Page 114 of Roadrunner

Not the very beginning. The beginning that mattered for this. “A long time ago, before you were born, I loved someone very much,” I said. “Riley.”

Arthur’s eyes flicked to Riley and back to me, already ahead of the sentence the way he was ahead of most sentences, but he didn’t interrupt. He just waited, hands still folded, for me to get to the part that actually needed saying.

“My father didn’t approve,” I said. “He arranged a dinner, back in California, with someone he thought I should marry instead. Joshua. I didn’t want to go. I went anyway, because I was young and I thought I owed my parents that much.” I made myself keep looking at Arthur and not at the table. “I had wine that night that I don’t remember finishing, and I woke up the next morning in a hotel room I didn’t remember going to, and I have never been entirely sure what happened in between. I want you to know that, because it’s true, and because it matters to the rest of it.”

Della’s hand found the edge of the table. Riley didn’t move at all.

“A few weeks later I found out I was pregnant,” I said. “And I didn’t know. I genuinely didn’t know whether that was possible because of that night with Joshua, or because of something that happened before it, with Riley. I was scared, and ashamed, and I made a choice that I now regret. I told Riley nothing. I let him believe I’d simply left. I married Joshua instead.”

Arthur listened to all of it.

He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t react outwardly. He sat with his hands folded on the table and he listened the way he listened to things that required his full attention.

When I finished the room was quiet.

Arthur looked at the table for a moment.

Then he looked at Riley.

“You’re my father,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” Riley said.

Arthur looked at him steadily. “You didn’t know.”

“No,” Riley said. “I didn’t know.”

Arthur went quiet, turning it over. He looked at his hands, then at Della, who was doing the same thing she’d been doing since Sunday with the roadrunner, holding herself together by force of will, her hand at her mouth, her eyes full of something she wasn’t going to let out at this table.

Then his eyes came to me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I blinked. “I’m supposed to be asking you that.”

“You’ve got your worried face on,” he said.

I pressed my lips together hard.

“I’m okay,” he said. “In case you were wondering.” He looked at the table. “It explains some things.”

“Arthur—” I started.

“I meant what I said in the truck,” he said. He looked at Riley, and some of his usual directness wavered, like he wasn’t sure it was still his to say out loud with everyone listening. “About you being more like a real dad.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I guess it’s just true-true now. Not just a feeling.” He glanced at me, quick, checking. “Is that weird to say?”

Riley looked at the boy.

His jaw was tight.

He nodded once.

That was all. Just once.

Arthur nodded back.

Two men at a table making an agreement with a nod. I thought about what I’d once known about bikers and handshakes and how some things were contracts regardless of their form.

Della exhaled from somewhere deep. She reached across the table and covered Arthur’s hand with both of hers. She looked at him for a moment.