Afternoon Thursday, June 5th, 2025

Penny came bursting through the front door, Lyrou behind and happily reminding her, “You have your US history test tomorrow.”

A head full of freshly braided hair and school gossip to disseminate, Penny kicked off her sneakers and ran up the stairs to her room, her legs a blur of bruised shins and purple cartoon character socks not unlike the kind Lyrou wore a lifetime ago. “Yeah, I know! I’m studying with Carla over video call.”

Garin appeared, scooping the car keys from Lyrou’s hand. “Got to go.”

“Where are you going?” Lyrou asked. She’d expected to find him resigned to staying inside for the day.

“With you, come on.” Garin swiftly moved out the front door.

Lyrou followed him. “I’m going to the grocery, though.”

Garin hopped in the driver’s seat. “Alright, and I’ll take you. Get in.”

Lyrou lowered her voice. “I mean I’m going alone.”

Garin overruled. “Get in.”

Lyrou locked up and click-clacked down the driveway to join Garin. “Well. OK.”

On the way, Garin made a sudden right turn. Lyrou corrected him. “Wait. You don’t turn this soon.”

“Detour, a stop at the bookstore,” Garin explained. Parking in the one remaining spot, he asked her, “Follow me in?”

Lyrou didn’t hesitate but a second. “What’re you picking up?”

“I’m not picking anything up.” Garin proceeded into the bookstore; it was unusually packed.

Lyrou looked about on entering; she beheld an inordinate ratio of women-to-men crowded about, and a thronging liturgy of a line to a wide table. “What is going on here? Is there a… oh yes, there is!” She struggled to make out who the visiting author was. “Garin, it’s a book signing. Can you see who it is?” She tugged him by the crook of his elbow.

Garin pretended he needed to stand on his tiptoes to see. He squinted. “Ah, hey, it looks like… like Eve Wright.”

Lyrou gasped. “Eve Wright?!” She slapped his shoulder in mirth.

“Why?” Garin played obtuse.

“Oh magnifique! She’s the author of the vampire novel I just finished. Oh, I should’ve brought my copy if I’d known.” Lyrou slouched, a defeated posture.

“You could’ve gotten it signed. I’ll run back to the house and get it.” Garin did a slow jog to the automatic doors.

Lyrou followed, pulling his arm back as the doors slid open. “No, you don’t have to go back for me.”

Garin stopped and turned. “You’re right.” He produced Lyrou’s copy of her vampire novel from under his jacket.

Lyrou lit up. “M-mon…! You knew she was here today.”

Garin gave Lyrou the book. “Get on line. Hurry.”

Before turning to take her place on line, she kissed him. “Thank you, jogging dad. You’ll wait here?” she asked.

Garin nodded and stood aside, arms crossed. Lyrou began a fan-to-fan conversation on line. They made small talk over the novel, but then she turned to see Garin was busily talking on his phone. He’d taken enough steps away, and she’d proceeded in her line far enough that she could not hear what he was saying over the cacophony of patrons. She couldn’t pay attention to what her fellow fan was saying about the novel, something about visiting the Carpathian setting.

And then Lyrou’s turn to meet the author had come. She quickly smoothed and patted down her thick dark hair, tugged on a couple of hems, then took a breath. Eve Wright was a bespectacled, tiny older woman, frail, with a head of curly, pure white hair. She might stand in for Mrs. Claus: “Hello, what’s your name?”

“Lyrou, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” She leaned a bit over the table, giving the author her hand.

“Lyrou? I’ve never heard it. This is no platitude; it’s fit to steal for a character.” The author leaned in as though she was telling a secret.

Lyrou beamed. “Take it! Please! I swallowed your ‘Citadel of the Accursed’ whole without chewing; you made me loathe Lord Gideon.” She presented her copy.

The author took Lyrou’s copy, opened and signed it. “The prequel is set to release in January. I want you to swallow it whole, also. You’ll understand the sweet and virtuous man Lord Gideon was before he became the immortal monster who drains innocents dry. I regard it as my magnum opus, thus far.”

Lyrou smiled and took her copy back, not opening it to read the signature yet. She took a quick glance to see Garin still talking on his phone, then turned her gaze back to the author. “Thank you, Mrs. Wright. You couldn’t stop me from reading your prequel if you threw holy water at me. How is it titled?”

The author laughed. “Pilgrimage of the Seneschal. By the way, dear, your accent is lovely.”

“I moved here from Paris ages ago.” Lyrou’s mind split to simultaneously enjoy this rarest of moments with a literary celebrity she adored, and to fret painfully over Garin on his phone.

The writer shared more than she did with most who had lined up, come and gone: “Forgive me, I’m far from fluent, but I stayed in Nice for the summer of 1992. Our wide world is the grandest book you’ll read; to remain in one country your whole life is to remain on a single page never turning to the next.”

Eyes wide, Lyrou nodded. “I’ll steal that.”

“Fair!” The one and only Eve Wright sealed their mock deal.

With an exchange of smiles and a humble wave, Lyrou gave way for the next woman on line and made her course through the crowd of readers back to Garin. He saw her as she approached, her smile disappearing as if a mask falling off. She could read his lips that he was telling the other end of the line he needed to go.

“How was she?” Garin stuffed his phone in his pocket.

Lyrou suppressed her agitation. With faux mirth in her tone, she said, “Glorious, Garin. Let’s go home.”

She gave him her signed novel, and he looked inside. “Nice,” he said, congratulating her. She returned a forced smile.

“Yes, alright. We can go, but what about the grocery?” They proceeded for the door.

Back in the car, Garin asked what he had been mulling over on the little walk through the parking lot. “No grocery list, then?”

Lyrou looked forward, out the windshield as customers pushed shopping carts past. “It wasn’t Amina?”

Garin pointed over his shoulder back at the bookstore. “Just now?” Garin shook his head. “Nope.”

Lyrou turned to look at him, to read his face for sincerity. “It wasn’t her?”

“It wasn’t. If it were, I’d tell you,” Garin said, cocking an eyebrow.

Lyrou held her hands before her, clenching her fists. “I wanted that moment for you and me. It was such a grand moment, until I was made to wonder if she…”

Garin pulled out his phone and readied to show it to her. “Disabuse yourself.”

She pushed it away. “I shouldn’t need to see inside your phone. Isn’t that what you said to me?”

“Is this partly nerves? Nexéo?” Garin wondered.

“Nexéo? Why would it be?” Lyrou flashed her temper.

“I’m happy for you; it’s great news. If you say it isn’t stressing you, fine, then it isn’t.” Garin relented.

