Are you on your way home?”
“No,” I say. “Something came up.”
“Oh? What happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Listen, I can’t tell you what it is, but I can’t come home just yet. Can you arrange my patients for tomorrow? Apologize for me?”
“Honey, you’re scaring me.”
“Don’t be scared. I just need some time. Dad’s retiring this week, and I want to be refreshed…” The lie tumbles out, cool and believable. I hate lying to my mother, but I need space without her or Fred breathing down my neck. Because he’s retiring, it’s a light week with no involved procedures. He looks for any excuse to work so he won’t mind.
Fred Sawyer, the man I call my father and took my last name from, stepped up when I was two. He’s the man who inserted himself into my mom’s and my life without an agenda. He loved us. He’s handing over his life’s work to me next week when I take over his dental practice.
He gave us everything.
