Probability says this shouldn't be happening. You don't find out you have a twelve-year-old son through a PI report at thirty-four. You don't get on a private jet the same day and fly to Denver. You don't stand on a stranger's doorstep that isn't really a stranger's at all. Probability, Tom thinks, twirling rental car keys around his finger, has never accounted for the specific ways his life tends to implode.

The house is aggressively suburban. Beige siding. Dying Japanese maple. A wooden sign by the door that probably says something insufferable like "Blessed." This is where she lives. Where she's been living, apparently, while raising his son.

His son.

Twelve years old. August 14, 2013. Three months after graduation, which means she'd been pregnant during finals, during that last screaming match outside the Quad when she'd told him he was incapable of caring about anyone but himself. Pregnant while he'd walked away to build an empire in San Francisco, convinced he'd made the clean break, the rational choice.

The PI's report had been thorough. Owen Brassey. She'd given the kid his last name but never filed for support, never contacted him, never left any digital breadcrumb that would've pinged his admittedly paranoid monitoring systems. Twelve years of radio silence.

Tom presses the doorbell. It makes a sound like a small bird dying. He can hear movement inside, a kid yelling something, then her voice—Christ, her voice—calling back "I'm coming, hold on!"

His heart shouldn't be beating this hard. Not for a suburban doorstep on a Thursday afternoon.

The social media photos had shown someone older but fundamentally unchanged. Same soft face, same eyes that had always seen through him with unnerving accuracy. Would she look the same in person? More tired? Would she still wear those leggings she'd lived in, still smell like that coconut shampoo he'd spent senior year trying to forget?

The door handle turns.

Tom straightens instinctively, the way he does before congressional testimonies. His hand stills on the keys. He's prepared seventeen different opening lines. Professional. Casual. Accusatory. Every possible angle.

The door opens.

There she is.

Twelve years collapse. She's wearing leggings and an oversized Stanford sweatshirt—their Stanford—and her hair is in a ponytail. No makeup. Exhausted and beautiful and exactly like he remembers and nothing like he remembers all at once.

Her eyes go wide. Her mouth opens. Color drains from her face.

For three seconds, neither of them speaks.

All seventeen prepared lines evaporate. What comes out is: "You kept him."

Her face does something complicated. Shock bleeds into anger, then something else, finally settling into exhausted resignation.

"Tom," she says, and his name in her mouth is archaeological. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Behind her, deeper in the house: "Mom? Who is it?"

Tom's eyes don't leave hers. "I think we need to talk."