His Brother Said, "The Baby Is Mine"

She walked to the kitchen counter, opened the drawer where they kept the takeout menus and the batteries, and pulled out a white envelope.

"Two weeks ago," she said. "I knew something was coming. He kept staring at me at church. He kept texting me things like you'll see. So I went to my doctor and asked for a prenatal paternity test. It's just a blood draw. They compare the baby's DNA in my blood to the father's."

Damon stared at her. "To the father's? How did you..."

"Your toothbrush," Jasmine said. "I'm sorry. I didn't want you to know I was scared."

She held out the envelope.

Damon didn't take it.

"I don't need it," he said.

"I know you don't," she said. "I need you to have it anyway. So nobody ever, ever asks again. Not him. Not your mama. Not our son when he's sixteen and finds out his uncle said this."

Damon opened the envelope with shaking hands.

Probability of paternity: 99.99 percent. Alleged father: Damon R. Pierce.

He sat down hard in his chair. He put his face in his hands and cried. Not quietly. Big, heaving, ugly sobs that he'd been holding in since the moment Trey said the baby is not yours.

Jasmine knelt down next to him, awkward with her belly, and put her arms around his head.

"I'm sorry," Damon kept saying. "I'm sorry I looked at you like that. For one second, I'm sorry."

"You looked at the pictures," she said. "Anybody would have. You're here now. That's what counts."

Trey was still standing at the front door.

He'd watched all of it. His face had gone gray. He didn't say anything. There was nothing left to say.

He opened the door and walked out into the dark without closing it behind him.

Their mother didn't believe it at first.

Mama Pierce called Damon the next morning screaming, because Trey had shown up at her house at midnight crying and told her Damon had thrown him out over nothing.

So Damon drove over. He sat down at her kitchen table, the same one he'd done his homework at, and he showed her everything. The cropped pictures. The editing app. The text thread with Rell.

The DNA result.

Mama Pierce read it all with her reading glasses on the end of her nose. Then she took them off and put her hand over her mouth.

"That boy," she whispered. "Lord, that boy."

She looked out the window at the backyard. At the oak tree and the tire swing her husband had hung there thirty years ago.

"He was always trying to be you," she said. "Ever since your daddy died. You got the grades. You got the scholarship. You got the good job. You got a good woman. And he got... me telling him to be more like his brother." She wiped her eyes. "I think I did this too, baby. A little bit."

"You didn't make him lie, Mama."

"No," she said. "But I never made him feel like enough, either."

Trey moved to Houston in March. He didn't say goodbye.

Damon blocked his number. Jasmine never asked him to unblock it.

The baby came in May. Eight pounds, two ounces. A boy with a full head of black curls and Damon's exact frown. They named him Isaac, after Damon's father.

Damon took three months of paternity leave. He turned down a promotion that would've meant more travel. He told his boss, "I already missed enough." He changed every diaper he could get his hands on.

On a Saturday in August, Mama Pierce hosted a Fourth of July cookout a month late, because she said Isaac deserved his first one. The whole family came. Cousins, aunts, neighbors. Smoke from the grill. A bucket of red plastic cups.

Damon stood by the white fence holding his son, with the tire swing moving slowly behind him in the breeze.

That's when he saw a figure at the end of the driveway.

Trey. Skinnier. Hair cut short. A job uniform from a hardware store. He was holding a small blue gift bag, and he wasn't coming any closer.

Jasmine saw him too. She went still.

Mama Pierce put down her spatula.

Damon handed Isaac to his wife and walked down the driveway alone.

The brothers stood face to face for a long time.

"I've been seeing somebody," Trey said finally. "A counselor. In Houston. Every week. She says I should stop saying sorry and start saying what I did." He took a breath. "I lied about your wife. I lied about your son. I tried to break up your family because I was jealous of you my whole life. And I hurt the only person who never gave up on me."

He held out the gift bag.

"It's a onesie. It's stupid. You don't have to keep it."

Damon took the bag. He didn't open it.

"You can't hold him," Damon said. "Not today. Maybe not for a long time."

"I know."

"And you don't come inside."

"I know."

Damon looked at his brother. He looked at the hardware store uniform and the shaking hands and the eyes that, for the first time in a long time, weren't trying to sell him anything.

"But you can stand by the fence," Damon said. "If you want. For a minute."

Trey's face crumpled.

He walked up the driveway, slowly, and stopped at the white fence. He didn't go any further.

Jasmine looked at him over Isaac's head. She didn't smile. But she didn't walk away either.

Damon picked up a red plastic cup and set it on the fence post. He took out his phone.

"Stand over there," he said to his mother. "With Jas and the baby."

They lined up in front of the oak tree. Mama Pierce, Jasmine, little Isaac in his tiny red, white and blue shirt.

Damon held the phone up with both hands. In the corner of the screen, at the very edge, he could see Trey standing at the fence, alone.

He didn't crop him out.

He didn't put him in the middle either.

He just took the picture.

So what do you think? Should Damon ever forgive his brother? Tell us in the comments.