"Why?" He heard the pleading in his own voice and hated it. "Why wouldn't you say something? You're my mother."
She reached across the table and put her hand over his. Her skin was cool and thin and spotted, and he could feel the bones beneath it.
"Because you held him," she said. "I watched you hold him in that chair by the window, and you looked down at him and you set your jaw like this." She lifted her own chin, just slightly, and pushed it forward. "Exactly like your father did, when he'd made up his mind about something and the whole world could go to hell. I said, he has your father's chin. Do you remember? I said it to you. And everyone thought I meant the baby. But I didn't mean the baby, Eric. I meant you. I was looking at you."
Eric stared at her.
"I had a day of wondering," Carol said. "And then I thought, what good would it do? You were sober. You were happy. That baby had a father the minute you picked him up. A test wasn't going to change that. I decided it wasn't my business. Maybe I was wrong. I've been wrong before. But I'm too old to be sorry I let my son keep his boy."
He sat in her kitchen with his grilled cheese going cold and her hand on his, and for the first time since the barbecue, he felt something other than the cold, clear numbness, something warm and terrible rising up in his chest that he could not yet name.
* * *