“How did you find out?” I asked Birdwine. He wanted to talk, and he had carried this by himself so long. I needed him to know we could talk, after all.
“Some asshole friend of Stella’s who knew us both back in the day. Bridesmaid in our wedding. She sent me a letter, saying she’d waffled and prayed, and she’d decided that I had the right to know. That was about ten years ago,” he said, and now he did sound bitter, a thousand times blacker and more caffeinated than when he spoke of his wife’s affair.
The timeline made sense to me, though. Ten years ago, Birdwine had walked into his first AA meeting. “And that’s when you saw Caleb?”
“Yeah. They’d moved to Florida by then. I drove down and staked them out. For more than a week, but they never saw me. You know how I am. Damn, Paula, they looked good. They looked happy. I would know, because I didn’t want them to be happy. I was hoping for a reason to storm in. But their first girl had just started toddling, and my kid, Caleb, I heard him telling the ice cream booth guy that he was a big brother. He couldn’t say th’s. He said it like, brudder, and he sounded so proud. Every other word he said was Daddy. ‘Daddy, look at me.’ ‘Daddy, pick me up.’ And Martin would pick him up. Stella carried the baby, while Martin rode my son around on his shoulders.”
“Shit,” I said. The bridesmaid had taken her sweet time growing a conscience. She’d waited three years after Stella’d made a judgment call, choosing Martin before the birth, when biology would give its testimony. There was no clearer way to tell a man you didn’t think that he was good enough for your kid, but I asked anyway, because he had to know that I would listen, and that the story would change nothing. “When Stella told you she was pregnant, you didn’t wonder? You didn’t do the math?”
His shook his head, a huge, shaking no that started in his shoulders and reverberated down through our clasped hands. It was a lie he told with his whole body, or maybe it was just denial, because the words that he spoke next were true:
“I wanted to believe her. I guess I decided to believe her. I was really, really busy drinking. It was a relief, when she said she was sure.”
Birdwine lifted his free hand in a whatcha gonna do gesture that said he didn’t blame her.
Maybe I couldn’t, either. I imagined Stella, pregnant thirteen years ago. Married to the ruin I’d seen when he was bingeing. He’d been drinking every day back then, hanging on to his job by a thread. She’d met another man, reliable and sober. She’d cared enough about Martin to break her marriage vows. When she realized she was pregnant, she’d had the luxury of choosing. I’d seen Birdwine at his worst, so I got it. And really, what would I have done in her shoes?
It was the wrong question. I knew my stupid answer: I’d have chucked the steady ginger and rolled my dice with this one.
“Do you think you’ll ever meet him? Caleb. Maybe when he’s grown?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if that was right, but I didn’t see a clear right. We were deep into the grays, here. Perhaps this wasn’t all that different from what Kai had done for Julian. For the first time I wondered if Julian had grown up knowing he was adopted. I thought so, from the way he’d talked about his family. Birdwine’s boy hadn’t. Had Caleb been abandoned or stolen, saved or released? It didn’t matter, because Birdwine was shaking his head no.
“Not unless he needs bone marrow or a kidney,” Birdwine said.
“Well, the gods be with him if he ever needs some liver,” I said, and Birdwine winced. “Yeah, low blow. But you know it’s true.”
We had reached my building now, and I let go of his hand and turned to face him. My back was to the wall. He faced into the gold light that streamed out from the lobby doors.
Birdwine said, “When I started AA, I made a promise to myself. I thought, if I could stay sober for a year, get my chip, then I’d go and meet Caleb. I told myself that, then, I’d be worth meeting. I started the trust fund, so he’d know he mattered the whole time, right? If I could just get that year chip, I kept saying.”