Chapter 76

Joe’s POV

At school, Joe sat next to William during lunch period. William had seemed really down lately, but he was even worse today, his shoulders slumped and his eyes downcast.

Joe didn’t like seeing his friend sad, so even though Joe was feeling his own unhappy feelings regarding the fight between his mom and Liam, Joe still tried to be there for William. His half-brother.

“When I’m feeling down, I always have a gummy bear.” Joe shared his hoard, passing a couple of his prized gummies to William. “Have some.”

“Thanks,” William said. He ate a few, but that didn’t seem to cheer him up at all.

Joe decided that perhaps a more direct approach would be better.

“William,” he said. When William looked up, Joe asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

William looked away again, but fortunately, he did talk this time. “Something Mom said the other night… She didn’t know I was listening. I don’t know who she was talking to…”

“What did she say?”

William sunk even further into himself. “She said that Liam isn’t my real dad.”

Joe sat up straighter, in surprise. “That can’t be right. He’s your dad, and my dad too.”

“I don’t know,” William said. “He’s said some stuff too… to Mom.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.” William placed both elbows on the table, and then buried his fingers in his hair, hiding his face.

Joe was so confident that Liam was William’s dad that he said, “What if we could prove it?”

William peeked out at Joe from between his fingers. “How?”

“I saw an ad the other day,” Joe said. “This guy and kid. They both put some of their hair in an envelope and mailed it to this place. Then this place told them they were father and son!”

William fully lowered his arms now. “Can we do that?”

“I think so. I can find the ad again.” He’d need an envelope and a stamp. He didn’t remember how much it cost, but if he tucked the twenty dollar bill he got for his birthday into the envelope, that would probably be enough. “We just need one of your hairs.”

Nodding, William immediately plucked one out. When he winced, Joe did too. That looked painful.

William placed the hair on the table and both boys looked at it.

“Now, we need one of Liam’s,” Joe said.

“How are we going to get that?” William asked, frowning again.

Joe didn’t want his friend’s hope to fade back into sadness, so he thought as hard as he could. “Liam lives next door to me now. Maybe…” Joe had imaginings of trying to sneak up and pluck a hair from Liam’s head without him noticing. But if it hurt as much as William showed, then Joe was likely to be caught. “I don’t know.”

“We have to think of something,” William said. “I have to know if he’s my dad or not.”

“Okay. If we work together, we will think of something,” Joe said with more confidence than he felt.

The boys, staring at the hair, continued to think of ways to gain its counterpart.

Liam’s POV

After their tense argument, I did his best to avoid Aria at the office. It wasn’t difficult, as she seemed to have taken the same strategy. While I stayed up in the office, she was down on the track.

By lunchtime, I’d seen her exactly once in the hallway, coming the opposite direction. When she’d spotted me, she did a full about-face and hurried the other direction.

By the end of day, I’d given up leaving the office entirely, for fear of watching her flee from me again.

A knock on the door startled me from my thoughts. “Come in,” I said, half expecting Aria to walk through so we can make up and go back to normal. This avoiding each other and not talking cut me to the bone.

But then I remembered how cold she had been in our argument and I hardened again.

I told himself to feel relief when it was only my assistant who walked through the door. Instead, disappointment flooded through me.

“Sir, we have an issue,” my assistant said. The worry on their face made me push all other concerns aside for the moment. “I just saw a copy of the order form that went out. All of Aria’s usual orders are entirely missing.”

I checked the date and realized it was Monday. God, I’d been so distracted all day. It was only Monday and I was already falling behind.

The orders always went out on Monday, but I had to sign off on everything first. Usually Aria brought hers directly to me here in the office. How could this happen?

Did Aria forget? Or did she change her order somehow? What was she planning on feeding the drivers, if she didn’t need to order anything?

“Contact Aria. Find out if this was expected. If not, ask her where the holdup was,” I said. “Maybe we can get an emergency order in to the supplier before they close for the day.”

“At once,” the assistant said and closed the door.

I always kept a stack of paperwork on the edge of my desk. I flipped through it now, searching for Aria’s order. Had she dropped it off when I hadn’t been looking? But I was in the office all day, so that didn’t seem likely.

Before long, I heard Aria’s voice in the space outside my office door.

“I have the form ready,” she said, panicked. “All Liam had to do was sign it.”

“Did you bring it by?” my assistant asked.

Standing, I moved closer to the door.

“I emailed it first thing this morning,” Aria said.

“Did you mark it as urgent?” my assistant asked.

“Why would I need to?”

Grabbing the door handle, I pulled it open. “Because I get upwards of 500 emails a day,” I said. “Even now, I’ve only gone through a quarter of them. Nights I stay late? This is what I’m doing.”

“Checking emails?” Aria repeated in disbelief.

“Checking emails,” I confirmed. I hold my hand out for the order form. After she passes it over, I moved to the desk and scribbled my signature down. At first glance, it looked much the same as always, and I trusted Aria not to rip the company off, even if she was still mad at me.

“Send this to the supplier right away,” I said to my assistant. “They can call it a favor if they want to. They know I’m good at paying those back.”

“Right away, Sir,” the assistant said. Taking the order form, she rushed to the fax machine.

With the assistant’s back to us, Aria and I exchanged a glance.

“I didn’t realize you had so many emails,” she said softly.

“You didn’t follow up,” I said, equally as softly. It wasn’t like her to let things like this fall through the cracks.

I’d wanted to avoid another confrontation, and maybe another apology, but seeing her so out of sorts…

Well, I was out of sorts too.

This was a simple mistake that we fortunately likely would be able to rectify.

But it could have easily been something more serious.

There was no avoiding it now. For the sake of the entire team, we had to resolve this thing between us, one way or another.

“Aria,” I said. “Step into my office. We need to talk.”