He sat there until the boy's breathing went deep and even. Then he went to check on Lily, who was asleep with the planets book open on her chest, and he took it gently away and turned off the light.
In the kitchen he looked at his list. He drew a line through "DNA clinic Friday" and wrote underneath: "Wait five days."
Waiting had never been his strong suit. He was going to have to learn.
Chapter 9: Ninety-Nine Point Nine Nine
The call came on Friday morning while Michael was pouring coffee, and Rosa's voice on the line was warm in a way that told him the answer before she said it.
"Mr. Rourke? It's Rosa from the clinic. I have your results."
Michael set the coffee pot down. "Go ahead."
"Ninety-nine point nine nine percent probability of paternity."
He thanked her, hung up, and sat down hard on the clinic steps. He had driven there without deciding to, the way you drive to a place your body already knows. The number sat in his head, clean and absolute and final: 99.99. He had expected to feel vindicated. Instead he felt the quiet click of something settling into place, like the last piece of a brief sliding home.
He thought about the fountain, the paper bag, the boy asking the one question. Nine days. His whole life had been rewritten in nine days, and he had not even had time to buy new suits for it.
His phone buzzed. Lily, from Rachel's: "did the test come????"
He typed back: "99.99%. You're a big sister. Officially."
Three dots. Then: "I KNEW IT. Tell Ethan I said he's stuck with us."
Michael smiled, and then he was crying a little, there on the steps, and he didn't bother to hide it because there was no one to perform for.
At the hospital, Claire was sitting up, color better, working a crossword with a pencil stub. She looked up and read his face in one glance.
"Well?" she said.
"Ninety-nine point nine nine."
Her hand stopped moving. She set the crossword aside very carefully, as if it might break, and then her face did what faces do when eight years of held breath finally lets go. She cried without sound, the tears just coming, and Michael sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand while she got through it.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "For all of it. For not telling you. For the fountain. For making an eight-year-old do my brave work for me."
"You did eight years of brave work yourself," Michael said. "This one thing, let me carry it."
"You don't have to carry anything," she said. "But you can stay for the crossword. The pen is broken."
"I'm moderately smart," Michael said, and she laughed through the tears and handed him the pencil stub.
She nodded, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. "Does he know?"
"I'm telling him next. I wanted you to hear it first."
"Go," she said. "He's probably in the family lounge. He likes the vending machine."
Ethan was indeed in the family lounge, studying the vending machine like a general surveying terrain. He saw Michael and straightened.
"Is it today?" he asked. "The results?"
Michael sat down beside him on the plastic bench. "It's today."
Ethan's hands tightened on his knees. "And?"
"Ninety-nine point nine nine percent." Michael turned to face him fully. "Ethan. Listen to me. I'm your dad. The test just wrote it down. It was true at the fountain, it was true before the swab, and it'll be true if every lab on earth burns down tomorrow."
Ethan stared at him. Then his face crumpled, and he launched himself at Michael with the force of eight years of waiting, and Michael caught him and held on, and the boy shook in his arms.
"I knew," Ethan said into his shoulder. "I knew when you crouched down. You have the same eyebrows."
"I have excellent eyebrows," Michael said, his voice thick. "Top percentile."
Ethan laughed through the tears. "Lily said that too. She said it's kind of wild."
They sat there a while. Then Ethan pulled back, wiped his face with his sleeve, and said, "Can I tell Mrs. Figueroa? She said to call when we knew."
"Absolutely. And then we're getting lunch, all three of us, because your sister has declared you stuck with us."
"She texted me already," Ethan said, and showed Michael his phone: a borrowed old one of Claire's, with Lily's message in all caps.
"She types in all caps when she's excited," Michael said. "Which is always."
The afternoon was for Briggs. Michael had put it off all week, but the partnership vote was six weeks out and you didn't disappear on a managing partner.
Walter Briggs's office smelled like leather and old coffee. He listened without interrupting while Michael laid it out: the boy, the test, the surgery, the custody letter from Howard Lindt.
When Michael finished, Briggs leaned back. "You need family leave."
"I need reduced hours through the end of the year. I'll carry my caseload, but I'm not taking anything new until this is stable."
"Michael." Briggs steepled his fingers. "The vote is in six weeks. You know what the others will say. Distracted. Unreliable. Family man."
"I am a family man," Michael said. "I have been one for nine days and I'm already better at it than I was at being anything else."
Briggs studied him. "The Morrison appeal. I was going to hand it to you."
"Hand it to Keller. She's ready."
A long pause. Then Briggs nodded, once. "Take what you need. But Michael, understand the arithmetic. Votes are counted, not felt."
"I understand arithmetic," Michael said. "Lately I do nothing but."
He left the office lighter than he'd entered it. In the elevator he called Jonah Fields.
"It's confirmed," Michael said. "Ninety-nine point nine nine."
"Congratulations, Dad. Twice over."
"Howard Lindt sent a custody letter."