“It isn’t,” Lyrou murmured.

The couple sat silently. Garin looked at his reflection in the driver’s side mirror ponderously. Lyrou was trying and failing to calm herself with some inner monologue about responsibility, acceptance, and whatever other abstract concepts. It was uncomfortable.

“Your mom must be over the moon; she’ll have you home more often,” Garin suggested.

“Not exactly, but she’s over the moon she’ll have our kids to keep,” Lyrou corrected him.

“Lyrou…” Garin turned to her, placing his hand on her thigh. “Our 15th anniversary is tomorrow. This is a touch early.”

Lyrou kept her gaze down, looking at his hand on her lap, gently massaging her. Then into her field of view came his left hand. His fingers opened, palm up. A tiny egg-white box with a crimson ribbon.

Taking it from him with both hands, she held it tightly to her chest, the corner of it poking a bit painfully as though it could pass miraculously through her sternum and safely into her heart. A hot tear shot down her cheek and dripped into her lap.

Garin gave her knee a quick little shake. “Open it.”

“No.” Lyrou savored it.

“Open it,” Garin implored her.

“Oui.” She obliged.

⚜

Late Evening Thursday, June 5th, 2025

At the vacant Grantwood apartment, Marc had Lyrou face down in bed, flatiron, her legs together between his, and he fucked her with downward drills that bypassed her ass cheeks and landed like bombs on her G-spot. “I’m not the first man you’ve cheated on your husband with, am I?”

Lyrou shook her head in the sheet, partly a negation and partly a pleasure response. “Were you hoping I would run away with you?”

“Are you going to run away with me?” Marc slowed his pace and reduced his penetration depth, a well-practiced measure to prolong things.

“Have you fucked your students since we met?” Lyrou threw an arm behind, playfully slapping his hip.

“Have you fucked your husband since we met?” He kissed her ear.

Lyrou squeezed her hand down between herself and the mattress, finding her labia and feeling his ribbed, slick shaft sliding into her pussy and stretching it, between her spread fingers. “Guess.”

Marc interrupted her, “Have you fucked anyone else since we met?”

Lyrou ran her fingers back farther and felt the slap of his nut-sack against her hams. “Do you prefer younger bitches? Do you need a coed who thinks you know everything in the world?”

Marc slid his hand under her armpit and groped after her tits. His hand was so wide and his fingers so long that as busty as she was, he squeezed them together to pinch and tickle both nipples at once. “Back at you; guess.”

Lyrou raised her ass into him enough to take him deeper. “But you like ruining horny college cunts for their unaware boyfriends back in flyover country? Revenge of a nerd.”

“I thought we were taking turns. Do you want raw honesty, Lyrou? I can give that if you want it?” As she spread her legs, he deftly positioned his knees between hers, and so they’d entered leapfrog position. He had such better ease of access to pound her now that he gave her massive buns a loud spank.

“I can give and take raw honesty.” Lyrou rubbed and strummed her clit, it seemed to have swollen to the size of a baby carrot.

“In that case, I love, love, love face-fucking 18-year-old Midwestern preps, starstruck by their hot Big Apple professor. I’ve had a dozen of my students on their knees under my desk.” Marc’s hand slid over hers, his fingers over hers, learning how she touched her button. “How about you?”

Lyrou let his finger slip between hers, meeting her clit as she guided him. “Younger men? I’ve had a few.”

“Who?” Marc kept up the same digital action her hand taught him.

“A few.” She let her hand fall away, trusting him to stimulate her swollen, sensitive clit.

“The most recent?” Marc felt her vaginal orifice; he could swear it seemed to form a wet vacuum that sucked him in.

Lyrou recalled her last vacation back to Paris. “A sexy Scottish boy, mid-20’s.”

“Was he good?” Marc almost couldn’t believe the slackened ease he felt inside her, or the overflowing of womanly fluid running down his balls.

“The two girls hosting him were better.” Lyrou reared into him, taking control with an awesome pace and throwing her whole body into him; her ass slammed against him, and he received it with amazement.

Marc closed his eyes to imagine Lyrou in a MFFF foursome. “So you like bitches, too. What else do you like?”

“I love, love, love tough guys with muscles, but a mind and money to go with the brawn.” Lyrou was pleasantly surprised that he had already learned how she likes her nub played.

Marc gave her ass another spank. “You’ve had un homme complet like that?”

She endured the sting and allowed herself to briefly remember her favorite lover of all time. “Do you want a woman with a mind and money to go with the tits and ass?”

“I have you. Do you like a long, girthy cock?” Marc looked down at his member and her rapid back-and-forth on it… how it pulled her a bit inside out on the out-stroke, she could slide off so far away and then slide it all back in, she could put his full length away with ease. He plunged!

“I have you.” She gave him his due.

“Oh? What’s the biggest you’ve had?” Marc took her around her waist and pulled her close and tight, getting as deep into her as he could.

Lyrou bit her lip, drooled a touch, shuddered, and shuddered some more… an orgasm that snuck up and seized her. And midway through that wave she told him, with the image of that meaty gourdin clear in her memory, “Too big, on first sight I thought it had to be fake, but it wasn’t. Am I too old for you?”

“We’re about the same age.” Marc pressed Lyrou onto her side to also then lie on his side and fuck her in butterfly. At that vantage, he could see the crown of her head and searched for grey roots, but spotted none. “You’re no grannie.”

“But am I too old for you?” She reached and locked fingers with him.

“I lost my virginity to a woman older than you.” Marc marveled at her curvature, how steeply her hips rose from her mid-waist, and how expansive her rear appeared.

“That was then. Are you still thinking of me taking a monster penis, or is it the bi sisters?” She found his wet, sticky bag on his inner thigh and gently palmed it as he thrust.

“Why are you worried about your age if I never mentioned it?” Marc gave her ass another loud spank, precisely where the others had been, re-reddening the spot.

“I’m a woman. Are you still, still thinking of me taking a freak dick or getting lez-sandwiched?” She reciprocated his spank with a quick twist-reaching slap across his chest.

“Are you worried I can’t be serious about you because I’ve got teenage bops flashing me their panties and down-blousing me in lecture hall every day?” He spanked her ass again.

“Are you worried I can’t leave my husband?” She flicked her wrist into it this time, snapping a stinging slap to his chest.

“Does your husband fuck you good?” Marc was nearing his climax.

“You’re that curious about my husband?” Lyrou asked, with loving recollection in her voice.

“Is it making-love? Is it that romantic nuclear family matrimonial sex?” Marc wrapped his arms around Lyrou and fucked her close.

