Excerpt of His Only Son by Kelsey Roberts

“I got here as soon as I could,” Sam said. “What’s the big emergency?”

Miles Johnson was wearing his lawyer face. That blank, unreadable expression he donned during negotiations. “Have a seat.”

Sam didn’t feel like sitting. Instead, he braced his hands on the back of the leather chair opposite Miles’s mahogany desk. He checked his watch. “I’ve got to pick Kevin up from the sitter in twenty minutes. If this is about the Littlefield merger, I’ve –“

“It’s about Kevin,” Miles said in a soft, even tone.

Sam’s heart skipped. He had feared this moment since the death of his wife eight months earlier. Four of his six brothers had warned him, tried to prepare him for this possibility.

Sam stepped forward and fell into the chair. “You found him? Kevin’s biological father wants him back?”

Miles shook his head. “No. The investigator I hired couldn’t find anything listed on the birth certificate you provided.”

Rubbing the late-day stubble on his chin, Sam tried to decide if that was good news or bad. Bad, probably. Part of him was glad the guy was nowhere to be found. Still, he knew he needed to find Kevin’s birth father to get the waiver. According to Miles, it was the best way to proceed with the adoption.

“So now we do the posting, right?” Sam asked. “Tell me what the notices have to say and, and I’ll get them to the newspapers by the end of the week.”

Miles cleared his throat as he shuffled some pages on his desk. “There’s a problem.”

Sam’s chest seized. “You found a blood relative?” You told me I could still go for the adoption even if you found someone with a biological link to Kevin. You said the courts would take into consideration the fact that Kevin’s lived with me since he was four months old. I’m the only father the kid knows.” Sam opened and closed his fists.

“Kevin’s finally adjusted to Lynn being gone. I’m not going to sit back and let some stranger with the right DNA yank him away from me.”

Miles lifted one hand. “Calm down, Sam. As far as I can tell, Lynn didn’t leave behind any living relatives. That much of her personal history has proven true.”

“What do you mean, ‘that much’?”

Miles slid a piece of paper across the desk. “Lynn was born in Ohio. Her father was killed during a military training exercise before her birth. Her mother died of complications from influenza when Lynn was seventeen.”

“I know all that,” Sam sighed as he briefly scanned the investigator’s report. “The courts emancipated her instead of putting her into the system.”

Miles shook his head. “Not according to Child Services in Ohio. Lynn was placed with a family in Canton.”

“Canton?” Sam repeated, surprised that it didn’t bother him more to discover that his late wife may have lied. “Okay, so she had a foster family. You aren’t suggesting that they have a legitimate claim for Kevin? Forget it.”

“Nothing like that,” Miles assured him. “But they did provide some interesting information. Sam, it isn’t good.”

He took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled slowly. “So tell me.”

“Do you know what endometriosis is?”

Sam shrugged. “Some sort of female thing.”

Miles nodded. “It’s a condition that causes painful scarring internally.”

“She wasn’t in pain when we got married,” Sam said. “So what does this have to do with Kevin?”

“Because of her condition, Lynn had to have surgery when she was with the foster family.”

“She had a scar,” Sam remembered. “She said it was from an appendectomy.”

“It was from an emergency hysterectomy.”

Sam laughed without humor. “How can that be? She didn’t have Kevin until she was thirty-six.”

“No, Sam. She didn’t have Kevin. She couldn’t.”

Sam’s gut knotted as he leveled his gaze on his attorney. “There has to be a mistake.”

“I verified the information with the hospital where the surgery was done. Lynn had a complete hysterectomy just before her eighteenth birthday.”

“So what are you telling me?” Sam demanded.

“Lynn could not have given birth to Kevin.”

Sam blinked as his mind raced. “Then who did?”