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“I understand.” The next pause seemed to stretch on for ages as I gathered the confidence to ask the question that burned a hole in my heart all these months. Nothing would ever be the same again once I did. “Do you think it’s possible that you’re my father?”

His features seemed to freeze and the words settled. It took a few beats for Jake to gather himself and reanimate, paler now than when we’d started the conversation. I had, in fact, just tossed the grenade of the question his way without warning.

“Um…” His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again, meeting my gaze. “I think it is.”

“Oh.” Where did I go from there? My hands went entirely numb, and the quiet chatter around us faded to the edges of my periphery until it eventually disappeared entirely. “Why didn’t you tell me? I don’t understand why no one did.”

“For one, you had a real good dad. And I wasn’t entirely sure until I was sitting with you here right now, looking into your eyes. Shit.” He sat back, pulled a ballcap out of his back pocket, and gave the worn, blue bill a tight squeeze. “I wanted to ask her, your mom, but she was, well…with your dad, and I had my family, and it felt like a lot to undo. For a whole group of people who seemed real happy.”

“The whole leaving well enough alone mentality.” My ability to think was drifting back.

“I suppose that was it. Things were different thirty years ago than they are now.”

“Thirty-five,” I corrected.

“Then, too.” We shared a short smile, anything to cut the heaviness of the moment.

I took a breath, feeling the need to explain my intentions. I didn’t want the man on his heels thinking he was now expected to leap into my life and make up for lost time. I was realistic enough to know it didn’t exactly work that way. “Hey, I didn’t ask this question to upend your life or to ask for anything from you. I just needed to know the truth.”

“I get it. I’ve always kept my distance out of respect, but wanted more than anything to get to know you some.” Tears appeared in his eyes and he looked away, embarrassed.

I now wished I hadn’t done this with his friends so close by.

“Maybe we could do just a hair of that here and there. I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” I said, caught off guard. I honestly hadn’t expected anything from Jake. “I’d love to hear more about your life sometime. Your time on the force.”

“The good old days.” He smiled. “The life I’ve led is nothing out of the ordinary, but I’d be happy to lay it all out there. And I could, maybe, hear more about yours, too.”

“That’d be great.” I stood, deciding to take this thing in small doses. The few words we’d exchanged left me feeling overwhelmed. My head was spinning and my emotions were firing in a lot of different directions. It was clear to me that I was going to have to manage this new discovery in small doses. There’d been no DNA test. Nothing was certain, and yet it was. Some things in life just came with a gut feeling so powerful, it couldn’t be ignored. I’d just had a conversation with my biological father. I had a living parent, who’d lived and worked just blocks away from me most of my life. When I’d stood in line for pancakes at the firehouse breakfast as an orphaned twelve-year-old, I’d likely had a dad standing in line, too. A brother. How did my brain make sense of any of this? I was excited, invigorated, but also a little bit angry at the decisions that had been made on my behalf.

Donuts in hand, I headed to work in a daze. I went through the motions of my daily list of tasks, taking care not to cut any corners but aware of the fact that I was distracted. I smiled and laughed in all the right spots. I wondered about Kyle and how her afternoon was going, while letting Buster know that two jars of pickles had been dropped and shattered by a customer on aisle four. But I had a father who now knew I knew, and my life was never going to be the same again.

“What if this whole thing starts rumors about my mother? I wouldhate that,” I asked Jonathan, taking my comfort cookies out of the oven. After I’d filled him in on my morning, he’d promptly come over to my place after his dinner date with the new guy, Christian. I’d needed someone to vent to, and Kyle had a shift in the ER until midnight. Plus, did I really want to drag her into the deep end so soon? We’d only just barely gotten off the ground again.

“It might,” he said, locating the milk in the fridge. “But like every other rumor, it will run its short course until it’s replaced with who’s making out with Leon at the Laundromat.”

“More like, who isn’t making out with Leon? He’s such a kissing bandit. I hope I have that kind of game when I’m eighty-three.”

“Right? That man can sneak up on you. Or send the snake up on you, if you know what I mean.” He bounced his eyebrows.

I stared at him. Hard. Arched brow and all.

“Not that I’ve experienced it!” he shouted in horror. “Damn, Sav. I’m not that hard up.”

“I don’t judge,” I said primly.

He studied the warm little comfort cookies, lined up like dutiful soldiers on the sheet pan. “And after ten minutes, nor would the people of the Bay. That’s my point about your lineage scandal.”

“God, I’ve never been a scandal before. Maybe I should try to see it as some sort of badge of honor.”

“You’re racking those up,” he said, popping a piece of the chocolate chunk cookie he’d selected. “First, hard launching you and Kyle in the middle of Ronnie’s and now announcing your bio dad suspicions on a busy weekday at the donut version of town square. My, my. What a week.”

“Well, when you put it that way…” I put three large cookies on my plate, stared, then added a fourth before heading to the couch. Comfort cookies were best enjoyed in generous quantities. Jonathan followed, sporting one arm-crutch today. I knew that meant his pain level was moderate.

“I want you to know, even though all of this may be scary, I’m proud of you, okay?”

I smiled up at him, a small lump emerging in my throat. We didn’t get sentimental too often, living more comfortably in humor, so it mattered when one of us went there.