“Tender, intimate married sex? Been there, done that. What’s new is that he’s angry.” Lyrou reached backward and touched Marc’s face, and he lightly bit her thumb.

“Oh yeah? An angry husband fuck? Angry at you or…?” Marc asked, suck-biting her thumb.

“Maybe he’s angry at his best friend, or his ex-girlfriend, or his new girlfriend. Maybe he’s angry at you or the many men before you. But he can’t be angry at me.” Lyrou pulled her thumb from his mouth and traced his jawline.

“Not at you, but about you, though. How do you fuck him?” Marc began to suck a hickey on her wrist, but she yanked her arm from him.

“Well. But afterward, I’m scared.” Lyrou lay and turned, contorted at the waistline, to kiss Marc.

“Scared of what?” Marc asked, their lips and tongues together.

“Scared I’ll miss him too much.” Lyrou felt Marc’s body seize up as they kissed, and he unloaded his sperm into her. “How are you deriving gratification from this?”

Marc took a moment to come down from his orgasm, but upon regaining himself, he answered, “No woman has been afraid of losing me.”

Lyrou reached and twisted to grope Marc’s ass as he humped his last humps, emptying himself thoroughly into her. “No woman?”

Marc answered between breaths, “None. My mom gave up custody of me to start a new family with her lover. Her professor.”

Lyrou smiled sadly, seized his head, his hair between her fingers, and pulled him in for a final kiss. “You want that for yourself?”

“I do,” Marc admitted. Lyrou raised and observed his white goo seeping out between her pussy lips, a proper cream-pie.

⚜

Friday, June 6th, 2025

For their 15th anniversary, Garin reserved a busy day. Lyrou wore a shoulderless, long-sleeved, midriff-revealing navy-&-white-striped marinière, sockless in navy wedge espadrilles. She also wore the pink-gold earrings Garin had gifted her the night before, sitting together in the car. They grabbed breakfast sandwiches with coffee to go and boarded a ferry. They were treated to wonderful morning views of the skylines on either side, passing with a close view of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, Governors Island, passing under the majestic Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge out onto the wide sea, and then finally disembarking at Rockaway and grabbing a ride-share to Coney Island. There they enjoyed the boardwalk, the amusement rides, and the aquarium with relatively small lines. Their exchanges were light, and they took photos with a selfie stick; at one point, an observing passerby politely offered to take some of them together from a better distance with the historic terminal as their background. It was so normal, but better than normal, and there with countless other unknown couples, and while it would be a stretch to say it recreated their early dating, it just had that genius loci to it also.

Garin threw a French fry in the air, and a seagull swooped in before it could touch the ground. Lyrou was amused. He told her, “I can get one to take a fry off my head.” And he gestured to place a French fry on top.

“Don’t, it’ll pull your hair, and it’s filthy,” she pleaded.

Garin compromised. “Alright, that’d be too much fun. So, you’ll have to hold the fry up and let a gull take it.”

“No.” Lyrou laughed. “That won’t work. Will it?”

“I’ll show you.” Garin took her hand, and she let him, looking away and covering her eyes with her other hand. He placed a fry between her thumb and index finger and raised her hand up high. “Oh, here it comes!”

Lyrou screamed, unable to look. “Oh?!” Garin took her fingers to his lips, eating the fry from them.

“Terrible!” Lyrou laughed through her anger, wiping the trace of his saliva and the lingering sensation of his lips and teeth from her fingers onto his shirt.

They strolled the boardwalk once more, the sun setting, and watched the ocean waves and people out on the sand. Toward the end of it, Lyrou clammed up, and Garin noticed something quite odd for her. He asked, “Still upset about something?”

And she denied it. “No. I’m not.”

A moment later, he asked again, and she denied it. “No.” Her palms were slick against his.

A third time, Garin insisted, “OK, now. What’s wrong?”

Lyrou stopped and pulled her hand away from his. It disappeared down into her purse, and she stood facing him, heels together, like a soldier. Behind her crashed the waves of the Lower New York Bay. The wind blowing her hair over her mouth, she brushed it away with her opposite hand. Her eyes so large, nostrils flaring, he thought she might be about to have some kind of episode.

“Garin…” she said weakly.

“Yes?” Garin was concerned.

“Please.” Almost too quiet to hear.

“Please what?” Garin asked sweetly, alert.

Without notice, and regally, she went down on one knee, head bowed, and pulled a small white box from her purse, presenting it up to him with trembling arms. “Will you open it?”

Garin stepped nearer; he didn’t stop to see if anyone might be spectating here in public. Taking her trembling wrists in his left hand, he opened the box with his opposite hand and pulled from it an engagement ring.

Taking her gently by her elbow, he said, “Stand up.”

She obeyed, coming up into his arms; his hands then clasped behind her lower back. “I didn’t expect that.”

“I want to remarry you. I want a new wedding. I want… I want to be yours. I want it until I die. Will you…?” Lyrou spoke breathlessly.

“Slow down.” Garin worried she’d faint.

With a slow exhale through her lips, she said, “Yes. Slow. Yes. Will you marry me, Garin?” she eagerly implored.

And at that, Garin shoved her away without any warning. It happened so fast, Lyrou blinked, a thunderclap, and it was done. Why? In the seconds it had taken her to propose, Garin had caught sight, looking over her head and past her, through the ring, coming down the boardwalk at great speed, a man on a mono-wheel fighting off a pair of seagulls swooping and plucking at the carton of chicken nuggets he held in one hand, swiping at them with his free hand, and not watching where he was rolling. In shoving her out of the way, Garin had put his body between them and taken the impact. Though Lyrou fell to her hands and knees, Garin and the man tumbled over one another like a rugby tackle. The nuggets flew, the gulls flew, the ring flew, and then those crashing bodies re-erected themselves.

“I’m so fucking sorry, you two,” the mono-wheeler pleaded. “Shit! Are you alright?”

Garin helped Lyrou back up. “Are you hurt?”

Lyrou patted herself off, sand on her palms and clothes. “I’m fine, I think. Are you?”

Garin rubbed the shoulder he took the force of the crash with. “I’ll be alright.”

The stranger did the touch-not-touch of a man at fault. “Are you two sure? Are you not hurt? I’m so fucking sorry.”

Garin held out his empty hands. “Forget about it; help us find her ring.”

Lyrou gasped. “It’s gone?”

The stranger bit his knuckle. “A ring?”

“I dropped it in the bumping, come on look for it.” Garin hunched and scanned the boardwalk, Lyrou also. The clumsy stranger joined in, looking between the boards and between people’s feet as they passed.

“Oh Garin, is it lost?” Lyrou fretted.

