Janice Johnson - Finding Her Dad

He could feel the foster mother watching him. He didn’t let himself look at her.

“What makes you think I’m your father?” he said finally.

“I compared DNA in a whole bunch of databases. I came up with a partial match. To a Linda Brenner. Then I did some research and found out she had one son, who was the right age.”

“Me,” he said slowly.

Her head bobbed.

His mother had become obsessed with tracing her family heritage, lord knows why. He did vaguely recall she’d sent off a DNA sample at one point. Jon had argued against it; once something like that was out there, you lost a piece of your privacy. She’d laughed and said, “What do I have to hide? The only people I’m likely to hear from are relatives. Imagine finding cousins I didn’t know I had.”

Imagine, he thought grimly, finding a granddaughter you didn’t know you had.

He cursed. Lucia Malone gave him a reproving look.

“You did this on a whim,” he said to the girl.

Her teeth closed on her lower lip again. Her eyes slid from his, then came shyly back. “It was after Mom died that I thought…” She gave a little shrug. Her shoulders stayed slightly hunched after that, as if she were braced for a blow.

When she didn’t say any more, he did look at Ms. Malone. “She doesn’t have any other family?”

“An uncle in New Mexico.” Her voice was repressive. “He wasn’t able to take Sierra.”

Jon couldn’t remember the last time he’d been staggered like this. He didn’t know what to think. There was supposed to be no way he could ever be traced. DNA testing had been around, but in its relative infancy. The idea of partial matches, of people casually sending off spit so they could track down unknown relatives, had been unimaginable.

No longer.

He made himself study the girl and immediately thought, hell. Her eyes were the same color as his, an unusually crystalline, pale blue. Her hair…well, who knew? No, that wasn’t true. Her eyebrows were light brown. Which meant she was likely a blonde. He’d been blond as a kid, but by his twenties his hair had darkened to a medium brown that bleached easily in the sun. This summer, between work and politicking he hadn’t gotten outside enough for that to happen.

He was tall—six foot three. His sister was five-ten. Fine boned like this girl, too. The nose and Cupid-doll mouth weren’t his, but the shape of her face…yeah, she could have gotten that from him.

Desperately he wondered what the voters would think of this. Was there any way to keep Rinnert from finding out about Sierra? He had a horrifying vision of what his opponent could make of the stunning appearance of an unknown daughter.

“Do you have any proof at all,” he said, his voice harder than he intended, “or did you pick me out of the phone book?”

Lucia Malone let go of her foster daughter’s hand—he hadn’t noticed until now that she’d continued to hold it in silent reassurance—to pluck a file folder from her capacious bag. She glared at him as she handed it over.

He opened it and took a quick glance, barely keeping himself from swearing aloud again. He’d seen enough DNA typing on the job to know he was screwed.

He closed the folder. “I’ll need to study this.”

Ms. Malone’s eyes narrowed. “You did donate sperm, didn’t you? Or you’d have kicked us out by now.”

His jaw muscles flexed. “I don’t have to answer that question.”

They stared at each other, her expression angry and contemptuous. At last she stood.

“Sierra, I think it’s time we go.” Her voice was astonishingly gentle, considering the way she was vibrating with outrage. “We’ve put Captain Brenner on the spot. I think it’s fair to give him time to think.”

“Oh.” The girl scrambled to her feet. Her cheeks were flaming red. “Yeah. Sure.” She didn’t want to meet his eyes anymore. “My phone number’s in there if you want…. But if you don’t, that’s okay. I really didn’t mean…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I didn’t mean…”

Oh, hell, she was going to cry. He almost groaned.

But she pulled herself together and looked at him with sudden dignity that gave him an odd, burning sensation beneath his breastbone. “Thank you for your time, Captain Brenner. I’m sorry if this felt like I was attacking you or something. I promise I won’t tell anyone.” Then she inclined her head, as regal as a princess, and walked beside her foster mother to his door. She carried herself proudly, and he felt like scum.

“Sierra.” His voice emerged rough.

She paused without turning. Ms. Malone did.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

The lips that had spoken so softly to the girl tightened. Ms. Malone nodded, and the two of them left, carefully closing the office door behind them.

He didn’t move; just stood there, stunned, and saw his chances of becoming sheriff implode. And knew he was a son of a bitch to even let that cross his mind after looking into the eyes of a girl tossed into the foster-care system because she had no family who wanted her—a girl, he had no doubt, who was his daughter.

JON DIDN’T KNOW how he got through the day. He had several other appointments, and had to attend a potluck dinner at a seniors’ center and then, later in the evening, a volunteer fair at a community center. The brief talks he gave to the seniors and the volunteers came by rote, for which he was grateful. He was getting good at running for office, which these days seemed to matter more than whether he’d be an effective sheriff. He could tell his tough-on-crime stance went over better with the old folks than it did with the activist kinds at the fair. They were inclined to be softhearted. He found their suspicion of him ironic, considering his core belief was that every person should take responsibility for his or her own actions. He believed in a kind of morality that was very personal. Wasn’t it that same sense of morality, a need to take responsibility, that had driven all of them to give of their precious time to some cause?

The whole time he talked, listened, smiled, shook hands, he felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience. He would have sworn he was standing outside himself watching critically.

Knowing the guy he watched was a hypocrite.

He argued for a morality that should govern every choice a person made, a sense of responsibility that wouldn’t let you look away when it was convenient to do so.

Responsibility. Now, that was funny, coming from a man who’d sold his sperm. Who might have a whole bunch of unacknowledged kids out there. Kids who were deeply wanted, he’d told himself back when he was twenty-one and saw the sperm donation as a quick and easy way to bring in bucks. He was doing the world a favor. After all, he was healthy, smart, athletic; he carried no genetic booby traps of which he was aware. What was wrong with helping women have babies, if their husbands were sterile or they’d chosen to go the single-parent route?

He’d returned to the clinic two or three times, hating the sordid feel of the process itself. But he’d been working as many hours as he could and still keep his grades up, and yet struggled to pay his tuition and rent and buy food and books. He’d been damned if he would take a cent from his father. He would do anything not to have to surrender his pride enough to ask for help from his parents.

He worked his butt off. And, when necessary, he’d sell sperm, and he’d sell blood. He had done both.

Personal responsibility wasn’t the strong suit of twenty-one-year-old boys. He’d been blithe enough about jacking off and handing over the tube of milky liquid, until one day he was waiting for a bus near a medical clinic. A pregnant woman came out and sat on the bench near him. He remembered looking at her sidelong. He didn’t know how pregnant she was. She was round, but not waddling. Five or six months, maybe. No husband with her. He’d wondered a little disapprovingly why not. A pregnant woman shouldn’t have to wait for the bus. What if it was full and she had to stand? Or she got jostled and bumped hard against the sharp edge of the seats? There were punks who hassled lone women on buses. And then he’d thought, Oh, my God. She might not have a husband, or a boyfriend. She could be pregnant with my baby.