Unexpected Arrivals

It had to be a joke.

Any minute now, a van would drive up and Ashton Kutcher would slide the door open, laughing hysterically at my melodramatic performance on the front porch.

But nothing happened.

The words on the page jumbled into a toxic mess my brain refused to comprehend, much less accept.

Please consider this letter as a formal request to arrange a paternity test (DNA).

I barely remembered Chelsea Airy.

That wasn't true-we'd gone out once, and we'd been friends for a while after. But I hadn't heard so much as a peep from her since I'd gotten married. I'd reached out a handful of times, but she'd quit responding and fell off the face of the earth. There hadn't been a text, an email, a phone call, not even a Facebook message, much less a stork in the last five years.

My wife could forgive a lot, but she'd never wanted children-much less another woman's.