“We’ll keep looking,” he said with more hope than he felt.

“I’m looking, guys. I’m looking. What’s it look like?” The stranger tried to make up for his accident.

Lyrou felt a tightness in her guts that the ring was lost so soon. Her eyes scanned and scanned; she thought she saw it and then she didn’t; she made circles within the two men’s circles. “I don’t see it.”

And then when she was on the verge of tears, she felt a little tugging on her wrist. She turned and looked. It was a toddler, a girl in a neon orange one-piece with purple floaties around her arms and waist.

“Hein?” Lyrou knelt beside the child.

The little girl held out her fist and opened it palm up. Lyrou shouted, “Oh! Merci! Wonderful child, merci!”

She stood, and Garin took her in his arms, facing her around. “Your question… your proposal…”

Garin embraced her tight, whispering into her ear, “You ask that fully understanding what I’ll need you to do?”

“Yes.” She buried her face into his chest, the fabric of his shirt.

“It’s over? All of that?” he asked, low and sure.

“Yes. Garin, please, all of it. All of it.” She offered up her sacrifice.

In a dire tone, he asked, “What should I do if that proves untrue?”

“Then you must divorce me,” she answered, dead serious.

“You mean that?” Garin squeezed her tighter.

“Oui. If I fail again, then abandon me.” She wrapped her arms round his back, squeezing too.

“Will you fail again?” His fingers bore softly into her body.

“I don’t know.” As simply put as if she didn’t know the weekend forecast.

Garin took her ring and slid it onto his finger. “To tell me you don’t know is so honest and handily beats any big empty promise that feeding me a certain but empty ‘no’ would’ve been. Heaven grant us our second and last wind.”

At these words, that he’d try with her, her body and face slackened, and if Garin hadn’t been holding her, she would’ve melted onto the boardwalk. Smooshing her cheek lovingly into his chest, she murmured, “My husband.”

When her feet replanted themselves, Garin let go of her waist and showed her his hand, turning the engagement ring on his finger for her to see. She stood silent, looking into his eyes. He looked out on the ocean, taking the ring back off to look at it in the sun. “I’d been thinking if I weren’t overdressed I’d go swimming, but turns out I was getting proposed to today, and for that I’m underdressed.”

Lyrou hugged him once more. “You’re not underdressed. I’ll show you underdressed.”

⚜

Evening Friday, June 6th, 2025

After returning from their Coney Island jaunt, Lyrou and Garin met Alan, Penny, and Penny’s friend Carla in the kitchen. Garin announced, taking off his shoes at the door, “We’re home. Home sweet home. I smell cookies.”

The teen babysitter gathered her bags and phone to take her leave, but not before explaining to Lyrou, “Their homework is totally done. You arrived just in time to take out the batch. I didn’t remember Penny’s vegan thing, sorry, so I made the “wrong” cookies, but she caught me, almost killed me, and we threw in the vegan cookies. So yeah, it’s normal cookies to the left of the pan and vegan cookies that might need a couple more minutes on the right of the pan.”

Tapping on her phone and hitting confirm, Lyrou squeezed the babysitter’s elbow and forearm tenderly. “I sent you your fee. Thank you for taking care of them, Monika. Next time?”

“Yes, check my availability, and I’d be so happy to cover for you again. Have a good night! Bye Penny! Bye Alan! Carla, goodbye!” The babysitter slid out past Garin.

The kids said in unison, “Bye Monika!”

Alan leaned into the counter as Lyrou came and put on an apron and oven mitt. He stole a hug from mom as she popped the oven open. “We knew you’d get here right when they were ready.” The burst of heat caused them both to turn their faces away.

Penny nodded with a soft laugh, eyes bright. “Yeah, we’re so good at that, right? What if we’re psychic?”

Garin palmed Penny’s head and pulled her in for a nuzzling hug. “What number am I thinking?”

She looked up at him. “That’s not psychic… that’s mind reading!”

“If you were psychic, you could look into the future and see what number I’ll tell you I was thinking,” Garin explained.

Lyrou pulled the tray out and placed it on the stovetop. The left, golden brown, perfectly round. On the right, slightly misshapen and a tad underdone, the vegan ones glistening with a subtle difference in texture. “I think both sets are done and fine to eat.”

“Two-thousand-five-hundred-seven!” Penny guessed.

“Ho-lee-sheet-of-paper. Did you say two-thousand-five-hundred aaand seven?” Garin was dazzled.

Carla, eyes wide, asked, “Penny guessed it?”

Alan interjected, “No way.”

Penny excitedly answered, “Yes, I did.”

Garin held his hands out in disbelief. “Correct to the digit.”

Penny laughed. “See!”

Alan grabbed his father’s wrist and pulled, rough-play. “He’s lying to you, Penn. You couldn’t have guessed that…”

Garin poked Alan in the belly quickly; the boy jumped back, tickled, releasing Garin’s wrist. “If you were psychic like your sister, you would have seen that coming. She knew I was going to do that.”

“I did!” Penny affirmed.

Carla giggled. “I believe you.”

Lyrou shot Penny a playful glare before carefully lifting the cookies with a spatula and placing them on plates, piling all of Penny’s vegan cookies onto the one differently colored yellow plate. “Well, these might need half a minute,” she said with a wink. “But we’ll survive.”

Alan slid into the chair next to his sister, his eyes fixated on the cookies. “You’re the best, maman.”

“She doesn’t care if you say maman or just mom,” pedantic Penny scolded him as she invited Carla to sit by her.

Lyrou made a pouting face at them both as she turned toward the refrigerator. “It’s the same to me whether you call me maman or mom.” Lyrou opened the refrigerator and pulled out two jugs: whole milk for everybody else, but almond milk for Penny.

“See, she doesn’t care,” Penny declared in vindication.

“That’s not what I said, Pinny-Pinny,” Lyrou added sweetly. “Are your cookies OK? Should I pick up more for you?”

Alan said nothing, cookies in his mouth. Penny took a bite and spoke anyway, with a thumbs up. “I’ll eat them if you get more.”

Alan swallowed and smirked. “That means they’re gross, but you don’t want me to say I told you so.” He took another bite.

Lyrou pinched Alan’s cheek as he chewed. “Get along. Get along.”

Carla had a cookie in each hand, tasting one from Penny’s plate and one from Alan’s. “They’re not that different… though.”

Lyrou laughed, her heart full as she worked, moving gracefully around the kitchen. She was home, and now she had the courage to unveil what she’d prepared for months upon months… when they were done with their snack. Still, a part of her was worried they’d make fun of it or not like it for some reason.

