I didn’t say anything. Neither did Amanda.
Chase slid her gaze from me to her sister. “Did I interrupt something?”
“I was . . .” Amanda muttered. “I was just about to tell Brendon where Tanner is. It’s time we went to see him, for Brendon to meet him.”
“What?” Chase turned her right ear towards Amanda, thrusting her head out in a melodramatic way. “I can’t hear you. I’m deaf, remember?”
“Chase,” Amanda snapped.
She held up her hands. “Okay, okay. Just trying to cut the tension here. You two need to start acting like grown-ups. There’s such a thing as words, you know. You should both use them. I hear they’re quite useful at times.”
“Chase.”
The hands went up again, this time with an exasperation I was feeling myself. “Oh for fuck’s sake, can we all just get in the car? I’ll drive. We’re going to get stuck in traffic if we don’t go soon, and you drive way too slow.”
I let out a tight breath.
“Before we do . . .” Amanda walked into the kitchen to a tall wooden cupboard, opened the door and withdrew something from it.
I could see what it was before she crossed to where I stood. My heart thumped faster. Harder. Tried to punch its way from my throat.
She stopped directly in front of me, gaze locked on my face. “This,” she extended her hand toward me, “is Tanner.”
I stared at the photo in her fingers.
“This is Tanner,” she repeated. I didn’t miss the emphasis on the word “this”. But I didn’t understand it either.
Pulse pounding in my ears faster than it should, I took the photo from her and studied it. A toddler grinned up at me, devilish mischief dancing in blue eyes so like my own I could never question his parentage. A tuft of thick blond hair – again, the same color as mine – sprouted from the top of his head, shaped into a short, spiky Mohawk. In his right hand was a bright yellow Transformer toy. In his left, an apple half-munched on by baby teeth. He was wearing a bottle-green T-shirt with the words Try and Stop Me across the chest and a pair of shorts that showed off his chubby legs and knees. His feet were muddy. At those muddy feet a puppy sat – a black and white scruffy mutt with no discernible breed – just as muddy as he was.
I stared at the photo. At my son. Drank in the sight of him. The obvious joy he was feeling at the moment he’d been immortalized by the camera.
A tight band wrapped around my chest and squeezed. It stole my breath. My throat thickened. My head throbbed. My son. I was looking at my son.
It was like looking at a photo of myself when I was that age. And yet, I could see Amanda in Tanner as well. In the shape of his jaw. In his eyebrows. My eyebrows are arched and bushy. Tanner’s fair eyebrows mimicked Amanda’s – straight blond horizontal lines above his blue eyes.
Those eyes held mine to the photo. Kept me prisoner. I couldn’t look up from it, not even when I heard someone move to stand beside me.
“He’s a cheeky little imp,” Chase said, her shoulder brushing my arm as she looked at the photo. “I remember the day that was taken. He’d just finished hitting Robby over the head with Bumblebee and thought he was all sorts of clever and awesome.”
“Who’s Robby?” I murmured, incapable of lifting my attention from Tanner.
If Chase heard my distracted question, she didn’t answer. It’s possible she didn’t. She was standing on my right, and Chase’s hearing is at its worst on her left.
To be honest, I didn’t give a rat’s arse who Robby was. Not at that second. I was completely preoccupied with Tanner. A rush of sheer happiness crashed over me. I smiled at the photo, all too aware my eyes were prickling with wet heat. He was gorgeous.
I know gorgeous is not a word guys tend to use unless they’re describing a hot chick, but he was. Gorgeous and full of life and fun. I could see it. There, in that photo.
My son.
Silence stretched in the room. It took more effort to raise my focus from that photo than it did to bench-press 136 kilograms. Chase and Amanda were both watching me.
“What’s going on?” I asked. A tickle in my brain said I was missing something very important. Something . . . “Why isn’t there any sign of him here?” That tickle turned to a cold finger, pressing at my heart. The hair on my scalp crawled. “Doesn’t he live here? Where is he?”
Adopted. She adopted him out. Why else wouldn’t he be here? With his mother?
The thought slammed me hard. I frowned, staring at Amanda’s face.
“Where is he, Amanda? Why do we have to drive to see him? Who does he live with?” Another thought popped into my head, a brittle connection to a possibility I didn’t want to ponder. “Who’s Robby? What’s he to my son?”
“Brendon,” Chase began, her voice louder than it should be in the small room. So it wasn’t just me stressed then? For some fucked-up reason that made me feel better. But not by much.
“No, Chase.” Amanda stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I got this. I should have got this months ago. Eighteen months ago. Then Bren wouldn’t be looking at us, at me, like I was . . . like . . . ah, fuck, Bren.”
She closed her eyes and stood motionless, save for her fingers pinching at her thumbnail again. She stood there, silent, before opening her eyes again and meeting my gaze with an unwavering, unreadable stare.
“Tanner has Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukemia, Brendon,” she said, her voice calm and yet at the same time hollow. Broken. “He was diagnosed last month. Unless he has a successful bone marrow transfer as soon as possible, the doctors have given him six months to live. Maybe less.” She stopped and drew a slow breath. “It’s rare for the parents to be a match, but sometimes they are, and the first ones tested are family and siblings. That’s why I contacted you,” she continued. “That’s why you’re here.”
I blinked, looking at her, trying to comprehend the words that had come out of her mouth. I must have misunderstood. I must have . . .
My brain caught up in the space of a heartbeat. Caught up and rebelled against what it had heard.
Leukemia.
Cancer.
I blinked again, staring at her. “Are you serious?” My voice was little more than a rough breath. It was the most ridiculous question I’ve ever asked in my life.
In my twenty-five years of living.
Living.
Six months to live . . .
A tear tracked a path down Amanda’s right cheek. She nodded, a strange hiccupping action of her head. Her eyes however, didn’t move from mine.
My knees crumpled beneath me. They’d been trying to desert me, abandon me, since I’d learned of Tanner’s existence and I’d denied them the victory. But now whatever determination and strength I’d had before was gone. Robbed of me by four words: Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukemia.
I fell onto my arse, hitting the floor with a thud. The room rushed at me, even as the air vanished. I gasped for breath, but none came. My chest turned to a vice; my gut a churning mess. I stared up at Amanda from the floor, my head roaring.
“No,” I said. “No. You can’t do this to me. You can’t call me to the other side of the world, tell me I have a son and then tell me he’s dying. You can’t do that.”