Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.

“Who is this?” I hear myself ask.

Dominic turns to look at me and he pales, as if he just remembered he’d forgotten to tell me something important.

“This is Ben,” he says, picking the kid off the ground and up into his arms. “Ben, this is Tyson. He’s my… friend. And he’s Bear’s brother.”

Ben turns to look at me with eyes so much like his father that I can barely look at them. He curls his face into Dominic’s neck, trying to hide.

“Hi, Ben,” I say. I look back at Dominic and ask a question I already know the answer to. “Your son?”

Dominic nods.

“How old?”

“Just turned three a couple months ago.”

“You have a kid,” I say stupidly.

“Yeah.”

Ben leans up, grabs Dominic’s head, and pulls it down, whispering in his ear. His gaze darts to me as he speaks to his… father.

Dominic sighs and shakes his head. “Probably not.”

Ben looks disappointed.

“What?” I ask. I’m still not sure if any of this is real. This could quite possibly be a dream.

Dominic shrugged. “Ben wanted to know if you were coming over to his house.”

“No one told me.” That’s the part catching up with me the most now. There was a human being in this world directly connected to my family that I did not know existed. It’s the worst possible thing I could focus on, but I can’t help it. Everyone knew but me.

“I told them not to,” he says. “Don’t you get angry with them.”

He knows me too well. “Why?”

“Why?” he asks. Then he spits my own words back at me. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”

I don’t know what to say.

“I have to get Ben home.” He turns back toward the house. “He eat?” he calls up to Bear. My brother nods, his arms across his chest. “You got the car seat?”

Bear reaches down by the door and picks it up. He walks down the steps and through the gate of the yard. Ben reaches for Bear, and Bear laughs, handing off the car seat to Dominic, trading it for the kid.

“Everything go okay with Anna?” Dominic asks as he fastens the car seat in the back of the cruiser.

Bear nodded. “Everything went fine. He’s been coloring with JJ inside.” He grins at Ben as Ben puts his hands in Bear’s hair. He babbles at him, and it hits me that I used to do that. Bear used to hold me just like that, and I’d tell him everything that ever came into my mind. I’d pull on his hair, and he’d listen and I’d talk. And talk. And talk.

They kept this from me. All of them. Even him.

“That’s Tyson,” Ben says to Bear.

“Oh?” Bear asks. He glances over at me, trying to see what he can see.

“I didn’t tell him,” Dominic says quietly. “There wasn’t time.”

Bear nods tightly. “We have some things to talk about, then, I guess.”