The Dissolution

The Dissolution.

As my wife's coffin was lowered into the ground I prepared myself for what I had planned to do.

Turning to my Father I handed him the restraining order. Then I turned to my Mother. "You disgust me," I vehemently told her, before handing my two children an envelope with their new birth certificates. That was the hardest part, but I knew it had to be done.

Putting my hand in my pocket I gripped the stone I'd been practising with. Taking my hand out of my pocket I smashed my hand right into my brother's face, hoping to destroy his nose and knock his teeth out. Stepping back, I kicked him as hard as I could in his crotch. If anyone was looking they would have seen that I was wearing my substantial walking boots.

Then I removed my wedding ring and tossed it onto my wife's coffin. Turning away from the grave I walked quickly to the car that had brought me and my children to their mother's funeral. As instructed, the driver had already opened the door for me and had the engine running. The car was already moving when I shut the door and sat back, my heart pounding and my body shaking.

Why had I behaved like that at my wife's funeral? To explain that I would have to go back nearly a year when cancer started to kill her.

Soon after my wife was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, the hospital wanted to take blood samples from my Son and Daughter to check if they had any indicators of the possibility of developing the same or similar cancer. I was also asked to give a swab.

A week after the tests my children and I were invited back to Doctor Heston's office. After telling us that neither of my children had any symptoms of having a similar cancer as their mother and discussing her prognoses, Doctor Heston asked me to have a private word.

Even though Doctor Heston had asked me to stay he seemed to be hesitant before talking to me. "Did you ask for a DNA test, Stephen?" he asked,

"No," I replied, not liking the way he was looking at me.

"Are your children adopted?" he asked after a few moments.

"No, definitely not," I replied sharply.

He then took a paper out of the folder on his desk and slid it across his desk. "By law, I have to disclose this to you, Professor Morton and I know I won't have to interpret it for you."

My field of teaching and research at Cambridge is human biology, so understanding a DNA report is part of my job. This report clearly indicated that neither of my children was sired by me. What the report also showed was that they were sired by someone in my family and, apart from my father and a much younger cousin the only other member of my family capable of siring my children at the time of their inception was my elder brother, Graham.

When I eventually looked up, Doctor Heston was staring at me. "I am assuming you didn't know?"

"No, Doctor, I didn't know."

"What are you going to do about the care of your wife?" he asked while looking quite worried.

My wife, what am I going to do about my wife. Nothing, apart from being perhaps a little indifferent toward her. "I'm not going to do anything to change the care for my wife," I told him. "I think the pain from her cancer and knowing she is dying will be punishment enough for her."

"Will you tell your children?" he asked after a moment's silence.

When he asked that I was surprised at how clear I was about telling Carol and Ronald. "When I confirm who he is I'll tell them after their mother dies."

Doctor Heston nodded in agreement.

When I joined Carol and Ronald they wanted to know what Dr Heston and I had talked about. "Just some personal things I need to know about your mother's care," I told them.

As I drove home my mind was still trying to absorb the implications of the DNA results. I know what I was thinking on the spur of the moment, but as I drove other, darker thoughts were coming into my head. I knew there was only one person who could be the children's father, my brother. As a scientist, like any hypothesis, I just had to prove it.

The first thing I had to do was get a sample of my brother's DNA. He was always around my house, especially when he knew Carol or Ronald were there, so his DNA was everywhere and finding a good fresh sample was easy. I gave the job of extracting his DNA to one of my undergraduates. The result was what I had expected.

I had to continue letting Carol and Ronald think I was their father. I felt they had enough changing in their lives watching their mother dying. I also had to continue behaving normally around my wife and my brother.

I also had to find out who else in my family knew that my brother was Carol and Ronald's father.

I discounted my cousin, he was just too young. I thought I knew my father well enough to doubt if he knew. He'd never, to my knowledge said or done anything to make me think otherwise.

That left my mother.

My brother, Gordon was a handsome man and a very successful lawyer. He had never married and that had always surprised me. Whenever we were having a pint and I mentioned it he always said that he was married to his job.

He did however dote on his niece and nephew, always giving them expensive birthday and Christmas presents. For the last seven years, every year since Carol was ten and Ronald was eight he has taken them on a week's holiday with my wife and their grandmother. Now I thought about those holidays, were they used as an opportunity for my wife to renew her relationship with my brother.

I'd never questioned anyone about them, taking the opportunity to spend the week fishing in the lake district or Scotland with my father. Other things about my mother and my brother also came to mind. Yes, I concluded, my mother had always known who my children's father was.

