We sat on the porch swing for a long time without talking.
Through the screen door, we could hear the boys laughing. Mike was telling them the story about the client in Mission Hills with the six-foot dog.
“Do you think they’ll be okay?” Dana asked.
I listened to my son’s laugh. Then Ben’s. They sounded almost exactly the same.
“I think they’ve always been okay,” I said. “I think we were the ones who weren’t.”
Part Fifteen: The Truth, Out Loud
The next morning, we had a family meeting.
All five of us. At our kitchen table. Pancakes and bacon. Mike made them. He’s better at pancakes than I am.
We’d talked late into the night, the four parents and boys, and we’d made some decisions.
The first decision was that there would be no more secrets.
None. Not about the donor. Not about the clinic. Not about anything.
“If you want to know something,” Mike told the boys, “you ask. And we answer. The truth. Even if it’s hard.”
The boys nodded.
The second decision was harder.
“We need to tell the rest of the family,” I said.
Mike’s face went pale.
“My mother,” he said.
“Your mother,” I said.
Mike’s mother, Eileen, is seventy-six. She lives in a little house in Raytown. She raised five boys alone after Mike’s father died. She’s tough and stubborn and goes to Mass every morning at seven.
She’s also the one who gave Luke the DNA test.
“She’s going to find out anyway,” Luke said. “She did one too. She’s probably already seen that I don’t match her.”
Mike closed his eyes.
“She’s going to think I lied to her for eighteen years,” he said.
“You did,” I said gently.
We went to see Eileen that Sunday afternoon.
Mike and Luke and me. Eileen made iced tea and a plate of shortbread cookies. We sat in her small living room with the crucifix on the wall and the pictures of her five boys and eleven grandchildren on every surface.
Mike told her.
It took him a long time. He stumbled over the words. His hands shook.
When he finished, Eileen didn’t say anything for a long moment.
She set down her iced tea. She looked at her son.
Then she looked at her grandson.
“Michael,” she said. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
Mike blinked.
“What?”
“I’m seventy-six years old,” Eileen said. “I raised five boys. I know what my grandchildren look like.”
She pointed at Luke.
“That boy doesn’t have a single Whitman feature on his face,” she said. “Not the nose. Not the ears. Not those eyes. I’ve known since the day he was born.”
Mike stared at his mother.
“You knew?” he said. “For eighteen years?”
“I suspected,” Eileen said. “And then I did that DNA test two years ago. And I looked at the results. And Luke wasn’t on my list.”
She shrugged.
“So I knew,” she said.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Mike asked.
Eileen looked at him for a long time.
“Because I watched you hold him,” she said. “At the hospital. That first day. You were humming my song. You Are My Sunshine.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Your father used to hum that song,” she said. “To all five of you boys. When you couldn’t sleep.”
She reached over and took Mike’s hand.
“You’re a Whitman, Michael,” she said. “And that boy is a Whitman. Because you made him one. Every single day.”
Mike started crying. Right there in his mother’s living room.
Luke got up. He sat down on the arm of his father’s chair. He put his hand on his dad’s shoulder.
Eileen looked at her grandson.
“Come here,” she said. “Give your grandmother a hug.”
Luke did.
“I don’t care whose eyes you have,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re my grandson. You’ll always be my grandson.”
Part Sixteen: The Letter
In October, the boys asked about the donor.
We were at Dana’s house for Sunday dinner. We’d started doing that every week. Pot roast at Dana’s one week, spaghetti at our house the next.
“Can we find him?” Ben asked. “Donor 4127. Is that allowed?”
Dana and I looked at each other.
The clinic had been an anonymous donor program when we used it. But things had changed. The genetic testing websites had changed everything.
“I don’t know,” Dana said. “We’d have to ask the clinic. And he’d have to agree.”
