OCTOBER 19

I parked in front of Jon's shop. I'd decided that I wanted to meet his parents – my grandparents. They were supposed to be getting to Jon's apartment sometime around four, so I'd wanted to make sure that I got there a little earlier than them. It was almost three-thirty.

I'd told Mom what Jon had said about Paul and Marie Essiter, and she hadn't been at all surprised. She'd never really seen them around town before the break up, apparently. And not after, either. She'd figured that Jon hadn't told them about me right away. She'd warned me that they were nothing like their son. "Extremely prim and proper" was how she'd put it. And snobs. She'd said that they could be snobs.

I got out of the car and fiddled with my clothes, trying to make sure they were straight and presentable. I'd worn my nicest pair of jeans, with my new Converse sneakers. And I had on a polo shirt. I'd even tucked it in.

I never tucked in my shirts. I mean, unless I was wearing a suit or something. That was different.

I used the main entrance for the apartment, not the one at the back of the shop. I knocked as I opened the unlocked door. "Hey," I said.

Roman, who was laying on his tummy on a large blanket, looked up and smiled when he saw me. He started kicking his little feet and waving at me. At four months old, he hadn't started crawling yet, but he sure could move his feet and legs. And he seemed to know who I was, because he always smiled when he saw me.

Charlie, sitting on the couch, smiled. "Don't you look extra nice, Stryker."

"Yeah," I said, reaching down to pick up my baby brother. "I figured I'd try to make a good impression on my grandparents."

Jon came into the living room just then, from the kitchen. "You talked to your mother, didn't you?"

"Yep."

"Did she tell you horror stories about my parents?"

"Well, I wouldn't say horror stories, exactly. More like – mph." Roman had suddenly smacked each of his little fists on my cheeks and mashed them together. He smiled widely, pushing my cheeks in every direction. He had just recently mastered the art of grabbing things.

Unfortunately.

"He's become very fascinated with faces in the past couple days," Charlie explained. "And using his hands to manipulate faces."

I pulled my face out of my brother's reach. "I can see that," I said. I gave the baby a mock-stern look, though I knew he didn't understand it. Not yet. "That's not very nice, Roman. You shouldn't pull on people's faces."

His grin came back in full force and he tried to grab my cheeks again. I tried to keep my face out of his hands. "No. Roman! Ow!" He'd managed to pinch one of my cheeks, hard. I turned him around in my arms, so he couldn't reach my face. Dang. He could pinch.

Just then, the door opened, and two people walked in, probably in their late sixties.

Boy, Mom had not been kidding about prim and proper.

Marie was wearing a brown pencil skirt, with a pastel green cashmere sweater set. She had on a pearl necklace and bracelet. Her white hair was pulled up into a tight bun.

Paul wore ironed white slacks and an argyle sweater vest over a crisp white dress shirt. And he wore a bowtie.

A bowtie!

I'm sorry, but the only time a bowtie was cool was if the Doctor was wearing it.

Somehow, I could not picture these two people raising Jonathan. It just seemed...wrong.

"Mom, Dad," Jon greeted, showing them into the small apartment. "There's Charlie; you've met her once before. That's little Roman. He's four months old now. And holding him is Stryker, my son with Mac. He's sixteen. Though he'll be seventeen in just a couple months."

"The son you didn't bother to tell us about until he was eight years old," Marie grumbled. "And then you wouldn't let us even meet him."

"Mom," Jon said through gritted teeth.

Paul glanced over at me. "I'm hoping you didn't help name him. Stryker?" Wow. It was like I wasn't even in the room. He was seriously going to stand there and diss my name? I was his grandson! Jeez. Maybe I was better off with them not in my life. I mean, it wasn't like I really cared if he liked my name or not. I liked it, so it didn't matter if other people did or not. But still.

"Dad."

I shook my head. "Don't worry, Jon. I got that a lot as a kid. Roman might get it, too, though I think Roman's becoming a pretty popular name now. He might not have people look at him strangely because of his name."

Marie stared at Jon in something close to horror. "Your son calls you by your name?"

Jonathan rolled his eyes. No wonder he hadn't exactly been excited when I'd asked about his parents. They were something else. "What else did you expect, Mom? I was absent from his life for sixteen years. Mac got married, and Stryk's had a good stepfather for most of his life. I never expected him to call me Dad. I haven't acted like one to him, and I don't deserve the title. Not from Stryker. We're both comfortable with him calling me Jon or Jonathan for now. That might change someday, and it might not."

Marie shook her head, muttering something about being 'indecent.' I was glad that she wasn't looking in my direction, because I was trying really hard not to laugh. While she and Jon had been talking, Charlie had been pretending to be Marie, horrified at the idea of me calling my birth father by his name. She had been making horrified faces and miming fainting and everything.

She was awesome.

Charlie caught my eye and winked.