Without warning, Garin declared, “I am he, Garinnirag!” His circus clown alter ego had taken demonic possession of Garin’s body. He cackled as his voice deepened into a slow, uncanny warped pitch-shift. He began juggling his house shoes, tip-toeing across the dining room, feet and legs splayed menacingly.

Carla looked stunned. “Garinni what? Rag?” But the family had seen his nonsense before.

Lyrou used her hand as a fulcrum on the counter as she walked around and to the opposite side of it. “Will you have any cookies, mon loup?”

“Garin would never, but Garinnirag might wolf up the batch.” He sniffed the air violently.

“I had to hide my Halloween candy from him.” Alan looked over to Carla.

“And Garinnirag smelt it out!” Garin pointed upward in triumph.

“Wash your hands,” Lyrou commanded as she removed her cooking apron and hung it on the oven door handle.

Not missing a juggle, Garin said, “Garinnirag never washes his right hand or his left hand. Garinnirag never washes at all! That is unless someone pays Garinnirag! Cash! Who is like unto Garinnirag? Who is able to make war with him?”

“Dad, that’s super sus.” Penny watched her friend Carla’s pinch-lipped, frightened amusement.

“Trust,” Alan noted.

“How do you do that?” Carla asked, commending his juggling.

“Garinnirag is gifted by the devil with a thousand useless talents!” He whistled a carnival tune while juggling under his legs.

“He did this until I was like 8. Did grandma slip paint chips into your bottle, dad?” Penny poked with a big smile.

Garin was momentarily moved so that Penny would remember grandma, but he kept up the play. “Lead is the acquired taste of gentlemen. In days of yore, lead was a medicine. Garinnirag sought paint chip cookies and by mistake ate up chocolate chip cookies.”

“Garinnirag will eat them the same.” Alan joined in the act.

“Garinnirag can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” He shared the Garinnirag philosophy.

Penny threw her arms over her head, closing her ears, unable to tolerate Garinnirag. “Premedicated assisted cringicide.”

Lyrou had swiftly disappeared to collect the thing she meant to show them. Only Garin really noticed she’d gone, as the kids were fixated on her cookies and his juggling.

Lyrou called from upstairs as she came down, “Close your eyes!”

Alan perked up and asked, “Who? Why?”

As she neared the landing, Lyrou called, “All of you. Because I said to.”

Garin ceased in his juggling and returned to normal, closing his eyes. The three kids followed his example and, without further question, put their cookies down half-eaten and covered their eyes.

Lyrou carried in her hands what at first looked like a heavy slab. She was careful not to trip or drop it as she walked with it into the kitchen. Garin peeked and cleared away a space on the end of the counter, pushing together a plastic jar of cheese pretzels, Alan’s baseball hat with the red jackal on it, and Carla’s pink touch pad with its charger cord hanging out. He helped guide Lyrou’s wide flat surprise down onto the counter surface so that she could be relieved of its weight.

Alan and Carla had their eyes closed; only Penny was watching. Penny asked first, “What’s that thing? That’s your project!”

Standing back a step and opening her hands toward it, Lyrou said, “Garin, close your eyes. Penny, since you already opened your eyes, you can remove the covering. It’s only on there to seal and protect it.”

Garin smiled, looked to the ceiling, and dropped his arms at his side. And closed his eyes. “I won’t look until you say.”

Penny inspected the edges; she picked at the edges of a thin sticky plastic film that covered and concealed the nature of this slab. “Remove this?”

Lyrou smiled. “Peel it off.”

Slowly at first and then quickly, Penny peeled off the covering, revealing the colorful mosaic portrait beneath. She looked it over up and down. “Whoa.”

Alan asked, “Can I look?” Then Carla asked, “How about me?”

Lyrou, nervous but giddy, said, “Yes, everybody look now.”

Garin stood behind Lyrou, beholding her art from over her shoulder. He locked his fingers over her belly. “This is… something special.”

Alan looked it over. “You made this?”

“I made it,” Lyrou said, turning her gaze not to look at her own work as others assessed it.

Carla began touching and feeling the texture of the mosaic. “That’s you, Penny! And your dad, and your brother… and your mom.”

Alan traced the pieces of his face with his finger. “You made it?”

Lyrou nodded. “Is it good?”

Alan nodded. Penny looked more closely at the beautiful and diverse stones that constituted the image. “It must have taken you forever.”

Lyrou shook her head. “There are workshops that post instructional videos online. They can make this in a week. But I learned as I did it, so it took some time.”

Garin was last to begin feeling the comforting texture of the mosaic. “This is a marvelous representation of our family. I love it.”

Alan seconded, “I think it’s great!”

Penny hurried to add, “It’s like… made out of gems. It’s cool, mom.”

Carla also said, “It’s way better than a picture… like a regular picture.”

Lyrou read the tone in their voices and their expressions; their approval was genuine. She let out a relieved and happy exhale. “Hooou. OK. Then I’m glad.” She turned and found her purse on the counter and then pulled a notepad from it.

Alan watched. “What’s that?”

Lyrou exhaled. “Oh…” Then she exhaled again. “I made an English poem.”

Penny clapped. “I got the poem guidebook! Can you read your poem?”

Garin nodded. “Please, read it.”

Lyrou exhaled a third time, and a fourth:

My Gold-Few

At end, in Heaven a hundred trillion stars will have burned out cold there,

a hundred trillion lives will have breathed this same air on this old sphere.

How strange then these words to mine ear,

that I too will know my last year.

My flame extinguished and done the same as one sun you gave my namesake to, Lyr.

My name undistinguished except by that which my womb doth make and bear.

To feel that then causes mine eye to tear.

Oh! From creation to oblivion, all told I swear,

no matter what you see or what you hear,

that these decades with you my gold-few here…

are worth more to me than our Author can hold dear.

Lyrou folded the cover back down over her notepad. “C’est la vérité.”

Penny, having sat quiet, now blurted, “It sounds so pretty!” but then whispered to Alan, “Can you tell me what it means?”

Alan nodded. “I think I can. I like the part about creation and oblivion, maman.”

Garin gave Lyrou a kiss on her cheek; he spoke an unknowable thing into her ear and stroked her arm, then turned to the kids. “Where should we put the mosaic, Alan?”

Alan stopped to think. “On the… um…”

Penny answered instead, “Over the fireplace, with all of our other pictures!”

Garin nodded. “Alan and I will hoist it over the mantle tomorrow. It’s heavy; we’ll need to secure it up there.”

The kids examined it more closely, the variety of stone pieces used and the details of the image itself, as they finished their plates of cookies.

