“Heather had her heart set on being a mom, but she didn’t want the complication of a husband. Nor did she like the idea of using a sperm bank. She wanted to make sure she was getting sound genes for her child. She was planning on having one baby, mind you, not two.”
Graham clutched both sides of the doorframe, shaking his head from side to side in denial. It dawned on him that Heather’s aunt was speaking of her niece with sadness as well as disapproval.
“Good God, has something happened to Heather?” he asked.
Lena nodded. “She was on vacation with the man she was dating. They’d gone to Italy. There was a terrible automobile accident. Neither of them survived.”
Even in his state of shock and horror, Graham realized she’d carefully chosen her words so as not to state in the children’s hearing that their mother had died.
“Poor kids,” he murmured. “They’ve been told?”
“Yes. In euphemistic terms. They miss Heather, of course, but they spent most of their waking hours with a daytime nanny. As you can judge for yourself, they’ve been raised without any discipline.”
Graham looked helplessly over at Jennifer, who was now busily pulling out drawers at Angela’s workstation. Justin had stopped banging on the aquarium but had his face pressed against the glass, mouth open and tongue hanging out.
His kids? No way. There had to be some mistake. Please, God, let me wake up and discover this is a bad dream, Graham implored silently.
“Of course, you’ll want some scientific proof,” Lena stated, as though reading his panicky thoughts. “Especially if you were extremely careful and took precautions yourself during your affair with Heather.”
Graham figured his sick expression told its own tale, but he elaborated, “She told me she was on the Pill. And showed me a recent lab report giving her a clean bill of health. She said she’d just taken out a work disability insurance policy that required her to prove she was disease-free.”
“The part about the insurance policy was true.”
“This is straight out of some bad movie! What the devil am I supposed to do?” Graham answered his own question before she could speak. “Naturally, I’ll take financial responsibility. If it turns out I really was the sperm donor,” he added in an undertone, so the children could not hear.
“Frankly, after seeing you face-to-face, I don’t think there’s much doubt. Have you looked closely at Justin? I’ll bet you looked a lot like he does now when you were his age.” She glanced over at her great-nephew, who’d lost interest in the aquarium and was now busy clearing a low table of the magazines neatly arranged on its surface. “For your mother’s sake, I hope you were better behaved. Justin, don’t throw the magazines on the floor! Just turn the pages gently and look at the pictures!”
“Justin,” Graham said sternly.
Surprisingly the little boy raised his head, seeming to focus attention on Graham for the first time. Graham’s heart sank as he gazed into a boyish face that was probably a replica of his own face when he was a youngster of three years and six months.
Once she saw that Justin was engaged in the task of restocking the magazines and was, like his sister, paying the adults in the room no mind, Lena confirmed in a low voice, “See what I mean?” Her tone held sympathy. “I’m really sorry my niece put you in this bind. In her defense, she never intended for you to be any the wiser.”
“What she did was wrong! It was downright immoral.”
“I agree. And I would have informed you against her wishes that you were a father, but Heather convinced me not to. She insisted she wasn’t cheating you by keeping you ignorant. She said she’d made sure in advance that you weren’t one of those men who wanted a family.”
“God…” Graham put both hands up to his head as though he could jump-start his numbed brain to come up with some magic solution. “Before you go, give me your address and phone number. We’ll talk later, maybe tonight. I’ll start sending you monthly checks.”
Her expression had turned pitying again. She glanced at the children, still busily playing, and said, “Graham, I didn’t come here today to get money for child support. I’m quite a well-to-do woman. Also very busy running a large corporation in Jackson. I can’t take on raising Justin and Jennifer. I’m past the age of becoming a mom, and lack the patience. It wouldn’t be fair to them.”
“Who’s going to raise them? Heather’s parents?”
“Obviously Heather never told you much about them or you wouldn’t even suggest the idea. Mildred and Bill—Bill’s my brother—divorced when Heather was three. She shuttled back and forth between them, poor darling. They’re both on their third or fourth marriage now. It’s hard to keep track. I won’t go into the details except to say that Justin and Jennifer would be far better off in a good foster home than with either of their maternal grandparents.”
“A foster home! Isn’t there another relative?”
“Not on Heather’s side. There’s a married cousin, Andy, who’s stable, but he’s currently living in a foreign country.” She raised her eyebrows. “Your parents perhaps?”
Graham immediately rejected that suggestion. “My parents run a hardware store that they own in Picayune, Mississippi. Plus they have their hobbies and interests. No way would I ask them to raise a couple of young kids at their stage in life. My brother is divorced.”
Lena made no reply, but just gazed at him sympathetically. Panic bloomed inside Graham at what she was surely considering as his only option.
“I can’t raise them,” he told her, pointing to himself. “I’m single. And I know nothing about bringing up kids.”
Still she said nothing. The panic strengthened into an emotion more akin to terror.
“I live in a two-bedroom condo and use one of the bedrooms as my home study,” he went on, presenting his case as if it would convince any reasonable person. “There aren’t any children living in the whole complex. It just wouldn’t be a suitable environment. I would be a lousy father.”
“I’m not so sure about that. You might be the best thing that ever happened to Justin and Jennifer and, one would hope, vice versa.”
“Look at Jennifer!” Justin shouted, chortling. Graham had been dimly aware that the little boy had completed his mission of throwing all the copies of Architectural Digest on the floor and had climbed up onto the sofa and was using it like a trampoline, jumping up and down.
“Jennifer, don’t do that!” scolded Lena as she rushed over to Justin’s sister, who’d discovered Angela’s plastic tube of hand cream. The little girl had removed the cap and was holding the tube aloft, upside down, squeezing out a long strand of cream.
The whole scene became surreal for Graham. It was beyond comprehension that he would be expected to deal with these two pint-size vandals. Supporting them financially was one thing, but take them home with him and turn them loose in his condo? “No way,” he murmured in a tone of despair.
Lena wrested the tube from Jennifer’s hands, and Graham braced himself for a howl, but Jennifer seemed satisfied with patting one small patent leather shoe
