The first time I saw him, I dropped a bag of ice on my daughter’s kitchen floor.
It split open like a bad joke. The cubes skittered under the fridge.
My cousin Mark laughed. “Bruce, you okay?”
I bent down too fast, scooping ice with my bare hands like that would fix the feeling in my chest. My fingers went numb.
Because the reason I’d dropped it wasn’t clumsiness. It was the man standing in the living room like he had every right to be here. He didn’t.
“Bruce, you okay?”
**
He was tall, clean-cut, with an easy smile that I could see on my daughter’s face. He held a drink and laughed with my sister like he belonged in the middle of my family.
She’d warned me that she wanted to find to find him, but I didn’t expect him here.
Then Nancy walked right up beside him and said, “Dad, come here.”
I wiped my hands on my jeans and went, my heart thumping like it already knew.
“This is Jacob.”
He stepped forward before I could breathe. He stretched out his arm, a wide smile on his face.
“Dad, come here.”
“Bruce,” he said like we were already familiar. “It’s really good to finally meet you. Turns out we share a daughter!”
He laughed a little too hard, like he needed the room to accept him before he could breathe. My stomach twisted.
His handshake was firm and practiced, like he’d learned it in a room full of other men trying to sell themselves. I shook anyway. I’ve always believed manners are what you cling to when the ground shifts.
“Nice to meet you,” I managed.
Nancy didn’t react. She just looked between us.
“This is my biological father,” she said. “He wants to rebuild our relationship. That’s why I invited him tonight.”
“Turns out we share a daughter!”
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