Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 305

Chapter 296: Brothers, For Real Now

LAKE

My family tree was complicated. Ms. Okafor asked us to draw one in class. Mine took four sheets of paper. I consumed the remaining part of my pencil on it.

I wasn’t bothered. That just meant I had a really good family.

The project was due on Thursday. Kofi came over on Wednesday after school. We worked at the kitchen table. Dad made snacks. We had our papers and coloured pencils spread out everywhere.

Kofi’s tree fit on one page. Easy. He has two parents. One sister and four grandparents. And two sets of aunts and uncles. Nothing wrong with that. It just wasn’t as interesting as mine.

“Who’s that?” Kofi asked, pointing at my paper, which had already expanded onto the second sheet.

“That’s Cameron,” I said. “He married my dad. So he’s my other dad now, basically. Officially.”

“So you have two dads?”

“Yes,” I said. “Cameron and Lucian. Lucian is my original dad. Cameron is the one who came later but has always been here on Tuesdays, and now permanently.”

Kofi accepted this without difficulty. “Who’s that?” he asked, pointing at another branch.

“That’s Sedona,” I said. “She’s Cameron’s sister. So she’s my aunt. She married Dante, who is Drew’s dad. So Dante is my aunt’s husband, which makes him my uncle.”

“And Drew?”

“Drew is Dante’s son,” I said. “Which means he’s my cousin, technically. But we call each other brothers because we decided that was more accurate when we were younger, and the technical word never really caught up.”

Kofi nodded thoughtfully. “And that one?”

“That’s Nick,” I said. “Nick is Sedona’s son. Which makes him Cameron’s nephew. Cameron is my other dad. So, Nick is my…”

I paused. I had actually not fully worked this part out to a clean conclusion.

“Nick is mine,” I said finally. “The specific word is still being researched. But the relationship is solid.”

Kofi looked at the paper. “Who are all these people at the bottom?”

“Grandma Jennifer and Grandpa Parker,” I said, pointing. “They’re Cameron’s parents, which makes them my grandparents. They were always my grandparents, actually. I decided this when I was four, in Chicago, in the first hour after I arrived. I informed Cameron of the decision, and he said it seemed fair.”

“He didn’t get a vote?”

"gave him the opportunity to object,” said. “He didn’t.”

“Kofi was quiet for a moment, looking at the full spread of my family tree, which now covered most of the table.

“It’s very big,” he said.

“Yes,” I said proudly. “It took a long time to build. There were several years of complicated situations that I was involved in managing. I had a binder.”

“A binder?”

“For planning,” I said. “I keep records. It’s important to have documentation when your family is this large.”

Dad came over with the snacks. And he looked at the papers spread across the table. Dag had the expression he used when he was trying to hold back laughter. And was mostly succeeding.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“I took time to explain the family structure. Kofi is learning.”

“I can see that. Do you need help with any of the, um, technical terminology?”

“I’ve handled it. There are a few classifications still under review, but the important parts are correct.”

“Which parts are still under review?” Kofi asked.

“The exact word for what Nick is to me,” I said. “Since it’s two steps through Cameron and one step through Sedona, and I haven’t found a single word that covers that specific combination yet.”

“Maybe you could make one up,” Kofi said.

I looked at him. This was actually a very good idea. And I was slightly annoyed I hadn’t thought of it myself.

“I’ll research existing options first,” I said. “For thoroughness. But yes. That’s a strong backup plan.”

That evening, after Kofi had gone home and I’d added three more annotations to my family tree project, I went to find Drew.

He was in the room we shared when he stayed over, which was most nights lately, working through his bird notebook with the focused quiet I’d known for years now.

“Kofi asked about the family tree,” I said.

“How did that go?” Drew asked, without looking up.

“Well, mostly. There are some classifications still being finalized.”

“The Nick one?”

“Yes,” I said. “I told him the relationship was solid, but the specific word was still being researched. He suggested making one up.”

Drew considered this. “What would you call it?”

Hthought about it seriously, the way I thought about everything that mattered.

“Something that means: a person who is technically your cousin through one parent and your almost-nephew through the other parent’s sibling, but who you actually think of as a brother because he shows up every day and you share grandparents and you have a joint bird list and you once both needed each other at the same time without planning it.”

Drew looked up from his notebook.

“That’s very long for a single word,” he said.

“I’m open to abbreviation suggestions,” I said.

He thought about it for a moment, with the specific careful attention he gave to things that deserved it.

“Brother,” he said. “I think the word you’re looking for is just brother. Even if it came from a different direction than mine and Nick’s did. The result is the same.”

I sat with that for a moment.

He wasn’t wrong. The routes had been different. Drew had come through Dante, Nick had come through Sedona directly, I had come through Cameron and Lucian, and all three of us had ended up at the same table, same grandparents, same joint bird list, same family that had been built piece by piece through years of complicated situations that were mostly resolved now.

“Okay,” I said. “Brother. All three of us.”

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