Chapter 7: The Cousin at the Door
Danny was taller than I remembered.
Or maybe he just looked larger because the room was small and everything in it had already shrunk down to its barest essentials.
He stepped in and stopped just past the doorway.
He was holding his car keys in one hand, turning them slowly, the way people hold something when they need their hands to be doing anything at all.
He looked at Ryan first.
Ryan looked back at him.
"Close the door," Ryan said.
Danny closed it.
"Sit down."
There was only one empty chair.
Danny sat in it.
I moved to stand near the window.
Melissa hadn't moved from the bed.
"Say what you came to say," Ryan said.
Danny set his keys on his knee.
He looked at Melissa briefly, then back to Ryan.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I know that doesn't fix anything.
But I need you to hear it from me directly.
What happened between Melissa and me — it was wrong.
It was completely wrong.
I have no excuse for it."
"You're right," Ryan said.
"You don't."
"I found out three weeks ago that there might be a — that the baby might be—" He stopped.
Tried again.
"I should have called you the moment I suspected.
I didn't.
I was a coward.
That's the truth."
"Three weeks," Ryan said.
"Yes."
"You sat across from me at dinner two weeks ago."
Danny's jaw tightened.
"Yes."
"You asked me how the pregnancy was going.
You asked if we'd picked a name."
"Ryan—"
"You looked me in the eye and asked if we'd picked a name." Ryan's voice didn't rise.
It just got very precise.
"And you already knew.
You already suspected that baby might be yours, and you sat there and asked me about names."
Danny didn't answer.
There was nothing to say.
"I want a paternity test," Ryan said.
"You'll do it."
"Yes.
Whatever you need."
"Not whatever I need.
Whatever the truth requires." Ryan leaned forward slightly.
"Because here's what's going to happen.
We're going to find out whose daughter she is.
And then we're going to figure out what comes next.
But I am not going to make a single decision about that baby's life based on anything other than the actual truth.
Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"And if she's yours—" Ryan stopped.
His voice caught for the first time.
He pressed through it.
"If she's yours, you are going to be present.
You are going to take responsibility.
You are not going to disappear and leave my sister holding a baby that nobody claimed."
He glanced at me when he said it.
I hadn't expected that.
The fact that he was thinking about me, in the middle of all of this, made my throat tighten.
"I won't disappear," Danny said quietly.
"I promise you that."
"Your promises," Ryan said, "are not worth very much to me right now."
Danny nodded.
He accepted that.
He didn't argue it.
Melissa spoke for the first time since Danny had entered the room.
"Ryan," she said.
"What happens to us?"
Ryan turned to look at her.
The question hung between them, too large for the room.
"I don't know," he said.
"I genuinely don't know."
It was the most honest thing he could have said.
And somehow it was worse than anger.
Worse than accusations.
Worse than anything that had come before it.
Because it meant he hadn't decided yet.
And that meant there was still something left to lose.
My phone buzzed again.
I looked at the screen.
It was the clinic.
Not the receptionist this time.
Dr.
Okafor himself.
"I need to take this," I said.
I stepped into the hallway.
Answered.
"I'm glad I reached you," Dr.
Okafor said.
"I've reviewed the file personally.
There's something you need to know before you pursue the paternity test through outside channels."
"What is it?"
A pause.
"The secondary sample in your file," he said, "was not from an anonymous donor.
It was logged under a name.
And the name in our record — I need to confirm this with you directly — is Daniel Mercer."
The hallway tilted slightly.
"That's Ryan's cousin," I said.
"Yes," Dr.
Okafor said.
"I know.
Because Daniel Mercer is also a patient of this clinic.
May you like
He registered a sample here fourteen months ago." Another pause.
"And based on what I'm seeing in this file, I don't believe that sample was used by accident."
