That afternoon the cemetery was nearly empty. David sat on the grass beside her marker and said nothing for a long time. Eventually he spoke aloud, feeling foolish and needing to do it anyway. “I should have told you.”
Wind moved through the maple branches above him. “I should have told you before Megan was born. I should have told you when Sarah called. I should have told you when I saw Connor at that soccer field.
I should have told you when you got sick. I kept deciding that the timing was wrong because every wrong time protected me.” There was no response, of course. David did not ask Laura to forgive him.
He had started to understand how often requests for forgiveness center the comfort of the person who caused harm. Instead he told her the facts. Connor existed. The test was positive.
Megan was furious. Sarah was ashamed. Paul had been the father who raised the boy. Then David sat there until dusk because leaving too quickly felt like another form of escape.
Connor had his own cemetery to visit. Paul Pell was buried two counties away beside his older brother, and Connor had not gone alone since the funeral. In December, after several months of therapy and careful distance from David, he drove there with Sarah but asked her to wait in the car. He carried no flowers.
Paul had hated flowers at graves and once told Connor he would rather receive beef jerky. Connor sat on the cold ground with his knees pulled up. “I found out something stupid,” he said to the stone, because talking to the dead makes everyone sound younger. “Or not stupid.
Huge. But you know what I mean.” He told Paul about the DNA test. He told him about Megan, prom, David, and the strange guilt of feeling curious about the biological father who had failed to earn his curiosity.