Chương 4
In the silence, Danny heard the faint click of Jenny closing a door at her house.
“Say that again.”
He did.
Jenny listened without interrupting. It was one of the things she did when she was frightened: she became efficient.
When he finished, she asked, “Did you see the confession?”
“No.”
“The real test?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know anything yet.”
“I saw him.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“He pushed his hair back like I do.”
“So does Mom. And a thousand people with hair.”
“He has my ears.”
“You hate your ears.”
“That isn’t relevant.”
“It is relevant to the quality of your observation.”
Danny sat at the table.
Jenny’s voice gentled. “Do the test.”
“I don’t know if I want to.”
“Want has left the building.”
“He already had a father.”
“He had Grant.”
“Grant raised him.”
“Yes.”
“What am I supposed to be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Everybody keeps saying that like it’s useful.”
“It’s true. Truth is useful even when it’s annoying.”
Danny stared at the old family photograph.
Their father had left when Danny was twelve and Jenny was eight. He had packed two duffel bags while their mother worked an evening shift at the nursing home. Before leaving, he told Danny he was going to Indianapolis for a construction job and would send money.
For the first three months, postcards came. Then a birthday card containing twenty dollars. Then nothing for six years.
When he returned, he parked a rusted Ford behind the nursing home and asked Danny, then eighteen, for two hundred dollars.
Danny had given it to him.
He had hated himself for that longer than he hated his father for leaving.
“I’m not him,” Danny said.
Jenny did not ask who.
“No,” she said. “You’re not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“No, you know I stayed near Mom. You know I remember birthdays badly and fix your minivan for free. You don’t know what I’d be like with a kid.”
“You’re arguing that you might be terrible so you should avoid finding out whether a child is yours.”
“I’m saying he might be better without this.”
“You haven’t met him.”
“I met him.”
“What?”
“He was in the car.”
Jenny swore softly.
“He asked me for a broken coolant flange.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop assigning meaning to random objects. Do the test.”
Danny opened Claire’s message again.
“I’m afraid it’s going to be positive.”
“I know.”
“I’m also afraid it won’t be.”
Jenny’s breath moved across the receiver.
“That,” she said, “is probably why you need to do it.”
The laboratory occupied the second floor of a medical office complex between a pediatric dentist and a company that sold orthopedic braces. Danny arrived twelve minutes early and sat in his truck until Claire texted that she was inside.
He wore a clean work shirt and jeans. He had shaved, then regretted it because the pale skin along his jaw made him look unfinished.
Claire was alone in the waiting room. She had traded the white dress for navy slacks and a gray sweater. Without the formal clothes and precise makeup, she looked more familiar and more tired.
“Noah’s at school,” she said.
“I assumed.”
“I thought you might think I brought him again.”
“I did think that.”
“I didn’t.”
Danny approached the reception desk. A woman behind a glass partition handed them identification forms and explained the collection procedure. She spoke in a calm, practiced voice, as if people discovered hidden children there every Thursday morning.
The legal test required photographs, signatures, witnessed cheek swabs, and sealed samples. Danny appreciated the bureaucracy. It gave him boxes to check.
Claire sat two chairs away while they completed the paperwork.
Under Relationship to Minor, Danny paused.
The form offered Father, Alleged Father, Legal Guardian, and Other.
He checked Alleged Father.
Claire watched his pen move but said nothing.
After the technician collected the samples, she told them results usually took three to five business days. Claire paid before Danny could reach for his wallet.
“I’ll reimburse you,” he said.
“You don’t need to.”
“I’m not letting the Bellamys buy my DNA test.”
“It’s my money.”
“Is it?”
Claire looked at him.
The technician turned away with professional concentration.
Outside, the morning was already hot. Claire stopped beneath the shade of the covered walkway.
“I have a job,” she said.
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“You implied the money belongs to Grant’s family.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No. I worked for the foundation for eight years. I left when he got sick.”
“Okay.”
“My savings are mine.”
“I said okay.”
“You say okay like you mean the opposite.”
Danny looked across the parking lot at a man struggling to fold a walker into the trunk of a sedan. The man pushed one lever, then another, becoming visibly angry with the engineering.
“I’m trying not to fight with you,” Danny said.
“You were better at it when we were younger.”
“That’s because I liked you more.”
Claire flinched.
He regretted the sentence immediately but not enough to take it back.
She folded her arms. “Do you want the recording?”
“No.”
“You should hear it before the result.”
“Why?”
“Because if the result is positive, you’ll assume everything Grant said was true.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Some of it.”
“What does that mean?”
Claire looked toward the medical building doors. A mother emerged holding the hand of a little girl with pink glasses. They passed without noticing them.
“Grant said he acted alone,” Claire said.
“Didn’t he?”
“I saw a discrepancy in the report after Noah was born.”
Danny’s skin tightened along his arms.
“What kind of discrepancy?”
“The date the sample was received was two days before the sample was collected.”
“And you said nothing?”
“I asked Grant. He told me it was a clerical error.”
“And you believed him.”
“I chose to.”
May you like
The distinction sat between them.
Claire rubbed her wedding ring with her thumb. “Noah was six weeks old. Grant had been sleeping in a chair beside his bassinet because he was afraid he’d stop breathing. My mother had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I had stopped working. I had nowhere to go that didn’t belong to Grant or his family. The report said what I needed it to say.”