How or why my wife allowed my brother to twice make her pregnant and then keep it a secret from me I have no idea and have no intention of asking her. That decision might have been different had she not been expected to die in less than nine months. Vivian had been a good wife and mother, so my decision was to let her die thinking I never found out. It also saved me the messy business of divorcing her.

What did concern me was if Carol and Ronald knew I wasn't their birth father. Had they been told anything during one of their holidays with my brother. If they had been told anything their relationship with me hadn't changed, though the question still remained with me.

For the next four months, Vivian continued full-time as a para-legal. She had to give that up when her cancer became too painful. I arranged for domestic help during this time and when she stopped working I engaged a full-time nurse. This enabled me to continue with my research and lectures. It also allowed me to have some separation from her by working longer hours and even attending several lectures and seminars in my field of study both in this country and abroad.

I know my absence concerned my wife, but I had some good enough reasons to placate them.

The final three months were bad for all of us. My wife, because of the pain and knowing she had only a little time left with her family. For Carol and Ronald, because of the distress of watching their mother's increasing physical deterioration. Me, I just wanted it all to end.

The day my wife died the family had all said their goodbyes and I was left alone with her. She was heavily sedated and barely holding my hand. Somehow, she had the strength to raise her head just a little. "I've always loved you, Stephen," she whispered as I leaned closer. As her eyes closed her head settled back into the pillow.

Perhaps if she had called me, Darling I wouldn't have replied as I did. "Like you've always loved Gordon." How I didn't add, 'and his children,' I don't know.

She died with a rasping gasp that sounded like. "No," and a look of shock in her eyes. Did she die realising that I knew about the children?

As I was driven away from the cemetery I had no idea what the future held for me. The restraining order I gave my father would keep my mother and my brother out of my life for the foreseeable future. Carol and Ronald would have to make their own decision about their future relationship with me. I suppose a lot would depend on what was told to them during those holidays with their mother, father and grandmother.

My solicitor would be carrying out my instructions to sell the house after Carol and Ronald had taken whatever they wanted from it. My Father would be told that he could only contact me in an emergency through my solicitor who had been told not to tell anyone where I was.

Five hours after the funeral and I was on a flight to Canada. I'd found out that one of my grandfather's brothers had emigrated there in the early nineteen-hundreds and I was going to stay with his family for at least a month. After then, who knows what I'll do, I certainly didn't.

Like most Canadians, my cousin loved the outdoors so he took me for a week in the Algonquin Provisional Park in lower Ontario. We trekked, canoed and fished in a total wilderness. I loved it so much that I stayed for another two months, visiting other parts of Canada and its wilderness.

During this time my solicitor informed me that all my property was now in storage and the house had been sold for the asking price. Somehow the four-hundred-thousand didn't seem much for a nineteen-year marriage to a woman who had deceived me about the two children I thought were my own.

On my return to England my solicitor had already rented a small apartment for me, so after a week to settle myself in I sent a text message to my Father.

He phoned me that evening. "Where have you been, son?" was the first thing he asked me.

"I've been in Canada for the past three months," I told him. "Do you remember your Dad's brother Gordon who emigrated to Canada?"

"I remember Dad telling me about him."

"I stayed a month with him then spent two months travelling around Canada."

There was silence for a few seconds. "I understand why you did it, Son." There was another pause. "I just wish you had told me."

"Are you all right, Dad?" I asked.

"Well," he hesitated. "After your mother eventually admitted everything to me, I kicked her out and we are getting divorced. Your brother spent a week in the hospital. Among the other things you did to him, he lost one of his balls. I refuse to have anything to do with him."

Perhaps I should have told my father what I knew and what I intended to do at the cemetery. I knew that what he had done to my mother and brother would be hurting him, I also knew what my father wouldn't tell me unless I asked. "How are Carol and Ronald?"

"The kids are living with me and neither of them will have anything to do with their grandmother or their father," again my father hesitated. "Son, they want their Dad back," he told me.

It took me a moment to overcome the crunch I felt in my chest when my Father told me that. It also confirmed a decision I had already made if my kids still wanted me. "Can I come and visit you? Tomorrow?" I asked.

"Shall I tell them you're coming?" I could hear the relief in my father's voice when he asked me.

"You decide," I told him. "I'll come in time for some lunch. Bye, Dad." I added as I cut the call.

I kept recalling what my father has said when I asked him about Carol and Ronald. 'They want their Dad back.' Well, I wanted my kids back. I might not be their Father, but I had always been their Dad.