⚜

Night Friday, June 6th, 2025

Alone together in their dimly lit room, the bathroom door opened and out slid Lyrou, exposed in a three-piece black negligée, her breasts and butt pouring out. Arms tight at her sides, hands out to balance, she tiptoed nimbly into bed and pulled the comforter over herself and next to Garin.

Pulling the comforter over his head, Garin cried, “Garinnirag is sus! Ravaging is his one-thousandth talent taught to him by the dark prince. Trust!” Garin dove under the blankets and crawled beneath, grabbing at Lyrou’s armpits. “Succulent pits!”

“No! Lyrou is a strong kicker!” she squealed. She retracted her feet under her butt and stiffened her arms tight to her sides.

“Garinnirag’s front tail wags like a doggie-dog!” he announced.

That she couldn’t see what he was doing under the blanket filled her with fun alarm, and she dropped the ball of her wrist down frantically trying to stop him as he rabidly pinched her legs and arms. “No!”

“Agh!” Garin cried out and went still.

Lyrou threw the blanket half off the bed. “Oh? Did I hurt you? Where?”

Garin stared about the bedroom, dazed. “Babe, what’s going on? My face hurts, and I feel dehydrated. What happened? How did we get into bed?” Garin came to.

Lyrou played along. “I’m so happy you came just in time! Garinnirag was here, and he must’ve run away when you showed up. He was going to give me grapes.”

“That bastard! And with my dick! I won’t rest until I catch that crunchy pit-sniffing clown. I’ll put my boot in his ass, which is my ass too, but I hate him enough to do it anyway!”

Shaking her hands and clucking her tongue, Lyrou warned, “Sadomasochistic. Garinnirag is rubbing off on you; you might become he whom you despise.”

“Would you love me more if I did?” Garin asked.

“I don’t know, I kind of like it when the Jester of Jersey sniffs my pits,” Lyrou teased, presenting her left pit, arm raised, to Garin.

“If feet are a fool’s funky fetish, dear wife, pits are a pauper prole’s predilection. As a man at the top, at bottom I’m about the bottom. But some of Garinnirag’s foolishness has rubbed off on me.” Garin sniffed, pressing his nose to Lyrou’s clenched-shut armpit, and she strained not to pull away, biting her thumb to endure the tickling sensation.

Garin’s cock had popped out, protruding from the front hole of his briefs, causing her to snortle as she beheld it, and with her opposite hand she swiped at it, running the tip of her thumb along his corpora cavernosa, solidly ribbed and veiny. “I need it,” she whispered.

Garin lay forward, a hand on each inner thigh, parted her legs, and mouthed her crotch through her panties. “What could you need this for?”

“To feel you,” Lyrou said softly.

“Isn’t it enough to look?” Garin grumbled low.

“The more I look, the more I need to touch,” Lyrou whispered.

“But we should wait until our wedding night to consummate,” Garin said, running his fingertip along her belly, the slight cleft of her abdomen.

“Impossible. It would drive me crazy,” she objected.

“Why?” He kissed her shoulder.

“I need to take the car on a test ride before I buy it, to know that it’s good under the hood.” She gave a man’s metaphor.

Garin scoffed. “Do you have wheels on the brain? Maybe you would like a new car instead of a new wedding.”

“I need my wedding,” she pleaded seductively, looking again at his hand at the ring she’d given him.

“Maybe a new house,” Garin asked, putting her hair behind her ear.

“My house is perfect; I want my wedding,” she demanded coolly.

“Six months?” Garin wondered.

“So that everyone can come.” She closed her eyes, envisioning a cathedral suited for the purpose.

“Can I invite anybody?” Garin tested.

“Who would you invite?” She opened her eyes.

“A divorced woman you could throw a bouquet to.” His meaning was clear, as was that he didn’t mean-it-mean-it.

“No.” Lyrou dismissed the idea in a syllable.

“Why not?” Garin pretended not to know.

“I’ll be red with jealousy.” Lyrou gave him confirmation of what he’d won from her.

“What about this guy I met?” Garin began to remove her top.

“Who?” Lyrou implored.

“He can be our wedding photographer. Click-click-click,” Garin said into her ear.

“Obscene, Garin. I’d be red with shame.” Lyrou drew her line, confirming for Garin that she’d have lines.

“Then I’ll walk you down the aisle and marry you in front of people who think they know us. Like your maman.” He felt up her breasts, handling as much of them as he could palm.

“Yes. Let them think they know us.” She raised forward to kiss him, tongues locking.

“I love you.” Garin pulled her panties aside by one finger and penetrated her. Garin lowered onto her into a coital alignment technique; pubic pad pressed firmly to her clitoris as he rocked up and down, bed creaking.

“It’s making me… cum. Already? Oh? I can’t… hold… it!” She locked her fingers together in his.

Garin withdrew and eagerly pressed his mouth to her groin, flicking her clit with the underside of his tongue, his lingual frenulum a taut harp cord of pleasure. Her whole core spasmed and she whimpered musically as she released gushing feminine squirt onto his face, into his mouth, and he guzzled after her flavor.

And then he re-entered her with his engorged, cream-coated, red cock, stretch-fucking a spent and satisfied woman until he too, too soon, reached his climax. A hand around her waist and his opposite hand around her neck, controlling her, he squeezed and gripped, winced with effort, and dumped himself totally, achingly, grunting into her sensually-sore pussy.

⚜

Noon Monday, June 9th, 2025

Garin had texted and called Joseph once or twice a day for three days with no response, uncharacteristic. Garin didn’t ask her, but he surmised that Lyrou had gotten him, and that Joseph was since then finding himself not in form to speak to the man he supposed was his victim. Yet, Garin grasped, he was the one person who must talk to Joseph. He took off work early, drove to Bayonne, and stopped by Joseph’s place on a hunch he might also have taken off. Through the chain-link gate and up onto the porch, he rang the doorbell and waited with no answer. He knocked loudly, tapped on the window. “Joseph, I need to check on you.”

He stood and waited quietly, but for the chirping of birds and the whish of neighborhood traffic this way and that. He stood with his back to the door, then took out his phone to text, “Leave me standing out here looking like a dumbass?”

There was still no response. Garin saw a babushka walking her fat beagle heading into the house next door; he called out to her, “Ma’am? Ma’am!”

She stopped and squinted at him. “Yeah?”

“Is he home?” Garin pointed a thumb at the door.

“He staggered in after midnight. Haven’t seen him come out.” The baba led her dog up her porch as it yapped at him.

“Thanks,” Garin said.

