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“This is a lie,” I shouted. “A fucking lie.”
Griffin moved his hands to suggest I should lower my volume. “This is exactly why I suggested not giving you this now,” he said.
“How do I know this is real? They could have paid someone off,” I said.
“This is a shit show for sure. But trust me. I know Connor and Kalen. They wouldn’t lie to you about this.”
There was pity in his eyes. Did everyone know the results?
“What about Royce? He could have paid someone off,” I said.
“I suggest do your own test. According to the lab, they need the mother’s DNA to narrow the window. Test you, your mother, and… Mr. King’s brother. Don’t tell anyone. Then, you’ll have your answers.”
That was sound advice. Only I had other worries. “That doesn’t solve my problem.” I raked my hand through my hair. “I have two days.”
He frowned. “Two days for what? Maybe you better tell me what happened with Nicolas at David’s.”
I did. I unloaded it all, except my extracurricular activities with Natalie. I had to hand it to Griffin. When I was done, he quickly came up with the rough outline of a plan.
First, I had to get us home and not crash the plane. We didn’t go to New York. I flew directly to Maryland by sheer will as my mind worked through how the results could possibly be true. When I landed, I called my mother and asked her to have Ted, the man I’d thought was my uncle, with her when I arrived home.
As I pulled up in front of the little two-bedroom ranch I’d grown up in, I sat gathering my thoughts until there was a knock on the window.
I wiped away the rage and disappointment from my eyes to see that it was Grant. Any other day, I would have called him cousin. What do I call him now?
“Hey, man,” I said, rolling down the window.
“You summoned the cavalry. Yet you’re sitting here.”
I nodded and rolled up the window before getting out. “You didn’t have to come.”
“Really?” he said. “After your phone call, Jo insisted I fly up. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Since he mentioned Jo, I assumed he’d taken my advice. “I don’t think I can say it more than once. Let’s go in.” Though I hadn’t considered it, he had as much right to the truth as I did.
The door was unlocked, as were most in our town. I hadn’t thought anything of that routine before I left for the military. After all of that and everything that happened in New York, it was time I convinced my mother to change her no lock rule.
“Mom,” I said. She stood in the middle of the room, clasping and unclasping her hands. I recognized how nervous she was and wondered if I would learn that she’d lied to me after all these years.
Uncle Ted, or should I call him Father, stepped into the room from the kitchen holding two mugs. He handed one to Mom.
“Liam. What’s this about?” he asked.
With a heavy hand, I lifted my burden as if it carried the weight of the world. He stepped forward and took the paper from me with the lightness of someone unaware what was about to unload on him.
The thin piece of paper, no longer crisp, bore the wrinkles of much handling. I’d reread it a number of times before I’d been forced into the captain’s chair to pilot the plane I wasn’t sure I was steady enough to fly.
The Air Force taught me a lot. Especially the art of flying in the direst of circumstances. Though in the moment, I would have preferred being shot at over the hours of circumspect reflection I’d endured.
They say the eyes are windows into the soul. I watched his for signs of surprise, which came. He handed it to my mother and held my gaze with his back straight.
“What’s going on?” Grant complained.
“Tell him, Liam.”
I turned to my brother, cousin, whatever, and said, “It’s the DNA results. According to them, Royce King is my uncle.”
Grant looked away, having thought that. He mentioned it once in passing, but quickly dismissed the suggestion when I wouldn’t give it a second thought. Oh, how right he’d been.
“It’s a lie,” Mom said with all the bravado of a woman who believed it. “They’re lying, Liam.” She pleaded with me and I so wanted to believe her until Ted took her hand. She stopped and looked at him. “Tell him, Teddy. Nothing happened between us for over two years after your wife left. Tell him,” she pleaded.
He didn’t look at me or Grant, just into my mother’s eyes. “Remember the night after she left?” He rarely gave voice to his ex-wife’s given name. We always knew when he was speaking about her.
