Chapter 2
PART 2
Naomi Brooks was awake when Grant reached the hospital.
That made the room harder to enter.
He had imagined unconsciousness because unconsciousness would have spared him from being seen.
Instead, Naomi sat propped against white pillows with an IV line taped to the back of her hand and a gray hospital blanket pulled over her legs. She was thirty-two now. Her face was narrower than the girl in the photograph, but her eyes were the same.
They found Grant before he found the courage to speak.
Jamal stopped at the doorway.
“I brought him.”
Naomi looked at her son.
Then at Grant.
No surprise crossed her face.
Only exhaustion.
“You threw the egg?” she asked.
Jamal nodded.
“Raw?”
“Yeah.”
Naomi closed her eyes for one beat. “We’re gonna talk about that.”
Grant almost laughed from the sheer ordinary force of it.
He did not.
Naomi looked at him again.
“You still lower yourself when you want people to think you’re listening?”
Grant realized he was standing slightly bent beside the bed.
He straightened.
“I came as soon as he found me.”
“He found you because I finally got too sick to keep pretending you were dead.”
The sentence left no space for defense.
Grant set the photograph on the bedside table, face up.
Naomi looked at it.
Her expression changed.
Not softer.
More guarded.
“Why did you bring that in here?”
“Jamal gave it to me.”
“I gave it to him,” she said. “Not you.”
Grant pulled his hand back.
A physician entered long enough to explain that Naomi’s blood counts and family history required further testing. Grant’s records about their mother could narrow the search. If the diagnosis confirmed what the team suspected, siblings might be evaluated for compatibility.
No promise.
No guarantee.
Only a possible role in a process Naomi had been facing alone.
Grant sent his assistant a message requesting every family medical document from storage.
Naomi watched him.
“You always did like paperwork after the damage.”
“I deserve that.”
“You deserve more than that.”
Jamal sat in the visitor chair, arms crossed.
Grant looked at him and understood that every answer would be remembered by a child who had already learned adults could disappear without dying.
“I should have come back,” Grant said.
Naomi’s lips pressed together.
“You said one year.”
“I know.”
“You called for six months.”
“I know.”
“Then every time I asked Aunt Renee when you were coming, she told me you were busy building a life.”
Grant looked down.
Naomi continued.
“I was seventeen. I thought maybe if I became less difficult, you’d have room for me.”
“Naomi—”
“No. You don’t get to use my name like it’s an apology.”
He stopped.
The room monitor gave a soft electronic pulse.
Jamal’s eyes moved between them.
Naomi breathed carefully before continuing.
“I needed help before this hospital. I needed help finishing school. I needed help when I was pregnant. I needed help when his father left. I needed help when the daycare closed and I worked nights. You were not hard to find because you were poor. You were hard to find because you did not want to be found.”
Grant absorbed each sentence without correcting it.
His phone vibrated.
The office.
He silenced it.
It rang again.
Naomi looked at the screen. “Answer.”
“I can call them later.”
“Answer. I want to hear what wins.”
Grant accepted the call.
The senior partner’s voice was loud enough to carry in the quiet room.
The acquisition team was waiting. The client was furious. Grant had thirty minutes to return or the firm would replace him as lead counsel. Friday’s partnership vote would be reconsidered.
Grant looked at Naomi.
She did not ask him to stay.
That made the choice his.
“I won’t be back tonight,” he said.
A pause.
“Grant, do you understand what you’re doing?”
He looked at the photograph between them.
“For once,” he said, “I think I do.”
He ended the call.
Naomi gave no sign of gratitude.
Good.
Gratitude would have made the moment too cheap.
Later that evening, Grant’s assistant delivered a sealed box from storage. Inside were their mother’s medical records, old insurance forms, and the guardianship order naming Grant temporary custodian after her death.
Naomi saw the order before he could close the folder.
Her face emptied.
“You kept that?”
“I didn’t know it was in there.”
“You kept the paper that said you were responsible for me.”
Grant looked at his own signature.
Temporary guardian: Grant Mercer.
Below it, three months later, another document transferred Naomi to their aunt.
The reason line read: professional relocation and inability to provide stable housing.
Naomi laughed once, without humor.
“Stable housing.”
Grant remembered the apartment the firm had paid for in Manhattan.
Two bedrooms.
One had held boxes for a year.
He had told himself the city was too demanding for a grieving teenager.
The truth was simpler.
He did not want grief living in his home.
The next morning, the hospital confirmed that Grant could enter compatibility testing if Naomi consented.
He signed immediately.
Naomi did not.
The nurse placed the form on the tray table.
Naomi pushed it back.
Grant stared at her.
“You need time?”
“I need you to understand this is not a transaction.”
“It isn’t.”
“You missed a meeting and signed a form. That is exactly how you do transactions.”
Jamal stood near the window, listening.
Naomi tapped the torn photograph.
“You don’t get to give blood and call the promise repaired.”
Grant felt his old instincts rise.
Explain.
Negotiate.
Solve.
He forced them down.
“What do you need from me?”
May you like
Naomi looked at him for a long time.
“The truth,” she said. “In a room where it costs you something.”
