The Blood Test – John Walters

“What?” Up until this moment, Pamela had remained fairly composed, as if she’d heard most of the story before, but this latest revelation was obviously something new. “I never heard about that,” she said.

“I told her that I didn’t want to take a blood test and that I didn’t care who the flesh father was. I said that if I married her I’d be the baby’s father, and test results didn’t make any difference one way or the other.”

“Did you really believe it?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing right then. When I called back for her answer, the first thing she said was that her mother thought I was a hero. Then… She turned me down.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I think it probably had something to do with my personal situation. I had no job, no home. She probably thought I wasn’t fit to take on the responsibility of a family. Or maybe that wasn’t it. She may have been hoping to patch things up with her boyfriend.”

“Did you love her?”

I sighed. “In the sense of romantic love – no, not really. I thought she was physically attractive, and I liked her. I thought that would be enough, and that we’d grow into love. Anyway, I dealt with the disappointment the way I usually did in those days: I left. I wandered off to another part of the world and never communicated with her again. I found a different wife and raised a different family. I thought of her sometimes, and wondered how she was and how you were, but eventually I lost her phone number and forgot her name. I never forgot her though.”

“And here I am.”

“Yes, here you are. I admit: you surprised me. This is completely unexpected.”

“Well,” she said, “I’d like to tell you the rest of the story.”

“All right.”

She hesitated and quietly sipped her drink for a moment before continuing.

“I pieced some of it together while I was growing up,” she said. “Some parts I only learned recently.”

“Such as my involvement, you mean.”

“Yes. When I was young, I thought that the man my mother eventually married was my real father.”

“The boyfriend?”

“No. He did have commitment issues. He disappeared shortly after you did. Then she met someone else. He was a relatively successful businessman and provided the stability that I suppose she needed.” She shook her head. “Though my mother never even hinted that anything was amiss, as soon as I was old enough to discern it, I began to wonder what was wrong. He didn’t act like a father. He was remote, aloof. As I was growing up, he didn’t love me or hate me; he was indifferent. When I was nine or ten years old I flashed on the reason by comparing my birth date with their wedding date. I confronted my mother and she admitted that the man she was married to was not my biological father, but she wouldn’t say more about my real father – only that he’d left.”

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