Caroline scrunched up her face. “Yeah. She’s pretty vanilla. So what, then?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” I said. “So, a few weeks ago, I was in the store, and I said something about getting my artistic talent from my father and Jack said, ‘No. You definitely got that from your mother.’ ”
Caroline opened Jack’s refrigerator, removing a Smart- Water and handing me one too. “So what? He was complimenting Mom.”
“We just eat out of Jack’s fridge now too?” I asked.
“Why not?” Caroline said. “At the rate things are moving between them, I think it’s safe to say he’s our almost-daddy.” Then she dropped her water on the floor, her hand frozen in midair. “You think Jack said that because he’s our sperm donor and he knows he doesn’t have any artistic talent?”
She leaned over and picked up the bottle, not even the slightest bend in her knees. I was so envious. I could barely touch my shins.
“I mean, it’s kind of a stretch.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just wondering.”
“And she didn’t want to date him.” Caroline nodded her head furiously. Then she swallowed and said, “And you overheard her telling him she had so much to lose if they were together?”
“We are a lot to lose,” I said. My head was spinning now. I felt totally sure Caroline was going to talk me out of this and tell me I was insane. Then I could put this out of my mind as a series of odd coincidences. But now that Caroline thought what I thought . . . My mind was racing. What did this mean?
“Do you honestly think he’s our father?”
She walked into the living room, where all the furniture was covered with sheets and pushed to the center of the room. “Let’s get this moved.”
“Oh, right,” I said. Then I added, “How would we feel about it?”
“I feel kind of weird,” Caroline said. “Although strangely better than if my father was a random test tube, which is how I’ve always imagined it. How do you feel?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re just trying to come to terms with Mom dating again, a new man being in her life, so we’re projecting all these feelings onto him?”
I nodded, gesturing to a large secretary that had to be moved, thankful it was on sliders. Caroline obviously didn’t know that because as I started sliding, she started lifting. Three drawers rushed out of their slots and crashed onto the floor, their contents dispersing wildly throughout the room. “Nice,” I said. “One priceless antique, totally ruined.”
Caroline pulled the sheet off and said, “This thing made it over on a ship from England like two hundred years ago. Surely it can take a little bump.”
I knelt down to pick up the drawers and stopped cold. Heat rose through my body. Caroline wasn’t moving either. She was flipping through a stack of pictures in her hand.
But when she looked up at me and what I had in my hands, she gasped.
She handed me the pictures, and I handed her the bag. Tears sprung to my eyes, but I wasn’t sure why. The pictures were of us. Caroline and me and then Caroline, Emerson, and me. Each had the date on the back in Mom’s handwriting.
“They could be Christmas card pictures?” I said hesitantly, knowing they weren’t Christmas card pictures. “Maybe he’s really organized about them?”
She opened the pink bag that had our monograms on it and handed me a fairy stone. I looked up at my sister and I thought of Grandpop and his words of encouragement to us that day. “I guess he needed them more than we did,” I whispered.
The door slammed shut, and Caroline and I got the photos and stones put away just as Jack appeared in the doorway. As if he were reading our energy, Jack seemed flustered. “Everything OK?” he asked.
I looked at Caroline, and she looked at me, but neither of us said a word. I could feel the heat in my face and my racing heart. Could Jack be our father? I couldn’t ask. The look on Caroline’s face told me she couldn’t either.
I looked at her again, helplessly, urging her without words to take control like she always did. I could sense Jack was about to say something when I heard, from the backyard, “Sloane! Caroline! Come quick!”
I wasn’t sure I could make my feet move, but when Caroline grabbed my hand, I did.
“Do you think?” I asked her when we were back outside in the yard.
She shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know. Let’s not read too much into this, OK?”
All these years I had wondered who my biological father was, but now that the truth was potentially right in front of me, I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.
As we reached the front porch, I looked out over the sparkling water, the sun setting hot and vibrant, warming our little patch of earth.
Emerson looked as if she were about to burst wide open as she called, “Mom! Hurry up! Get out here.”
I looked at Caroline again, and I wondered if we had done the wrong thing in walking away, if we should have stayed and learned the truth.
But maybe it didn’t matter. What would it change, really?
I wondered again if we should have asked Jack about our suspicions. I felt in my heart that he wouldn’t lie to us. I felt in my heart that we were connected more deeply than our brief encounters would allow. And I had to admit that connection, that voice in my head that recognized that I relied on and trusted Jack far more than was reasonable, was something I had been ignoring for a long time.
Caroline squeezed my hand, and I wondered if she felt that with Jack too. I squeezed back, but I didn’t say a thing.
And I realized when it comes to matters of the heart, when it comes to love, no matter what form that takes, sometimes there really are no words.