Before she might make it to her watching-window to nosily play witness to him, Garin bolted around to Joseph’s tall wooden fence and pulled himself up and over it to the other side. He hurried to the backdoor and found it dead-bolted. The window, though, was open with a cheap square cooling fan in it. He called inside, “J-o-ey!” The fan oscillated his voice.

With no response, Garin lifted and pulled the fan out of the window and, limb-by-head-by-limb, allowed himself into Joseph’s kitchen. He saw the trash bin filled up with beer cans. Coming to the living room, he found Joseph on the floor, passed out belly up, mouth hanging open. Garin swiftly knelt beside him. “Hey! Joseph!” Garin gave him a hard tap on the face. Joseph woke, his face turning red and choking. Unable to speak, Joseph heaved and from red turned a deep red, then almost purple. He keeled over, coughing and hacking, putrid lumps of yellow and brown flying out onto his floor. Garin slapped his back. “You got it?” The two stared at each other while Joseph gathered himself off the floor, pulling himself up onto his couch.

“Nasty.” Garin stepped into the kitchen, squirted dish soap in his palm, and gave his hands a good hot scrub, calling back into the living room, “Breathe, my guy.”

Joseph sat, disgusted by the sight of his mess. Garin stepped into the living room only to turn back into the kitchen, then returned again but with a polystyrene-foam cup of water. Joseph drank, swishing his mouth. Garin went and returned with a mop bucket placed next to him to spit back out into, and so he did.

“You’re gross.” Garin stood, hands on his waist, exhaling out his nostrils.

“I know.” Joseph looked up at him and staggered up onto his couch.

“What’re you doing?” Garin took a seat on the edge of Joseph’s recliner chair.

“Too much.” Joseph rested his head in his palms. “Why did you come over?” Joseph brought himself to really look into Garin’s eyes, but nearly couldn’t.

“You’re not answering my calls or texts.” Garin clasped his hands together.

Joseph nodded. “Yeah.”

“Yeah what?” Garin leaned forward.

Joseph cleared his throat. “Garin, I should tell you something.”

“Sure. Tell me.” Garin, of course, knew what Joseph wanted to divulge.

Joseph put effort into standing. He pointed at his couch, dropped his hand at his side, then raised it again, pointing in at himself. “Garin…” he said, breathing through his teeth.

“Make the words, out with it.” Garin encouraged him.

Joseph stood pondering, hand over his mouth, and then without warning began to stomp at the couch, his big foot eliciting thuds and cracks with each drop. “Shit!”

Garin raised his hands, gesturing for Joseph to stop, but not about to handle him. “Easy.”

Joseph desisted, turned and faced Garin. “Look, alright. This is what I needed to say. You… have befriended a man undeserving of your soles. And… and…” Suddenly and violently, he stomped his hardest yet, pressing the couch back across the floor.

“Hey, you two should take it outside.” Garin delivered.

Joseph ignored him; his words didn’t even register. The sight of him so idiotic got on Garin’s last nerve, and for once he shouted, “Stupid fucker, stop! Stop, you dumb bastard!”

Joseph froze; it disarmed him. “Huh? Oh?”

“I needed to say that.” Garin regained his composure.

“I needed to hear that,” Joey said.

Garin raised his hands as a referee would. “Joseph, stop. Listen. I know,” Garin said as if he was really the one clearing his chest.

Joseph felt the blood pooling in his organs. “What do you know?”

Garin spoke with his hands. “Lyrou. She told me.”

Joseph’s face went pale, recoiling in dishonor, mouth agape. “She told you?”

“She did. She told me,” Garin said, shrugging.

Joseph processed this, and his heart sank. Tears welled up; he looked around his apartment and balked in trepidation that Garin would lose much because of him. “I ruined your marriage. Lord have mercy, I ruined your… I ruined it.”

“No.” Garin shook his head.

“I ruined your life. I’m sorry. I ruined your family.” Joseph’s face turned sallow, as he might vomit again; he squirmed under the tonnage of his disgrace on him. “I don’t know what to say or what to do. Hell.”

Garin threw his hand to the air in dismissal. “I want you to get cleaned up, out of this dark, damp domicile; we’ll go out, keep it light.” Garin proposed to refresh themselves.

Joseph stood silent for a moment. Garin stood impatiently. “Come on. Shower. Shower.”

Joey looked at Garin like he was speaking an alien language. “Shower?”

Garin enunciated it slowly, “For. Now. Show-er.”

Joseph stood up straight. “Alright.”

And while Joseph cleaned himself up in the bathroom, Garin picked up his place, shoving crusted-over dishes into the dishwasher, throwing strewn-about clothes into the washer, and tossing empty his bin of beer cans into the recycling just out back.

Reappearing fresh but in his deadened eyes, Joseph asked in a muted voice, “Where to?”

The two walked down the block and around the corner, past a bodega and into a gyros spot for sodas with pitas. Nearly a half hour later, Garin’s half of the pitas was in his stomach. Joseph’s remaining few were cold, and if not for Garin prompting him to eat, they might’ve been untouched in his paper tray.

“You didn’t want them?” Garin gestured at Joseph’s food.

“What?” Joseph was lost in his thoughts, mind fried.

“Or your drink?” Garin poked.

“My drink?” Joseph was numb.

Still, Garin was anything but numb. “Do you have anything more to say?”

“I… I have a thousand things to say, and I don’t know what to say.” Joseph was honest.

“About yourself?” Garin wondered.

“I hope to never see her again.” It was a muffled, pitiful excuse of a promise, childlike. “Why did she choose me?” Joseph looked Garin in the eye for once.

“She wanted to show me that my friend is no more loyal to and honest with me than she is.” Garin reflected, looking Joseph back in the eye.

“Garin, I was going to tell you, I couldn’t talk to you again without telling you. I needed time to… decide how I was going to tell you. I mean that,” Joseph said, again mealy-mouthed and with Potemkin words, simple sounds maybe Joseph believed in, but Garin knew better.

“There is a chasm between what one wants to do and what one wants-to-want to do.” Garin twisted his ring around his finger.

Joseph looked to Garin’s ring finger. “You’re wearing the ring she gave you.”

“I wouldn’t forsake it,” Garin confirmed.

Wide-eyed at Garin’s ready response, Joseph put his face down into his folded arms, his lumbering body spanning his side of the table, a pensive hangover.

“Have you asked yourself why she does it?” Joseph asked, looking about the empty tables.

Garin nodded. “Yeah. But I don’t know.”

“You didn’t need to lower yourself because she did. You made your millstone into your touchstone,” Joseph said with sad disillusionment.

