She Named Their Baby After Her Ex

The lobby was bright and loud. A coffee cart, a gift shop full of balloons that said It's a Boy, families everywhere.

Mark found him in about three seconds.

Jacob Miller was sitting on a bench by the elevators with a blue teddy bear in his lap. Thirty-four, sandy hair, a navy fleece jacket. He looked like he hadn't slept. He looked up, saw Mark walking toward him, and his face went white.

He stood up. The teddy bear fell on the floor.

"Mark," he said. "Man, I..."

"Sit down."

Jacob sat.

Mark didn't sit. He stood over him with his hands in his pockets, because he didn't trust what his hands would do if he took them out.

"How long have you known?"

"She told me in June," Jacob said. "She said the dates lined up. She said she was pretty sure." He swallowed. "She said she was going to leave you after the baby came."

Mark laughed. It wasn't a laugh. "She said that?"

"She said you'd be okay." Jacob looked at the floor. "She said you'd land on your feet. You always do."

"She say anything else?"

Jacob hesitated.

"Say it."

"She said you'd at least have the car."

Mark turned around and walked three steps away. He looked out the glass doors at the parking lot for a long time. A man was helping his wife into a minivan with a baby carrier. The man was laughing.

He came back.

"And you?" Mark said. "What's your plan, Jacob? You gonna move in? Change diapers? Be a dad?"

Jacob opened his mouth. Closed it.

"I'm engaged," he said finally. "Her name's Rachel. The wedding's in April. She doesn't know about any of this."

Mark stared at him.

"So you came here today with a teddy bear," he said slowly, "to meet a kid you're not going to raise, while your fiancée thinks you're at work, and my wife's upstairs planning to leave me for a guy who's marrying somebody else in April."

Jacob didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

"Does Megan know you're engaged?"

Jacob shook his head.

Mark pulled out his phone and opened his notes app. His hands were steady now. That surprised him.

"Here's what's going to happen," he said. "We're doing a DNA test. You, me, and the baby. Today. The hospital lab can do it, I already asked. Results in three days."

"Okay," Jacob said quickly. "Yeah. Okay. That's fair."

"Until those results come back, you don't call her. You don't text her. You don't come up to that room." Mark leaned down a little. "And if he's yours, you're going to tell Rachel. Before the wedding. Or I will."

Jacob nodded. He looked like he was going to be sick.

Mark picked the teddy bear up off the floor, brushed it off, and handed it back to him.

"Take your bear," he said. "He's got one."

They did the swabs that afternoon. A lab tech in a yellow gown rubbed a cotton swab inside the baby's cheek while he screamed his head off, and Mark held his tiny hand the whole time and whispered to him that it was okay, it was okay, it was almost over.

He didn't know yet if he had the right to say that. He said it anyway.

For three days, Mark didn't go home.

He slept in the visitor chair. He changed diapers. He walked the baby up and down the hallway at three in the morning when he wouldn't stop crying, singing the only song he knew all the words to, an old country song about a pickup truck, which was embarrassing. Gloria caught him on the second night and pretended she didn't.

Megan barely talked to him. She kept checking her phone. Jacob wasn't answering her, and Mark could see her trying to figure out why.

"Why are you even still here?" she asked him on the second night. Not mean. Just confused.

Mark looked at the baby asleep on his chest.

"Because somebody's got to be," he said.

On the third morning, Gloria came in with an envelope.

She handed it to Mark, not Megan. She held onto it for one extra second before she let go.

"Whatever's in there," she said quietly, "you were the one walking the hall at three a.m. Don't forget that."

Mark opened the envelope with shaking hands. He unfolded the paper. He found the line at the bottom of the page.

Probability of paternity.