Or maybe I would never think about it. Who knew? I still, and more than likely forever would, want nothing to do with her.

“She is biologically my grandmother. She was my dad’s mom,” I replied, flexing my fingers around the steering wheel.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jonah fidgeting in the seat beside me and knew without looking that he was watching me.

“Your father, where is he?” Sarah went on to ask.

I heard Jonah grunt, but I answered her. She wasn’t the first person to ever ask, and she wouldn’t be the last. “He died before I was born.”

The silence in the car for a few moments after that honestly made me feel just a little bad. I bet she hadn’t been expecting that. And she wouldn’t be the first person either to feel bad for asking that specific question.

So I decided to be the better person and not let her feel so shitty. Mostly because making someone feel guilty was kind of a cheap shot. Like Rafaela showing up out of the fucking blue just to make herself feel better.

“He was in a drunk driving accident. He wasn’t the one drinking or driving. The woman who gave birth to me hadn’t even known she was pregnant when he died, so he didn’t know I was on the way either,” I explained, and for once, I realized just how similar in a way my story with Jonah and Mo was to this.

I didn’t like it.

And I was glad, obviously, that it wasn’t tragic too.

Because maybe I hadn’t known Marcus, but Grandpa had always talked about how awesome he’d been. And if he was Grandpa Gus’s son, of course he had been that way. “I know he was my biological dad, but I’ve always thought of him as being like a brother-figure I never got to meet.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Sarah said in a surprisingly gentle and honest voice that I was only partially expecting. “And your mum?”

I had glanced in the rearview mirror to take in the back of Mo’s car seat. Poor little monster. We’d be at the house in five minutes, so I hoped she stayed awake so we wouldn’t have to wake her up all over again. “My biological mom gave her rights up and let my grandpa take me. Supposedly she was only twenty years old and wasn’t ready to have a baby, so she did the right thing. My grandpa and Peter raised me, and I couldn’t have had better parents. It’s always been the three of us. Grandpa Gus didn’t have brothers or sisters, and Peter’s only sister died a while back.”

Memories of the thousands of times they had been there for me had made my heart clench up. The countless hours spent at judo, with one or both of them always there. The family vacations, the weekend trips they had snuck in as much as possible to give me a normal childhood. The infinite amount of unconditional love they had given me, even if sometimes it was tough love. I really couldn’t have had better parents. “They loved me enough for five whole families though, so I was the lucky one.”

There was more silence, and I’d bet my ovary she regretted asking that question too.

Awkward.

And because I had still been feeling pretty gracious and could only imagine what was going through her head as she tried to piece things together, I decided to just wrap up the whole story so she would know.

We were family, after all. Maybe I didn’t like her yet and maybe she didn’t like me yet, and maybe we would never really and truly like each other, but that didn’t change shit. She was here, and she seemed to truly love Jonah in her own way I wasn’t totally feeling, and she was being all about Mo, so….

“My grandpa divorced that lady when Marcus, my dad, was five, and she wasn’t really in their lives after that. She moved somewhere else, and after he turned eighteen, they never saw her again until she showed up at my family’s gym a few weeks ago.”

Jonah was for sure watching me as I drove, but I didn’t dare glance at him.

But in the back seat Sarah made a noise that sounded somewhere in between shock and outrage, and that surprised the fucking shit out of me. “I don’t mean to be intrusive—”

Sure she didn’t.

“—or be rude and make assumptions, but you’re at least in your late twenties, and you have never met your own grandmother until recently?”

“Correct,” I confirmed, trying to figure out where she was going with this. “Today is the second time I’ve ever seen her.”

“I’m sorry for asking about such an upstanding family member. I don’t see how any person could leave their child, or grandchild, their own flesh and blood, like that. I would never be able to do that.”

“Me neither,” I agreed with her, glancing in the rearview mirror again and catching her eyes.

*

Luckily I hadn’t expected that little moment to change anything, because it hadn’t. Thirty minutes later, Sarah had criticized the bottles we were giving Mo and then tried to grill me on what we were feeding her. I started zoning her out ten seconds in.

But I wasn’t bothering with that. I knew we were doing our best and had done a lot of research on everything we used on her and for her. Sarah meant well, and I wasn’t going to get pissed off for her giving a shit about my daughter.

Apparently Jonah was well aware of that because he gave me a playfully exasperated face at me playing dumb by answering my previous question. “The conversation with your granddad’s ex-wife, Len. I want to know you’re okay with it.”

I eyed my stress ball but kept my hand on my lap.

“Not that all right then, I’ll take it,” the man who probably saw and understood too much—obviously since he was bringing it up—claimed easily and carefully.

Opening up my mouth to say that I was all right, I shut it right back. Because I’d be lying if I said I was. He didn’t need to know that I hadn’t even been able to tell Peter or Grandpa about that conversation because I didn’t trust myself to explain it in a reasonable voice. I could tell them anything and everything. Every cell in my body knew that.

But, that… that I hadn’t been able to share. That I had let settle in my chest to pick up and look at while I had stood under the shower that night once everyone had left. Jonah and his mom had bounced after spending all day with me and Mo at the house. Natia had showed up in the afternoon, and I found that I really fucking liked Jonah’s sister. She was cool as shit. Even Luna had showed up with Ava and her husband, and we’d all had dinner together.

It had been the first time that my best friend met Jonah, and the second she’d gotten a chance, she’d elbowed me in the ribs and given me an enormous grin. She’d texted me from home that night and said he was great and even Rip had mentioned liking Jonah. But my favorite message had been:

Luna: And he’s better looking in person, Lenny. WOO.

It had been a nice day that had made me forget all about Rafaela and her bullshit. So it wasn’t until the shower that I’d let myself think about her. Then I’d thrown that moment in the park with my grandmother into the imaginary trash after thinking it over while I’d washed and conditioned my hair.

Until now.

“I just….” My voice came out a little high. “I’m fine.”

The look he gave me was enough for him to not have to verbally call me out on my bullshit. He wanted me to tell him the truth on my own. Fine.

“I am,” I insisted, trying to think about it. “Realistically, I am. If I don’t see her again, I don’t think I would regret it. I don’t think I would even think about it much. Really.”

His face was so patient. “But?”

Was this my second Peter? Another person about to see a loose end sticking up and decide to pull at it gently to see how much came free? “But,” I continued on, not totally wanting to, “I am a little mad about it.” I thought about it. “Maybe more than a little.”

Jonah didn’t make any kind of physical gesture to get me to keep talking, but the way he just looked, straight, his facial expression totally blank, made me keep going.

“It’s been thirty-one years. Longer than that if you want to be technical. The last time she saw my dad was when he was eighteen, seven whole years before I was born. So that’s a whole lot of time.”

He still didn’t say a word, and I could feel my eyelid get twitchy.

But I didn’t touch it. What I did do instead was keep talking. “She didn’t miss out on anything. She gave it up. She didn’t want it, and that’s the difference.” Fuck it, I reached up and gave my neck a scratch with my index finger, just one quick scratch, and I dropped my hand again. “Who the hell cuts their kid off because of something someone else did? How do you just… leave them behind? I’ve been mad over things. I’ve been hurt. But I would never do some shit like that. She didn’t come talk to me because she wanted to. She only did it to make herself feel better for getting caught.”