Garin took a sip from his straw. “It was not in contumacy that Adam deigned to eat the forbidden fruit, once Eve confessed to him that she’d done it first. It was so that when she’d soon be damned to exile and death, he could go with her. Though he was afraid and he knew not good & evil, he knew his paradise was not eternal idyllic life in the bountiful garden with his benevolent creator, but suffering beside her, sinning beside her, dying beside her, defying a god to be like a god beside her; his true paradise was beside her.”

“I can’t malign another’s mote when I have a beam in my eye.” Joseph sat up.

With that, Garin looked around the empty gyros shack, put a cash tip on the table, stood, and gave Joseph’s worn cross trainer a light kick. “We’ll take a walk.”

The pair walked the sidewalk, passing by several brownstones. Garin reminded Joseph, wistful, “We were stoop shorties plugging together our handhelds, swapping cartridges.”

Joseph nodded. “Yeah… we were.”

They came to an outdoor basketball court, entered the chain links, and sat together on the bench. They watched six young guys, 3 shirtless and 3 shirted high schoolers just out for the day and with their backpacks thrown aside into a pile, playing a hard game. They shouted and cursed, slammed into one another, and kept in constant motion. After taking a shot and making it, they all went for their water, hydrated and cooled off. Two of the shirtless players grabbed their bags up, bumped fists with the others, and left together. The remaining shirtless boy strolled up to Garin and Joseph. “I’m down two guys. Fill in?”

“For sure.” Garin stood, took his shirt off inside out, and slapped it over the bench. “I’m Garin, he’s Joseph.”

Joseph knew not to slug now, however fuzzy he was. He stood, pulling his shirt off his big frame, and joined the game. “What’s the tally up on the board?”

A Boricua teen with a chinstrap beard and an Edgar cut said, “We’re down two-five. I’m Fabian. That’s Angel, Fedir, and Minjae.”

Garin started the quarter getting the ball checked back to him, and he made an instant overhand pass to Fabian, the quick flick of his wrist giving it an artful trajectory. A lanky shirt pursued Fabian as he tried to press in for the basket; he slingshot around Joseph using his big wall-body block, peeling off the long-limbed defensive opposition. Another shirt tried to reach and grab at Fabian but was trick-shot; very nice, but for missing the layup. Garin went for the rebound, but the shirt that had been on him like glue was a step closer and hustled it to half-court. The shirt tried to fake a pass, but Garin didn’t fall for it and intercepted the real pass. Having recovered the ball for the skins, Garin wound his way to half-court and then back to the hoop, feinting a shot from the three-point line. He bounce-passed the ball under the legs of a defending shirt to Joseph, and Joseph, with shirt resistance arriving too late, put it clean into the net. “Whoosh! Yo, you see that?”

The game went on like this for just over a half-hour, all playing breathless and covered in sweat. There on the court, nobody cared about any woman. Joseph rode the revitalizing adrenaline of a two-pointer. Garin kept up his speed and agility to the end, to his positive self-appraisal. They and the boys called it a tie. Fabian fist-bumped them. “Good game, uncs!”

⚜

Morning Tuesday, June 10th, 2025

In the parking garage downtown, turning the engine off and ready to step out, his phone notification jingled. Opening it, he saw that he had a voice message, and expecting it to be Lindz, he played it on speaker. “Garin, hi. This is Reine. Lyrou told me, congratulations. She invited me. I never said sorry to you. I want to tell you that I am sorry. I did know, and I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think it was my place, and I was afraid of what would come and of holding the blame for it. But I didn’t think about you and your right to know, or I did, but I didn’t put you first. I regret that. I want to be welcome at your wedding with Philip and Elena, but if you don’t want me there, then I’ll completely understand. Yes, Lyrou invited me, but you’re important too, and going forward I’m going to treat you with your proper importance. Have a good day, Garin.”

Garin chuckled; he hadn’t given Reine much thought at all. She had known, hadn’t she? Oh, whatever, was she supposed to have snitched?

There was in Garin’s office safe something more precious to him than his wedding ring. It was a pair of unopened envelopes. He kept them there and on the ride up the elevator thought about opening them each day. He’d always decided before the elevator reached his floor, and he’d always decided no. Those envelopes had been in there waiting, and he might’ve never opened them. But going up the elevator this morning, he slapped his palms tight and said to himself, “Let’s do it, shall we? Penny’s birthday was yesterday, so this won’t mar that day for you. Yes? Let’s do it, Garin.”

He passed by a number of cubicles, greeting those present, key in his hand. Allowing himself into his office, he didn’t turn on his light and switched off the motion-activated light the moment it came on. He locked his office door back and made straight for the safe.

He froze there a minute, then hurriedly peeled out a sheet and plucked up a pen, writing thus:

“If it should be determined that either your son, Alan, or your daughter, Penny, are not your biological issue, you hereby;

-vow to and agree with yourself not to inform either Alan or Penny of this reality before the day after Penny’s 18th birthday;

-vow to and agree with yourself to continue regarding yourself and conducting yourself as their true and only father, usque ad mortem.”

Signing and dating it, he gave it one more read and placed it aside.

Opening his safe, pulling out the pair of envelopes, and then sitting in his chair, he tapped their corners on his desk, tore one end off each, then dumped the contents; two separately stapled pairs of sheets folded up as twins birthed into the dark world of his office. He took one at random, spying Penny’s name near the top. Penny will go first, then. Garin waved the paper as though it had caught a flame and he was flapping it out. Sitting back, he turned his gaze, opened it, and prepared himself. In his heart he said to himself, “You’re mine,” and summoned the willpower to look. His eyes danced over the page, having expected the result to read more boldly, but it took a second of reading over the clutter of details on the page for him to find it... surely, there! ‘Probability of Paternity: 99.99%.’ In the shadow of his office, Garin embraced the paper, crunching it to his chest, as though it were Penny herself there.

Garin gave himself a moment. He’d long ago decided that if he were to do this, it’d be in his office first thing so that if the results were bad, he couldn’t act rashly. He would put in a day of work, perhaps having learned the worst, before saying or doing anything that could make it worse. He thought about Penny; he was surer that she was his because of their shared physical appearance. Alan too, but in his case those resemblances could be in the eye of the beholder. And so then, Alan. Garin took Alan’s results in hand; he thought to himself, “You’re mine, too, my son.”

Knowing where to look this time, Garin’s eyes landed instantly on the result: ‘Probability of Paternity: 99.99%.’ Taking the paper to his lips and kissing it, his body filled with endorphins and his mind with memories of his children. What else did you expect, Garin? How could you not be their father? Fool!

⚜