“Gorgeous, I want her to have your smile. Your smile lights up a room and is the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, maybe we’ll have to have another at some point so we can both get our way.” I squeeze her hand as I make the turn onto Grant’s street.
“Love, you know my thoughts on that. I’ll give you as many kids as you want. Let’s go see what he’s got.” I park and get out. I help my woman out of the vehicle and we walk up to the front door. I knock and open the door, calling out, “Hey, Grant! We’re here. Where you at?”
I hear rustling and the sound of voices in the kitchen. He yells back,
“In the kitchen! The boxes are in the living room. I’ll be right there!” I look over at Kierstie and I can tell she heard someone else in the kitchen too. We walk into the living room and I swear I hear the back door open and close. Less than a minute later, Grant walks into the room just as we’re sitting down on the couch. I don’t ask anything but my face must show my questioning ’cause he slightly shakes his head in the universal “don’t want to talk about it” way.
“Hey, you two. I found all these up in the attic yesterday. I went up there looking for something and had forgotten we’d put these up there. I didn’t dig too much into them, but I figured we could see if there’s stuff you want to keep.”
“Well, let’s see what’s in them. I forgot we saved some stuff. Maybe her journal is in here. I wanted to ask you about the guy I think might be my biological dad. From what I can remember, it sounded like you knew him at one point.” Grant’s eyebrows go up in surprise at that thought. We each open a box and start pulling out stuff. Kierstie gets all teary-eyed when she finds my baby blanket and my first Christmas ornament. She puts them in a pile that’s going home with us. I start a box of Tyson’s things to keep for him. There’s some stuff that I’m not sure why we saved it and it goes in a trash pile. Grant is almost at the bottom of his box when he finds a shoebox. When he opens it, it looks like letters and papers.
“Maybe this will have the stuff you were wondering about. It’s her handwriting, that much I know. Do you want to take some and we can both look at them?”
“Sure, you may be triggered to remember stuff I don’t even know. I’d just kinda like to find out who my biological father is out of curiosity. Maybe ’cause Tom was such an asshole and I want to confirm everything I’ve found that I really don’t share genes with him.”
Grant tilts his head in thought while looking at me.
“You know, it doesn’t really matter if you do or not. You’re nothing like him. You’re a good man. That’s who you are at your core, no matter your genetic makeup. Your grandmother was a fucking nightmare of a person, but thankfully your grandpa showed me and your mom enough goodness, we didn’t turn out horribly. Yeah, we might have had horrible tastes in partners, but I’d like to think I learned from my experiences in that arena. I also know Kierstie wouldn’t have married you if she didn’t believe you were a good man.”
She squeezes my thigh.
“He’s right. I mean, I might have gotten knocked up by someone who I didn’t know their character and who they were as a person, but I damn sure wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t know to the depths of my soul how good a man you are.” She leans and gives me a peck of a kiss and smiles at me as she gets back to going through the boxes.
Grant and I are about halfway through the letters, notes, and journals in the box when he stops.
“Holy shit. What was Gretta thinkin’?” I haven’t heard him call my mom by her name in a long time.
“What did ya find? Is it something helpful?”
“Fuck yeah. I think I know who your dad is, but you’re going to want to talk to Mike and Ben about him.” Huh?
“Mike, you mean Jane’s dad?” He nods at me.
“Yeah. If it’s who I think it is from what Gretta wrote here, it’s someone who prospected for us, then all of a sudden, one day, just quit and left town. I remember hearing a few years after that, he joined the same MC they were in. Let me read a bit further, but I think she fucking slept with him. I also have this gut feeling that she didn’t tell him about you. If it’s who I think it is, he was a decent guy and wouldn’t have run from taking care of a kid. She met Tom during this time too, so who knows what she was thinkin’.” Kierstie pipes in with her guess. “I bet she was pregnant and scared. She probably looked at the guy who got her pregnant and the guy she thought would make her happy for a lifetime and was in love with that idea and went that way. Was it right? No. I think she must’ve known that deep down ’cause she didn’t put your stepdad’s name on your birth certificate. She could’ve completed the lie by doin’ that and given you his last name. Maybe even she couldn’t lie that much. She would’ve also known you would find her journal and letters. Sometimes we make the decisions that turn out to be a mistake, but at the time seemed like the best option. We can’t look at the past and judge someone’s decisions with hindsight. They had to make that decision with the information they had at the time. Maybe she thought Tom was the better choice at the time. You’ve said your stepdad didn’t start seriously drinking till you were about five or so, right?”
“Yeah. I guess that makes sense. Makes me even happier that you didn’t keep her from me, gorgeous.”
“It never even dawned on me. I knew you had to have the option of being in her life, even if nothing came of us. Every person has a right to decide if they are going to be a parent. If this guy is your dad and Mike and Ben know him, are you going to get in touch with him?”
“Maybe. I mean, it probably depends on what the guys say. If he’s a horrible person, I don’t want someone like that in our lives or near our daughter. If he’s still alive and a stand-up guy, then I think yeah, I wanna get in touch with him. Like you said, he may not have been given the option to be in my life at all. If that’s the case and he wants to talk, I’d be open to it. Like your pa says, you can always add more to your family. They don’t replace those relationships you already have but they create their own little spot in your world.”
Grant chooses this moment to chime in. “Well, look at that. You do listen to shit we say sometimes.”
Rolling my eyes at him, I say, “I do when you have something important to say. Now how about we finish this stuff. We have to go to the store and I know Kierstie’s gonna wanna nap before we head to the club for church.” I get smacked in the arm for this.
“Hey! It’s your daughter that’s making me tired all the time and playing soccer with my insides.”
I know better than to say anything back. We finish up the last couple of boxes and Grant tells me he’ll bring my mom’s journal to church tonight to see if Mike or Ben know about the man who is most likely my father. I get Kierstie home and within ten minutes, she’s asleep on the couch.
**********
A few hours later, Jon’s about to wrap up church. He always opens it up at the end to anyone in the club needing to talk about things. Sometimes, someone just needs to throw some business ideas around or get feedback on an idea for something, even a new charity event or what have you. I’m ready to finish this up and go out and make sure my woman is fed and get some grub for myself. Jon, in his predictability, throws it out to anyone the same way he always does.
“That’s all I got. Anyone have anything to bring to the table?”
Jackson brings up an idea to add to the Holiday Bazaar we have every year. Everyone agrees it’s a good one and Jon tells Jackson to get who he needs to make it happen.
