Jose
I’d just finished up the graphics that a big online business had hired me for when my phone rang and Tabby’s tone started playing. Her and Dave had decided not to have a huge honeymoon, so she’d taken him back to Jersey for a couple of days to show him her roots. After that, they’d spent three days in Houston with his dad Alex, helping him sell his house and move into a rental until he decided what he was going to do. We all knew he’d end up moving here, and with a boom in construction in the area, more people were moving here, so crime would increase. If you did the math on that one, it was guaranteed that we needed more police, so he definitely wouldn’t be stuck without a job. I reached out to hit the green button, but it ended before I could do it. That’s when the knocking on the door started, almost making me shit myself. “Jose,” Tabby called in between thuds. “I’m not kidding when I say this is a 9-1-1, open up!”
Walking past Liv who was sound asleep, I opened the door and saw a ghost with pink hair. Serious as shit, she looked like a ghost with a wig on she was that pale. “What the hell?”
Pushing past me, she waited for me to close the door, and then grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the kitchen. “We have a problem,” she whispered closing the door, and then did a quick search for the baby monitor in case Liv woke up. Seeing it on the table, she nodded and walked over, sinking down into a chair, and putting her head in her hands once her ass met the wood. “We have a problem.”
Sitting down next to her, I leaned back and did a quick scan through ‘problem scenarios’ in my head. “Are you pregnant?”
That wouldn’t be a problem, it would be the best news ever. Then again, it would interfere with her job so I could see how that might be a problem to her initially. But it was a baby, and Tabby and Dave were freaking awesome with babies, so it would work itself out.
She almost fell out of her seat when she sat up straight, but what didn’t miss the mark was the glare she leveled at me as she did it. “No, not even close,” she snapped, and then all the energy seemed to leave her all at once as she slumped back down. “I checked my phone when I was walking to my car after school and… Shit, if you check your emails, you’ll see that we have another hit in our gene pool.”
I was totally stumped on what she was talking about for all of two seconds, and then it made sense. The DNA tests we’d done – there was another match. Looking around for my phone, I remembered that it was next to my laptop which was in the living room, and I wanted to ask questions more than I wanted to read whatever it said. “Is it a brother or a sister?” I asked, figuring from what we knew that something like that was the most obvious possibility. I’d already anticipated us having quite a few of those come through on the site after Tabby had filled me in on our birth father and his way of life. In all honesty, I’d also considered contacting them to see if I could remove our profiles after Tabby had come into my life. Part of that way of thinking was for selfish reasons – I didn’t want to share her. It was immature and childish, but she was one of the best things to happen to me, and if another sibling came along, it might affect the relationship we have somehow. I’d been an only child who looked after herself all her life, and since Tabby arrived, I’d had a bond with someone that I’d never experienced before. I also worried that the person would be a criminal trying to escape from the authorities, a serial philanderer like our birth father, a psychopath, or something like that. It would be a conflict for Dave, might cause problems between him and Tabby, and… why was I worrying about this so much right now and working myself up? Because it was a shock. Finding people you’re linked to through DNA that you’d never have found before now without some major investigative work was a shock. I’d felt it when I’d first heard from Tabby, and then it had eased into overwhelming joy and relief. This could be exactly the same thing; it didn’t have to be a bad thing. Right?
“It’s our father,” she whispered, looking up at me with tears falling down her face.
I was wrong.Chapter 16