Finding Her Dad

After another pause, he said, “You weren’t predisposed to like me, were you?”

She hesitated, a little embarrassed to have been so obvious. “That’s not it,” she said finally. “I’m sorry if I’ve given that impression. I actually, um, felt a little bit sorry for you, blindsided that way.”

“Then why the hostility?”

Because my father was a sperm donor of a different kind. A one-night stand. But she wasn’t going to say that.

She felt herself making an apologetic face, which, of course, he couldn’t see. “I’m scared for Sierra. I suppose I was…”

When she didn’t finish, he did it for her. “Striking preemptively?”

Chagrined, Lucy admitted, “Something like that.”

He sighed. “I hurt her feelings. I lay there in bed last night thinking about the expression on her face. When you were in my office, I was too stunned to be as sensitive to her feelings as maybe I should have been. Part of me was thinking it all might be nonsense, or even a con. Maybe I wanted to think that. I don’t know. But…” He was the one who didn’t finish this time.

“She looks like you.”

“Yeah. Enough that…it’s possible. I looked at the DNA results, and she’s definitely a close relation to my mother.”

“Does your mother have siblings?”

“Three. Two of them have sons somewhere in the right age range. And there are probably second cousins. I don’t know.”

“So Sierra jumped to conclusions,” Lucy said slowly.

This silence shimmered with tension. His voice was tight when he said, “But seventeen years ago I gave sperm. What are the odds that any of my male cousins did?”

Startled at the admission, Lucy only murmured, “Oh.”

“May I speak to Sierra, Ms. Malone?”

“Lucy,” she heard herself say. “You can call me Lucy.”

“Not Lucia?”

“No.” She’d never gone by Lucia, although it was her legal name. Her mother told her it was a tribute to her Hispanic heritage. She didn’t want anything to do with the father who didn’t want her. Lucy wasn’t sure why she’d said Lucia and not Lucy when she first met him.

“I go by Jon,” he said, sounding…gentle, as he hadn’t been earlier. Less wary, anyway.

She took a breath, on the verge of asking what he was going to say to her foster daughter, but instead said, “I’ll get Sierra.”

“Thank you.”

She took the phone with her to the dining room. She mouthed, “It’s him,” and handed it to Sierra, who had a deer-in-the-headlights look. In a normal voice Lucy said, “If you want to take the phone to your room, that’s okay.”

Sierra sat frozen. The hand gripping the receiver was white-knuckled. After a moment she gulped. “No, that’s okay. I—I don’t mind you listening.” She visibly girded herself, then put the phone to her ear and said, “Hello?”

She listened. Lucy could hear the low rumble of his voice, but not his words. Surely, surely he wasn’t brushing Sierra off, not after admitting to her that he might be Sierra’s father. Not after the way his voice had softened.

She ate a few bites, chewed and swallowed, and she might as well have been putting foam packing peanuts into her mouth. Expressions washed over Sierra’s young face with such rapidity, Lucy couldn’t pin any one down.

“I— Yes.” She nodded. “Uh-huh.” Listened some more. “No, Mom never said.” Pause. “Okay. I—” More rumbles from Jon. At last Sierra said shakily, “Thank you. Okay. Um, bye.”

She dropped the phone, which clunked on the tabletop. Tears welled in her big blue eyes. “That was him!”

Smiling, Lucy said, “I know.”

“He…he… Oh, Lucy!” Her mouth trembled.

Oh, Lord. He hadn’t rejected Sierra after all, had he? Lucy jumped up and circled the table to hug the teenager. “What did he say, sweetie?”

Sierra buried her face against Lucy’s shoulder and hugged her fiercely. “That he’s going to call the clinic,” she mumbled. “He thinks that, with both of us giving permission, they’ll tell me who my father is. At least, they will if it’s him.”

Lucy laid her cheek against Sierra’s bright hair and closed her eyes in relief. Mostly relief. She was surprised to discover some other emotion tunneling beneath. It felt furtive, as if she should be ashamed of herself. In astonishment, she wondered if she could be jealous.

“Oh, Lucy,” Sierra whispered. “I’m so happy. He was really nice.”

The position was awkward, but Lucy held her tight as she sobbed. Maybe, she thought, I am a little jealous, but mostly I’m glad. If Sierra really had found her father, if he accepted her—no, wanted her—that was the best thing in the world for a girl who eight months ago had been left with no one at all.

JON HALF EXPECTED TO GET the runaround when he got in touch with the sperm bank. Probably he should have started with the fertility clinic Sierra’s mom had gone to, but Sierra didn’t know what one it was. Why would she? So the next morning he looked up the phone number of the sperm bank on his BlackBerry and called from his car, where he could be sure no one would hear.

He explained his mission to three different people; he wasn’t surprised when the first two hastily passed the buck. All three expressed shock and dismay, which he fully understood. If they couldn’t guarantee anonymity to donors, how many men would be willing to give? Jon had no trouble imagining what his own reaction would have been if he had a wife to whom he’d have to explain the teenage daughter who’d shown up unexpectedly on his doorstep. Yeah, this wasn’t the 1950s. Times had changed. He still doubted that most women would be thrilled to find out their husband might have God knows how many children out there who could come a-knocking.

The final person he spoke to, a woman, conceded that they did indeed keep such records. The circumstances were unusual…. Unprecedented was what she meant. The mother was deceased? They would require proof of her death, as well as his and the child’s identification before releasing the requested information. However, assuming he was the father, she didn’t see why they couldn’t then give confirmation.

Lucy answered that evening when he called. Sierra was at a friend’s, apparently. Jon tersely explained what Sierra would need to produce.

“Doesn’t a doctor or the medical examiner or somebody have to sign a certificate of death?” she asked.

“Yes. Sierra wouldn’t necessarily have that, but we could get it. I suspect a newspaper article would do as well, though.”

“She has clippings.” Lucy was quiet for a moment. He pictured her face with its soft, round chin and a mouth that had struck him as feminine rather than sultry. For some reason, he imagined her biting her lower lip. “She put them in her photo album after the last picture she has of her and her mother together.”

Well, damn. He didn’t like to think of the girl sitting alone in her bedroom—in a foster home, no less—flipping through that album. He wondered if she did often. Every night? Gazing at her mother’s face, desperate to be sure she never forgot it. Turning the last, stiff page to the black-and-white newspaper clippings. Had the paper printed a picture of Sierra’s mother?

“How did she die?” he asked.

“Drunk driver. Middle of the afternoon, not even nighttime. He pulled out to pass someone who was daring to go the speed limit and hit Sierra’s mom’s car head-on.”

“Hell.”

“He wasn’t even badly hurt.” Outrage was evident in her voice.

“Too often, drunk drivers aren’t.” He hesitated. “What was her name?”

“Rebecca Lind. She went by Becky.”

Jon vaguely recalled the accident. County deputies had responded and arrested the other driver. He was engulfed again by the stunning feeling of unreality. What if he’d known at the time that Becky Lind might be the mother of his child? A woman he’d never met. He shook his head. He’d made…what? Two hundred bucks over the course of his several donations? A pittance. Not worth it.