Beneath the Night Tree by Nicole Baart

into our lives, it changed the landscape of everything. Michael, who had been a father figure to Daniel—and Simon, too—would be relegated to merely my boyfriend, a man who had no claim on the boys he had grown to love. And Parker, a virtual stranger, could enter our lives out of the blue and profess the title of birth dad. It wasn’t fair.
    And it certainly wasn’t fair that I had to shoulder this alone.
    I prayed for wisdom, for guidance, but God seemed tight-lipped. Or maybe He was just biding His time, following a schedule that I couldn’t access no matter how earnestly I begged to catch a glimpse of His agenda.
    There was a time in my life when I would have waited. I would have worried, chewed my fingernails down to the quick, and obsessed about what people were thinking of me. But much had changed. I had faced my mother, forgiven her, and lost her again all in a span of a couple months. I had become a mother myself. I had more or less parented my brother through the same heartache I faced as a child—the abandonment of the woman who gave us birth. In some ways, Grandma was right. God was working in me, and I was no longer the sort of girl who just let life happen to her.
    I decided that whether or not it would break my heart, it was time to tell Grandma about Parker. We were a family. We existed, for better or worse, together. And I had failed us by keeping Michael’s proposition to myself. I wouldn’t make the mistake of keeping secrets again.
    My classes at the local tech school began the second week in September, and before I abandoned myself to the dash and scurry of work, family activities, and night class, I carved a couple hours out of my week for some one-on-one Grandma time. Mr. Durst was willing to let my schedule at Value Foods be flexible as long as I got everything done, and after I e-mailed Parker the final detail that had the potential to unleash the unknown—my son’s name—I worked through several lunch breaks so I could leave early on Friday. Grandma and I would have the rare chance to be alone before the boys got home from school.
    Grandma wasn’t expecting me when I pulled into our winding driveway. She looked up from her roost in the garden, where she was plunging a narrow spade into one of our potato hills, and gave me an uncertain wave. I expected her to return to the task at hand while I parked and walked across the browning grass, but instead of thrusting her shovel back into the black soil, she folded her hands over the wooden handle and watched me come.
    “What are you doing home at one?” she called when I was within earshot. “Are you feeling okay?”
    “Fine.” I smiled, hoping that the sentiment reached my eyes.
    “I thought you had to work until four.”
    “I’ve been skipping lunch breaks, putting in some extra hours.”
    She buttoned her lip on one side in an expression that I had learned long ago meant she was skeptical of my actions. More likely, she questioned my motives. “What for?”
    I laughed. “What is this? twenty questions?”
    “Something like that. It’s just unlike you to be home in the middle of the day.”
    “I’d like to talk to you,” I said, skipping the trivialities so that I could get straight to the point. “I want to take you out for lunch.”
    “I already had lunch.”
    “You did not! You rarely have lunch when we’re not home. Maybe an apple or a leftover muffin from breakfast . . .”
    “Fine.” Grandma leaned against the spade with a resigned sigh. I would’ve been bothered by her less-than-enthusiastic reception if it hadn’t been for the sparkle in her eye. “Let’s have lunch. But I don’t want to go out. We have fingerlings.”
    I followed her gaze to the woven basket at her feet and marveled at the modest crop of diminutive potatoes. “I thought we needed to give them a few weeks yet,” I mused, bending to select one of the delicate yellow tubes. It was heavy for its size and crusted with a fine layer of dirt as