Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

Providence, RI

Miles had actually spent quite some time in the back of the limo before working up the courage to go into the diner. Going over in his head what he was going to say. He thought back to when he was in high school, the butterflies he had in his stomach while he worked up the courage to ask a girl to the prom. That, in retrospect, was nothing compared to telling a young woman that she was your biological daughter.

It had taken a little more than two hours to make the drive here from New Haven, and he’d spent much of it in quiet contemplation. His frequent driver, Charise, had noticed.

“Hope you’ll forgive the intrusion, Mr. Cookson,” she’d said, “but you seem a little preoccupied today.”

He had told her more times than he could remember to call him Miles, but Charise was a stickler for protocol. When you drove someone around, you wore a white shirt, jacket, and tie, no matter how warm it got outside. You opened the door for your passengers. You addressed them formally. You didn’t take personal calls in your employer’s presence.

“Yeah, a little preoccupied,” he’d said.

“Would you like the radio on?” Her finger had been ready to bring in the Sirius station of his choice. “Beatles?”

“No, that’s okay,” he’d said. “I’m happy with quiet.”

He had not necessarily meant that she, personally, should zip her lip, but she had almost nothing to say for the rest of the trip.

As per Dorian’s suggestion, Miles was beginning this process with Chloe Swanson. Much was riding on the encounter. If it went well, he’d feel encouraged about getting in touch with the others. If it went badly, well, he might have to rethink everything.

He had settled on a go-slow approach. Head into the Paradise Diner, find a place to sit away from other patrons, order a cup of coffee, hope Chloe Swanson would wait on him, and if she did, engage her in conversation. Get a feel for her before asking if he might speak to her privately.

Heather had found out for him that Chloe would be working the morning shift. She’d called the diner, pretending to be someone who’d lost a credit card. Chloe had been her waitress, Heather said, and maybe she’d found it? Come by in the morning, she was told. Chloe was covering someone else’s shift.

And so here he was.

Miles was going to meet his biological daughter.

He took a deep breath, got out of the car, walked into the diner, and right into a nasty situation between Chloe and some asshole customer.

It was at that moment a hint of the Huntington’s made its presence known. A sudden flash of irritation, anger. He grabbed the ketchup from the next booth over and shot it all over the guy’s face. Like throwing water on a dog in heat.

And then he’d just come out with it.

My name is Miles and I think I’m your dad.

God, talk about smooth.

The look on her face. Stunned, dumbfounded, gobsmacked. Just stood there, staring at him for several seconds before finally saying, “What?”

There was no way to ease into it at that point. The proverbial cat was out of the bag.

He said, “That didn’t come out the way I’d planned. I—”

“Jesus,” she said, now looking at the table, which was covered with rivulets of ketchup that crisscrossed the pancake order. “What a fucking mess.”

“I’m sorry. I saw him grabbing you and—”

“Yeah, you’re a hero. Like I don’t know how to deal with handsy dickheads.”

It was like she hadn’t even heard, or comprehended, what he’d told her.

“Is there someplace we could talk?” he asked her.

She grabbed the cloth tucked into the waistband of her uniform, took a preliminary run at wiping up the ketchup, saw that some of it had hit the vinyl-covered bench, and said, “Shit.”

She took the untouched plate of food and the mug of coffee and walked them over to a nearby station filled with other dirty dishes, Miles following her.

“Did you hear what I said?” he asked.

“Whatever it was, it didn’t make any sense to me,” she said dismissively.

“It’s true.”

Chloe stopped momentarily. “Seriously. Well, I have no dad. Never have.”

She’d grabbed another cloth and went back to wipe down the bench.

“I know,” Miles said quietly. “You have two moms. Gillian and Annette. I’m sorry about Annette. I know you lost her when you were very young.”

Chloe stopped cleaning, turned, and looked at him.

“You’re freaking me out. Who the hell are you?”

He introduced himself again. “Miles. Miles Cookson. I came up today from New Haven.” The words were catching in his throat. “To see you.”

Chloe wavered slightly, as if struck by a spell of dizziness.

“Why don’t you sit,” Miles said, and Chloe slid onto the bench of the booth she’d just wiped down. Miles, awkwardly — one of his legs was slow in getting the message that he wanted to sit down — settled in across from her.

Vivian, the skillet still in her hand but hanging, nonthreateningly, at her side, approached and said to Chloe, “You okay, sweetheart?”

Chloe gave her a dazed look. “Um... is it okay if I take a break?”

Vivian looked at Miles and then Chloe, realized there was something going on, even if she had no idea what it was, and said, “Sure. You need something, just holler.”

“I wouldn’t mind a coffee,” Miles said.

Vivian shot him a look, suggesting she hadn’t been talking to him. “Comin’ right up,” she said and walked off.

Miles smiled at Chloe and said, “She looks like someone you don’t mess with.”

Chloe said, “How do you know about me? How do you know about my moms?”

“I’ve had to do my homework,” Miles said. “Or had people do it for me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you have a hundred questions, and this is all a lot to take in in just a few seconds, but let me start by asking you one. What do you know, what have you been told, about your biological father?”

“Nothing. My mom went to a fertility clinic. Got pregnant. Had me. End of story.”

“You must have wondered.”

She nodded slowly. “I don’t know that I should be telling you this.”

“I understand. If you ask me to leave, I’ll leave. But I hope you won’t. I’m legit. I’m who I say I am. I swear.”

“I did the WhatsMyStory thing.” She paused. “But it didn’t connect me to you.”

“I haven’t sent them my DNA. I could have, but there was no guarantee it would accomplish what I wanted, in the time I have.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’ll come back to that. I got the names of everyone who was implanted with my sperm. Doesn’t matter how. And from there, I was able to learn the names of the issues from those donations.”

“Issues? I’m an issue?”

Miles shrugged. “I still don’t know the language to use.”

Vivian returned with coffee and a handful of tiny, sealed creams. “Everything okay here?” she asked, noticing that Chloe’s eyes were misting.

She grabbed a napkin, dabbed her eyes. “We’re good, Viv.”

“Okay.”

Once she was gone, Chloe asked Miles, “You found all of them?”

Miles nodded.

“How many?”

“Nine.”

“Nine? I thought they could use a sperm bank donation like dozens and dozens of times.”

“In my case, I guess they didn’t. I was a little surprised, too.”

“Nine,” she said, again, more to herself. “I’ve found one of them.”

Miles’s eyebrows went up. “You have?”

“A half brother. Todd Cox.”

“Yeah, that’s one of the names on my list.”

“Do you have it? Can I see it?”