Page 106 of Roadrunner

Riley was at the club. Arthur was at school.

Martina and I sat at the kitchen table with our coffee and the particular quiet of a weekday morning that belonged only to us.

I’d told her the night before. That I had ordered a test. That I was doing it to put a stop to a look Della had not even put into words.

She’d listened without interrupting.

She was still processing this morning. I could tell by the way she held her cup. Two hands. Careful.

“What if you’re wrong,” she said. “About it being nothing.”

I looked at my coffee. “Then I’ll know I was wrong. That’s the point of asking a lab instead of a grandmother.”

“And?”

“I don’t think I’m wrong,” I said. “I think Della sees what she wants to see because she lost a son-shaped hole years ago and a boy walked into it.”

Martina was quiet.

“Riley doesn’t know,” I said. “He doesn’t get this hanging over him unless the paper says he has to.”

“But you’ll know,” Martina said.

“I’ll know,” I said. “That’s the only thing I can say for certain.”

“It will change something for you,” she said. “Whether you want it to or not.”

I looked out the window. The saguaro at the back fence was doing what it always did. Standing there. Unbothered.

“I shouldn’t have offered,” I said. “The test.”

“You agreed to it because you want to know,” Martina said. “Same as Della.”

“What if I don’t want to know anymore?”

“Too late,” she said. Not unkindly. Just accurately.

“I keep thinking about what happens to Riley if it’s not him,” I said. “He’s already loved that boy for months without knowing why it felt the way it did. If the test comes back and says he has no claim to him at all—” I stopped. “I don’t know how you tell a man that. After everything.”

“You tell him the truth,” Martina said. “Whatever it is. He deserves that more than he deserves your protection of him.”

“And if it’s the opposite,” I said. “If it comes back and says he does have a claim. Eleven years he didn’t know about. Eleven years I took from him without ever intending to.” My throat tightened around the words. “That’s not a small thing to hand someone, Martina. That’s not good news wrapped up with a bow. That’s a grief shaped like good news.”

She reached over and took my hand. “Then he grieves it,” she said, “and you let him, and you don’t try to make it smaller than it is because it would be easier for you if he did.”

I wrapped both hands around my cup. “Let me think through it,” I said. “The timeline.”

She waited.

“Arthur turned eleven in March,” I said. I looked at the table. “Riley and I…the last time before I left…it was graduation night. The night my father came.”

“May,” Martina said.

“May,” I confirmed. “And the restaurant in California was—” I counted. “June. A few weeks after graduation.”

She was quiet.

“Three weeks after the restaurant I tested positive,” I said. “That’s consistent with June.” I pressed my lips together. “But it’s also consistent with May.”