All Chapters of My Brother's Best Friend's Secret Baby: Chapter 281 - Chapter 290

I had made it. But I sat in that chair and felt something precise. It didn't have a name. I had felt it building for years, since that park where she had waved to me before going back to her questions about sharks, since the aquarium in the clinic waiting room where she had told a stranger that he had the same eyes as her and moved on without making a fuss, since those fourteen minutes spent watching the jellyfish in the aquarium, with those sounds that weren't words, since every bedtime, every debate tournament, and every conversation at the kitchen table where she asked questions that were more perceptive than necessary. It wasn't pride, exactly. Pride was too simplistic a word. It implied that she had done something that reflected well on me, when this wasn't about me. It was about her. Who she was, independent of anything I had done. It was more like: I was here for this. Whatever I had done wrong before, I was in that room. I was at the back of a third-grade classroom, s

"That was obviously very well timed," I said. "I know." She took another bite of ice cream. "I was saving it." I looked at Aiden over her head. He was looking at me. His face had that expression he wore when something was both very funny and very big, and he was holding both feelings at once. I glanced at Lucy. The booth was the same. Same table, same window, same view of the same street. And yet nothing was the same. The first time, I had sat on the other side, facing Aiden, with Lucy between us, trying to keep my composure while managing a good fifteen fears at once. The first time, I had ordered something I never tasted, and I had watched him with Alessandro and the vermicelli, looking away when he caught me staring. Now I was sitting in the same booth, the ice cream tasted like caramel, Lucy was in the middle because she wanted to be there, and Aiden was on the other side of her with his coffee ice cream and the expression he wore when he was trying not to be overwhelme

He started the car. We drove most of the way home without speaking. Not the awkward kind of silence. The other kind. The complete silence that came when something had been said and was still being absorbed, when the air in the car was already full of it and words would only add to it. At a red light, he reached over and placed his hand over mine, on my knee. I turned my hand over and held his. The light turned green. He kept driving. I called Jeffery from the apartment while Aiden went to pick up the children from my father's. He answered on the second ring, his voice professional, slightly brisk. "We found out," I said. The briskness faded. "And?" "A girl." He made a sound. I didn't have words to describe it. It wasn't a laugh or a shout, more like the voice of a man receiving information that was exactly right in a way that was difficult to express. He made the sound once, then fell silent for a moment. "Of course," he said. "Of course it is." "You say that li

"I know." He heard it. He noticed the difference. He had known my voice in every register for thirty years. "When did that happen?" he asked. "The interview," I said. "Lucy's school project. She kept telling me all along that I was worth it, and I decided to believe her." A silence. "She's eight." "She's also right." He laughed. A real laugh. The Jeffery kind of laugh, louder than he intended and something he had never quite managed to control. "She's going to terrorize the Naval Academy." "That's the goal." Mara appeared at the car window, clearly having just hung up with her mother, and knocked on the glass. Jeffery pressed the phone against his chest, and I could hear their muffled conversation. Mara said something, Jeffery answered, and Mara's voice took on that particular warmth it had when she was happy. He came back to the phone. "I have to go." "Go. Call me later." "I'll call you from the road." A silence. "Will you tell Aiden?" "Yes." "Tell him I want

"You needed time." "I needed someone to stay," he said. "There's a difference." I was sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee. The morning was quiet around me. From the living room, Alessandro cheered. Down the hall, Lucy turned a page. "I know the difference," I said. "I know you do." He was silent for a moment. "You're going to stand beside me while I marry someone, and you'll be there because I asked you to."That means something." "It means everything," I said. He made a sound that wasn't quite a word. The sound he made when something was too big for the word that was supposed to contain it. "Send me the dates," I said, because we both functioned better when we had a concrete objective to work toward. "I'll send them this week." His voice had returned to that other register, the functional voice, which told me the other part was over and properly filed away. "Will Lucy have an opinion about the wedding?" "Lucy will have very strong opinions about the wedding.