And Baby Makes...?

Chapter 32

The New Year dawned cold and snowy. Sam slept in, like any normal teenager, except we had to wake her up for breakfast so her blood sugar wouldn't tank.

She seemed to be in a good mood. She was happy, texting with Jill who had just returned from a family Christmas vacation. The two girls were catching up and every now and then Sam would burst out laughing. Sometimes she'd tell us what Jill had said that made her laugh. Otherwise she just said 'Jill said something funny'.

Josh and I were talking over text or Zoom, or on the phone getting ready for our European tour in February.

When the school semester started back up, Samantha seemed to have put the DNA test out of her mind. She'd had a couple of Zoom calls with Mark and his family, which we sat in on. His family seemed nice and I was praying this wasn't going to blow up in our faces. 

Jake had told us that they had DNA samples from Sam's mom from the crime scene, so they'd be able to compare them. He said he'd also pulled one of Stanley's DNA samples because even he was thinking along those lines.  I hadn't really realized how protective he'd become of Samantha. We kept in touch with him, and we'd met his family as well. Over the Christmas break, we'd gotten together with them for dinner. Sam liked Jake's two sons Asher and Jonathan. They were 6 and 4 and Samantha seemed to draw little kids to her.

Samantha had settled back into the routine of school, homework, chores around the house, playing with her sister and maintaining what was becoming an active social life. She was over at Jills or their friends were at ours almost every weekend.

So it came as some surprise, since we'd put it out of our minds when the envelope from the lab arrived one snowy Friday afternoon at the end of January. Just a week before I was due to leave on tour.

"Do we open it?" I asked Jenna.

"Tyler! No. We wait for Sam!"

"Sa Sa Sa!" Rosie said, banging a spoon on her tray.

"Sam will be home soon, Rosie posey," Jenna said, using Samantha's nickname for her.

We sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and staring at that envelope waiting for the sound of Samantha's key in the door.

She was right on time, as usual. She must have had a good day at school because she came in singing 'High Hopes', and I hate to say it's but I think she sings it better than Brendon.  Don't tell him I said that.

"Good afternoon parental units," she said as she breezed into the kitchen. She went to the fridge and poured herself some milk and took out the bowl of strawberries and a carton of yoghurt.

"Sa Sa!!" Rosie cried, raising her hands for Sam to get her.

"Hello Rosie Posey!" She said, kissing the baby's head. "I just need to have my snack, okay? Then we can play for a little."

I swear, Rosie understands Samantha. She went back to banging her plastic spoon on her tray.  Hmm maybe she'll be a drummer.

"What's going on?" Samantha asked as she slid into a chair at the table. "Are you guys okay?"

"We're fine," I said, picking up the envelope. "This came today."

Samantha looked at the envelope. She didn't take it. She stopped mid pour of her yoghurt on her strawberries.

She gulped. Visibly.

"Did you open it?" She asked.

"No, sweetie," Jenna said. "We waited for you."

She continued to stare at the envelope in my hand. She didn't reach for it.

Instead she turned to her snack and started eating her strawberries in vanilla yoghurt.

"Don't you want to know what it says?" I asked.

She looked at me.

"Yes and no." She said honestly.  "I'm afraid to find out he isn't my mom's brother. Or worse, he's related to Stanley. But I'm also excited to find out if he's mom's brother."

"Makes sense. We don't have to rush into anything," I said. "Finish your snack and we can wait.  How was school?"

Samantha told us about her day, but her eyes kept drifting towards the envelope.

She told us a story about something that had happened in her music class that she thought was funny, and that there would be a talent show in the spring that she was thinking of entering.

Jenna stayed silent the whole time just listening to Samantha, a sad smile on her face. I could just imagine what was going through her mind. She was thinking a lot of what ifs. So was I, if I'm honest.

Samantha seemed to draw out her snack as long as she possibly could. Once she was done, she got up, put her dishes in the dishwasher and came back to the table. She sat down and looked at the envelope lying on the table.

She pulled her sleeves over her hands and sat staring at the envelope.

Finally, she took a deep breath, picked up the envelope and opened it.

She sat staring at the envelope, now open in her hands, but wasn't taking the papers out. Part of me wanted to shout 'just read it already! We've been staring at it for two hours!'  But this was Samantha's results and she had to do it in her own time.

Finally, she pulled the papers out of the envelope and read them. I watched as she read them once, twice, a third time.

Then she stood up quickly.

"Excuse me," she said, and ran upstairs.

She'd left the papers on the table.