Chapter 12

"Warrick?" Gemma stood next to her husband. "Warrick!"

"What?" Jolting out of his contemplative state, he turned to his wife. "Did you say something?"

"Are you expecting a phone call?" She questioned causing Warrick to frown and shake his head in denial. "Or did the phone do something to displease you?"

"What? No, I'm not expecting a call." Warrick looked at her as if she were crazy.

"Honey, you've been glaring at the phone for the last twenty minutes." Gemma informed him. "You don't look very happy about something. If it's not the phone, then what is it?"

"I was thinking about calling him." Warrick admitted, glancing at his watch he was surprised that that much time had passed. Gemma didn't have to ask who "him" was. She automatically knew whom he was talking about. He was talking about Sean Arthur.

"It's morning here, it should be afternoon there. This would be a good time to call. Do you know his number?"

"Yeah, he left it with Nick." Warrick frowned. The man had entrusted a lot with Nick. "He gave him a sample of his blood so that I could run the DNA tests. He gave Nick his address and number for incase I want to contact him."

"So, what do you want to say to him?"

"That I ran the test and we have a 25 match. This is what half siblings share. That's what Jess and Suzie should share."

"Twenty-five percent? Is that enough to prove that you are related?"

"Well, it could be a fluke, it happens. I'd like a little more proof before I start getting all worked up about it."

"What other proof could you have?"

"Well, if he had some sample of his father's DNA, hair or something. If not, he mentioned that he had a sister. If I could test her DNA and come up with a twenty-five percent match, we'd be as sure as we could ever be."

"So call him. It's worth a try right?" Gemma hugged her husband, running her hands up and down his back, trying to ease the tension that was running through him.

"He just seemed so determined and eager. When I went to talk with him, he was so depressed looking." Warrick frowned. "Why would this be so important to him?"

"He's the only one that can answer that, Honey. " Gemma placed a kiss in the hollow of his neck, trailing a finger over the furrow in his brow. "You've got to relax; you're letting too much get to you right now."

"You keep doing that and I'll find a way to take my mind off of things." Warrick teased, pulling her flush up against him. "How much longer do we have to wait?"

"Warrick Brown, Suzie is barely a week old. You've got less patience than Jessie at desert time!"

"That's cuz you're my favorite desert and I've been starved lately." Warrick chuckled, nuzzling her neck as his hand slipped lower to cup her rear.

"Starved!" Gemma pulled away, smacking his hands. "Is that what you call it? I'll show you how starved you can be!"

"Ah, Woman." Warrick called after her playfully as she clomped away in a mock huff. Warrick realized, as she disappeared, that she had done what she had aimed to do. She had lightened his mood. He wasn't feeling tense or grouchy anymore. He was actually smiling and relaxed as he picked up the phone. Pulling the paper that Nick had given him, he dialed the operator, ready to make his first overseas phone call.

The phone was answered on the second ring. Warrick was surprised to hear a young girl's voice call out loudly. "Hello?"

"Uh, is this the Arthur residence? I'm trying to call Sean Arthur." Warrick was suddenly so nervous his palms were sweating.

"Just a moment." The girl told him a second before she screeched loudly "Da! Someone wants to talk to you!" Warrick pulled his ear from the earpiece, wondering if bad phone manners were a teenage trait for all girls. He hoped his girls would have better manners.

A moment later, Sean Arthur's voice was on the phone. "This is Sean Arthur, May I help you?"

"Uh, this is Warrick Brown-"

"Warrick! You called!" Sean gushed, sounding shocked and surprised. "I guess this means you did the test?"

"Well, yeah. I wanted to apologize to you. It was very bad of me to be so rude to you. I realize I should have taken the time to hear you out at the very least."

"No, I should apologize to you." Sean countered. "It wasn't a good time to be throwing all this at you. You're wife had just had a baby, for cripes sake! I mean, you were knackered and I put all this on you. You had every right to be narked at me."

Warrick took a moment to try to figure out the things he was saying. "I know I acted angry, but…..I think I was more in shock than anything. You're right about it being bad timing, but when exactly would be a good time to come up to a stranger and declare him a brother? The fact that you're white was pretty damn shocking too!"

"You think I wasn't bloody well shocked to find that you were a black man?" Sean chuckled, good-naturedly. "I had met you're wife, a beautiful blonde, and saw you're daughter. When you approached me, I thought Nick was you. I never considered you being a black man."

Warrick thought back and saw, in his mind's eye, the shock and confusion that had been on Sean's face when they finally met. "You mean, in all your searching, you never….. Found out that I was black?"

"All I had was a name, a birthplace and a birth date." The man sighed. "Luckily, you have an out of the ordinary name. There were only two Warrick Brown's in the United States. The other was an elderly man in Florida."

"I somehow thought there might be more." Warrick felt a little disappointed. Somehow, it seemed right that he should be harder to find.

"Not that I found. So, are you going to tell me about this test you ran with my blood?" There was a silence that followed as Warrick debated what to tell the man. "Warrick? You ran the test, correct?"

"Yeah." Warrick choked out.

"Are you going to tell me about it? Perhaps if you explained the process to me, it will be easier. I don't know anything about your science."

"I had your blood ran for DNA. You know what that is, right?"

"It's what sets us apart from others." Sean answered hesitantly.

"Yeah, it's a…..chart of our genetic make up. Everyone has a different DNA, except for identical twins. You have parts that you share with family members. You have matching…..markers with your mother and with your father."

"And siblings?" Sean hedged, hoping Warrick would grow more comfortable in talking about it.

"Full blooded siblings share a fifty percent marker match. Those that share only one parent have a twenty-five percent match." Warrick continued to sound nervous and uncomfortable with the conversation. "I tested mine against yours."

"And did we have any matching?"

"Twenty-five percent matched." Warrick sighed. "But that isn't conclusive at all! There are sometimes fluke matches of completely unrelated people."

"So what must we do to find out for sure?" Sean felt disappointment rush through him. It felt to him as if Warrick was fighting the facts.

"Run more tests. If you could locate some of your father's DNA….., a hair maybe?" Warrick told him hopefully.

"I don't know about that. It's been a year since he died. We've cleaned out all his belongings." Sean did not sound very hopeful.

"What about your sister? If I was to run the DNA test against her blood and I have matches, then it's a pretty good indicator that we are, indeed, related." Now it was Sean's turn to bring them silence. Warrick waited for the man to reply. When there was nothing from him, he sighed. "It's not going to happen is it?"

"She's very upset about all of this. She has been very angry since my father's letters." Sean confessed. "She has been angry at me for searching for you. I don't think she'll be very cooperative about any of this."

"Well…." Warrick felt that he understood the woman's feelings completely. This whole thing was ripping all of their lives apart. He felt anger towards the dead man for leaving all this unsaid until his death. If he were alive, he would be able to answer all the questions they had. "There is not much to be done until we find out for sure."

"You'll stay in contact, won't you? I have email; we can…..continue to correspond at least!" Sean sounded desperate. Warrick wondered why the man was so anxious for him to be his brother. Did he feel incomplete, as Warrick had all his life? Knowing that there were people out there in the world that shared the same blood, but had no idea about you.

"Yeah, I'd like that, Sean." He told the man, and was surprised at how much he really did mean it.