Given the sudden appearance of the teenager sitting across from him, that plan had just been blown out of the water. “I think we can safely classify this as extra-weird, yes.” He took a moment to look Zach over, more carefully this time. The boy’s hair was a lighter brown than his, but when it came to the eyes he could’ve been looking in a mirror. “How did you find me?” A thought suddenly occurred to him. “Don’t tell me Noah sent you.”
“No,” Zach said quickly. “He and my mom don’t even know I’m here. My dad . . . doesn’t like to talk about you.”
Glad to hear it’s mutual. “Then how did you figure out who I am?”
“He told me once, a long time ago,” Zach said. “I was four years old, and we were watching your Rose Bowl game. It’s the first time I can remember watching a game with my dad. He was cheering and shouting at the TV, and in the last play, when you threw that awesome pass and won the game, he grabbed me and did this stupid little dance around the coffee table.”
Zach had been smiling at the memory, but then his expression turned serious. “Then everyone realized you were hurt, and the sportscasters were talking about how you’d taken a bad hit and it could be a broken shoulder. I remember that the entire stadium was on their feet, clapping for you as the coach and trainer helped you off the field. And I looked over at my dad, and there were tears in his eyes. It was the first time I’d seen my dad cry, so I asked him if he was sad because the man on TV had gotten hurt. And then he turned to me and said, ‘That man is your brother, Zach.’”
Cade stared at him, just . . . unable to understand any of that. The kid might as well have walked into his office and told him that he was a time traveler from the future who’d been sent to save the planet from evil cyborgs, it was that surreal. He had one memory of Noah Garrity, and it ended with Noah walking out of his life for good. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same Noah Garrity? From Hoffman Estates, dropped out of Conant High School?”
Zach seemed surprised by this. “He never told me he’d dropped out. I just knew that he’d played wide receiver and was some big star in high school.” He switched gears, finishing his story. “I don’t think he meant to tell me you were his son, because anytime I asked about you after that, he would change the subject. But it stuck with me, the fact that I had a brother out there. I always wondered what you might be like, and, you know, whether we might get along and stuff. Then I saw your name in the papers last week with the Senator Sanderson case, and I . . . guess I just wanted to finally meet you.”
Cade ran his hand through his hair.
He had a brother.
Since Noah had written him off, Cade had never allowed himself to speculate about the rest of the Garrity family—especially since none of them had ever reached out to him.
Until now, apparently.
“Are there any more of you? Any siblings, I mean?” he asked.
Zach shook his head. “Nah. It’s just me.”
“What are you looking for, Zach? From me.” Cade hoped the words didn’t sound callous; he was just trying to wrap his mind around all this and be as direct as possible.
Zach shrugged. “Look, I get that I’m basically this total stranger to you, but I don’t know . . . maybe we could grab a burger sometime or whatever. Just hang out.”
Cade saw the eagerness in Zach’s eyes, a look he understood. Because twenty-three years ago, he’d felt the exact same thing, and had put himself out there for a near stranger, just as Zach was doing now.
He didn’t know jack squat about being a brother. And, no doubt, he was wholly unprepared to have suddenly acquired one at 3:45 on a Friday afternoon. But he did know one thing.
He would not do to this kid what Noah Garrity had once done to him.
So he nodded. “I’d like that, Zach.”
* * *
AFTER ZACH LEFT, Cade shut his office door and took a seat at his desk. The two of them had agreed to meet for lunch the following weekend at DMK Burger Bar. Cade had only one condition, and it was non-negotiable.
“Noah can’t be there,” he’d said. “I don’t care what you do or don’t tell him about the fact that you came to see me. That’s your business with him. But he is not a part of this.”
Zach had seemed a little surprised by his vehemence, but he’d nodded nevertheless. “Yeah. Sure. No problem.”
Cade didn’t know what it meant that Noah had been crying over his Rose Bowl game, and he didn’t care. He was a lawyer; he dealt with facts. And in this case, there was one irrefutable fact, the only one that mattered: Noah Garrity hadn’t bothered to contact him in twenty-three years. He wasn’t a part of Cade’s life, and never would be.
Cade knew enough of the story, although it had taken him years as a kid to piece it together. Noah Garrity got his mother, Christine Morgan, pregnant during their last semester of high school. Christine’s parents had remained surprisingly levelheaded that their homecoming queen daughter was going to have a baby; Noah, on the other hand, had freaked out. His older brother had flunked out of Illinois State University and decided to move to California with a buddy to open a landscaping business. When they asked Noah to join them, he packed his bags for the sunny west coast, and broke up with Christine by leaving a note in her school locker. Don’t hate me, babe. I’m just not ready to be someone’s father.
Luckily for Cade, Christine realized that—ready or not—the arrival of a baby, one she’d decided to keep, meant that somebody needed to act responsibly. She finished high school and enrolled in the local community college. Cade, never one to cause his mother too much trouble, conveniently arrived during winter break, allowing Christine—with her mother as a babysitter—to resume classes by February. After two years, she received her associate’s degree and transferred, with Cade, to Northern Illinois University where she earned a nursing degree.