Page 94 of Sing with Me

“Where’s my phone? Help me find it? I think I dropped it last night.”

Skye was on her hands and knees looking under the couch and coffee table. She found it under an armchair on the other side of the table. By then, the phone had stopped ringing.

“Please check for me.” Diehl swallowed the tablets with his coffee.

Skye read the notifications on the screen. “A bazillion missed calls from your son.”

“Not my son.” Diehl’s chest shuddered and he began to weep.

“What are you talking about?” Skye swiped up. More notifications. Text messages from Ethan. No content. “Looks like he’s been texting for a couple of hours.”

“Ethan… Elisa… They’re both not mine.” Diehl lay down on the couch and covered his face with his arm. “What’s the probability of that?”

“What on earth?” Skye sat down on an armchair near Diehl’s head.

“The DNA test was negative.”

“What? Seriously? But they sort of look like you—maybe.”

“Not mine. They look like my dead wife, to be honest with you. However, their daddy is her Italian boyfriend—whom she’d been carrying on with for twelve years.”

“Twelve what?”

“I know, right. Can you imagine?”

She could not.

“I’m responsible for them, but they’re not my flesh and blood. How could it be?”

“That’s tough.”

Tears streamed down the side of Diehl’s face.

“Elisa… Ethan…” He moaned.

“Are in God’s hands.” Slowly, Skye began to sing Charles Wesley’s hymn, “And Can It Be.”

Long my imprisoned spirit lay

fast bound in sin and nature's night;

thine eye diffused a quickening ray;

I woke; the dungeon flamed with light;

my chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

No condemnation now I dread;

Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!

Alive in Him, my living Head,

and clothed in righteousness divine,

bold I approach the eternal throne,

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