Page 87 of Lee

“Yep. I’ll be there.”

“I’ll swing by and pick you up,” Lee said. “So you don’t have to worry about walking to the clinic.”

Lee could see that she was about to decline his offer. Though it went against everything inside him, he didn’t try to convince her to accept his offer.

Finally, she nodded. “That would be helpful. Thank you.”

Lee smiled, happy she’d agreed. “You’re welcome.”

He wished they could spend more time together, but hopefully, she’d agree to come for pizza the next night so they could hang out more. And maybe it was time for him to share how he felt about her. To see if she’d be interested in moving their friendship forward.

Would it make things awkward if she didn’t want that?

Perhaps for a while, but he couldn’t go on not knowing if he was just setting himself up for heartache. It would hurt if she wasn’t interested, but it would hurt even more if he continued to build their friendship up to something in his mind that could never be.

Later that evening, after eating dinner and helping clean up, Lee retreated to his bedroom with Elsa. Checking his email for the first time that day, he was happy to finally see an email from the DNA company indicating that his results were available.

Sitting down at his desk, he opened his laptop and pulled up the website. He’d chosen a company that included medical information, in addition to ancestry details. It was possible that there would be no one related to him who had used the site, so he hoped the medical info would at least be helpful in giving him a glimpse of his genetic makeup.

Once he was signed in, Lee saw right away that he had some relatives. Nerves flared to life, and he hesitated to click the link that would show him who those people were.

This was what he’d wanted, but now that he was so close to getting the information, it was scary. What might he find out?

He’d given some thought to what his birth family might be like. He’d been told he was Hispanic, but he’d wondered if there was more.

Now, that information was within his reach. It felt fortuitous to receive it right when he was wanting to get into a relationship once again. Was it God’s way of letting him know that the timing was right?

Lee took a deep breath, then blew it out. Then, with a slightly trembling hand, he tapped the touch pad to see his relatives. His biological relatives.

The page showed him that he had a lot of relatives. However, only four were close ones. Cousins, by the look of it. He clicked on their names and saw that he shared grandparents with each of them. It looked like three were on one parent’s side and one on the other. So his biological parents had had siblings.

There was an option to message them, but he chose not to.

Instead, he went to the page that revealed the breakdown of his ancestry. It showed that he was forty-three percent Indigenous American from East Central Mexico and forty-six percent British, with a high likely match coming from Northern and Central Scotland. The final eleven percent came from Spain, Portugal, and somewhere unknown.

So while he’d been told he had Hispanic blood, Lee now knew that he had European blood as well. He hadn’t thought a whole lot about how his appearance could be broken down into ethnic groups, but it seemed he carried more than just one in his genes.

Lee decided to look over the medical stuff later, choosing instead to go back to the information about his cousins. He opened a blank email and entered the email address for the private investigator he’d hired.

After typing a few lines about the information he was sending him, Lee cut and pasted the names and locations of the four people listed as the closest of relatives. He could email the people himself, but something told him he should get some background information first.

He knew that sometimes there were shocking reasons why someone’s past might have been kept from others. His thoughts went to his sister-in-law Aria, Gareth’s wife. She hadn’t known anything about her father and had also used a DNA site to see if she had any family out there once her mom had passed away.

In her case, she’d discovered a half brother who was able to tell her the story of how she’d come to be. While that had ended up being a positive experience once she’d met her brother, Lee suspected that wouldn’t be the same for him. His parents’ evasiveness the last time they’d discussed the subject of his biological family had given him a hint at what was to come.

But how bad could it possibly be?

He hoped that whatever he learned didn’t impact his relationship with his parents. If he came to understand why they had been evasive, he might never let them know he knew. Although, if the information he gleaned was that bad, he might not be able to keep his knowledge of it from showing.

Staring at the screen, Lee decided he’d cross that bridge when he got to it. And somehow, he didn’t feel in a hurry to figure everything out. He was closer than ever to getting the information he wanted, and knowing that answers were likely at hand, his impatience had disappeared.

Or was it just that he had other things dominating his thoughts these days?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Was there a better way to start a Friday than by getting a ride to work with Lee?

Maybe there was for other people who didn’t feel about Lee the way she did. But for her, Rori couldn’t think of anything better. She only wished it could have lasted longer. At least she’d get to end her workday by getting another ride with Lee back to the garage.

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