“I don’t know,” I told her. “There’s so much to think about, and I don’t know what the best decision is.”
“You have the DNA test in. Soon enough, you’ll have the results and know for sure if that little girl is your daughter or not. You’re going to have to know what you want to do about it. Now is the perfect time how to decide how you feel and what you would want to do with either outcome,” she told me.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be thinking or feeling.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Since the results are still unknown, you can explore the feelings of both outcomes. Think about how you would feel if it turned out she wasn’t your daughter and Kelly was lying to you. Now decide how you would take those feelings and turn them into your next action. Then think about how it would be if they come back the opposite. If you are a father, how do you feel about that and what do you want to do?”
“That sounds a lot like homework,” I said.
“You have to be serious about this, Darren. Your life is different now, whichever way those tests go,” she told me.
“Yeah,” I said, taking another sip of my coffee. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Either way, everything is changed now. Nothing could ever go back to the way it was, but some things haven’t changed. I feel like a complete imbecile even admitting this to you, but I still want Kelly. Even with the lie, I still think about her, and I want to know how we would be together,” I admitted.
It was a hard thing for me to put into words and say out loud to my mother, but they needed to be said. It was the complete truth. I was more than halfway in love with Kelly and thought I was rushing toward having that other half fulfilled. I’d been holding a torch for her for three years. Now those feelings took on a completely different meaning.
I didn’t expect my mother to understand how I felt, to think it was okay to still want her. But if there was one thing I should never do when it came to my mother, it was to underestimate her. Rather than getting upset or telling me I was being ridiculous, she reached over and took my hand. She squeezed it gently and looked into my eyes.
“Kelly could have a good reason for why she didn’t tell you. You haven’t even given her the chance to talk it out with you. What you really need to do is just talk to each other like adults,” she said.
They were heavy, impactful words, and I spent the rest of the time she was there tumbling them around in my head, trying to unravel them. After she left, I went into my living room and sat down, not wanting to climb back into bed until it was time to sleep. I sat down and tried my best to work out how I was going to handle everything. Of course, I needed to talk to Kelly. Before I could do that though, I had to find a way to let go of the anger. After that I could find out why she did what she did and see if we could salvage anything of our relationship and ever be more than just co-parents.
But, then again, all of it hinged on the DNA results.
30 Kelly
Darren never showed up to work on Monday, and I really wasn’t all that surprised to not see him on Tuesday, either. But Wednesday loomed large in front of me. I knew there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to avoid seeing him that day. It was a race night, which meant even if he was somehow able to get around being in the garage, I would still see him at the track.
Race days were always chaotic and extremely busy. I had only experienced one firsthand, but Vince’s assurance that they were all like that stuck with me, and I was sure he was right. That Wednesday was setting out to be even more out of control than the one before because skipping out on the first two days of the work week meant Darren didn’t have that time to perfect his bike and do the practice rounds he always did to make sure everything was right. Of course, that meant everything he would have done Monday and Tuesday had to be shoved into Wednesday morning.
I wasn’t looking forward to it. Gus and I were fine with each other, and it seemed Quentin and Vince were on board with a distant acceptance of each other, almost like a stalemate. I could live with that for now, but I had a strong feeling the interaction with Darren was going to be a bit different. When he walked into the garage, my heart jumped, and my mouth went dry. It was the first time I’d seen him since he left my apartment, and my response to him was immediate. I would want to say that reaction was purely frustration and even anger, but that wouldn’t be true. I was still strongly attracted to him, and my first instinct as soon as I saw him was to want to jump into his arms. Even if he was the one causing me the pain and upset, it was still him I wanted to look to for comfort and reassurance. It was an unsettling and unpleasant feeling, and I wanted it to go away as soon as possible.
We managed to work throughout the day without directly interacting with each other. We moved around each other and intervened with what the other was doing through other members of the team. Partway through the afternoon, Darren left the garage without giving any indication of where he was going. He was gone
