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Even saying that sounds weird.
I park my car behind my brother’s truck and kill the engine. At the front door, I inhale deeply and briefly entertain thoughts of why I must tell them. My brain tries to convince me that they don’t have to know but that’s stupid. You can’t hide a child forever and it’s not fair to keep her existence from her relatives.
I ring the door and wait. Seconds later, it flies open, and Janice appears in the doorway.
“Hey, pixie,” I say.
She sticks out her tongue and leans forward to kiss my cheek. “Something’s wrong with your eyesight. I’m five-foot-five.”
I ruffle her hair affectionately. “Five-foot-nothing.”
Janice takes after our mother in stature. They are both tiny but that hasn’t stopped them from taking the world by storm. My mother owns a beauty salon and Janice is an interior decorator.
“Come on in, everyone’s already here,” she says.
“Even Stan?” I ask.
She laughs. “Stan too.”
Our older brother is a lawyer and he’s always late for dinner at my parents’ place. I follow Janice to the kitchen which is the hub of the house and where we’ve always eaten.
My mother always threatens to get rid of the long table, but she never does it and I suspect that we all love it. Everyone except my mother is seated at the table and as soon as I look at them, panic swells up inside me. A feeling of letting them down comes over me.
“Come over here and give me a kiss,” my mother says, and I obediently cross the room to where she’s standing by the stove. I go around the table bumping fists with my father and brothers.
“You on duty after this?” I ask Josh who is wearing his cop’s uniform.
“No, just finished and there was no time to go home and change,” he says.
I head to the sink to wash up before joining everyone at the table. I pour myself a glass of water.
“How are things at work?” my father asks me. He’s a retired firefighter and every time I come home he usually wants a run-down on everything that is happening. He misses the fire station more than he likes to admit and I don’t blame him. We are like a family down there and I know all the guys’ wives, girlfriends, and children.
We talk about the station for a while as Mom, Janice, and Stan bring dinner to the table. The food is lovely as usual, but I don’t eat much which of course my mother notices.
“Did you eat before you came?” she asks, staring at my still full plate.
“No, I just have a few things on my mind,” I say, bracing myself to tell them about Emma.
That gets everyone’s attention, and they stop eating and stare at me. I’ve never admitted to having something that is bothering me and looks of worry come over their faces.
“What is it, son?” my father says in his deep baritone.
“It’s nothing bad and I know that it will come as a surprise to you as it did to me,” I begin.
“Spit it out,” Stan says.
“I have a three-month-old daughter.”
Nobody says anything. Janice’s mouth drops open. The others continue staring at me as if expecting me to say that it’s a joke.
“A daughter?” my mother says. “I don’t understand. Logan, you don’t even have a girlfriend.”
“You haven’t had one since Lisa,” Janice says.
I’m too tense to react to that. “Well, yes but I’ve had casual relationships since then and one of them resulted with the conception of Emma.”
Nobody says anything. It was easy to talk myself into doing this by telling myself that I’m an adult, but I don’t feel like a responsible one right now. It’s not fun telling your family that you had a one-night stand that resulted in the birth of a daughter.
“There’s more.” I thread my fingers through my hair.
“There always is,” Stan says to my relief. The silence had stretched for too long. It’s nice to hear someone’s voice even if the tone is Stan’s courtroom sarcastic one.
“I met Jade a year ago and we got together for a short time.” We met in a club, and we went to her place and slept together. As with all my affairs, it was short, intense, and purely physical.
“What does Jade do?” my mother finally asks.
“She was a yoga teacher.” I hope I’m remembering this correctly, but we did very little talking during the times we were together.
“Was?” Josh says. As a cop, he’s always the first one to catch a clue or something out of the ordinary.
I nod. “She died while she was giving birth.”
“Oh my God!” Janice cries and clamps a hand over her mouth.
“What?” my mother says. “Jade passed on?”
“I’m sorry, son,” my father says and my brothers mutter intelligible things.
“I’d actually lost touch with her by then. Jade never told me that she was expecting a child.”
