Chương 2
“I know.”
“DNA is family.”
Rachel looked at her daughter.
This was one of the moments no parent prepared for because any answer large enough to be true was too large for the child asking.
“DNA tells you who you’re biologically related to,” Rachel said. “It doesn’t get to decide who your family is.”
Lily considered that.
“Then why did she say it?”
Rachel looked toward the closed door.
Because Eleanor had spent her entire adult life believing that belonging was something she could distribute.
Because Daniel had hidden something from Rachel.
Because Rachel herself had known for three days that Eleanor had entered Daniel’s study without permission and taken photographs of documents from his desk, and she had not told Daniel because she had been waiting for the gala to end.
Because she had believed, stupidly, that adults could postpone ugliness until after dessert.
“I don’t know all of it yet,” Rachel said.
Lily picked at a loose bead on her dress.
“Did she break my hair?”
“No.”
“The crown.”
“Tiara.”
“I know.”
Rachel almost smiled.
Lily’s eyes filled then, not with the theatrical sobbing Eleanor would later tell people she had witnessed, but with slow embarrassed tears.
“It was Grandpa Charles’s mom’s.”
Rachel took her into her arms.
“Yes.”
“I was careful.”
“I know you were.”
“I didn’t even run.”
“I know.”
That was when Lily began to cry.
Daniel did not come upstairs for forty-three minutes.
Rachel knew because she checked the clock three times while helping Lily out of her flower-girl dress and into the oversized Whitmore Grand T-shirt the hotel kept in the gift shop. Lily ate four crackers, refused water, drank half a glass of water after Rachel stopped offering it, then fell asleep sideways across the bed with one hand under her cheek.
When Daniel finally knocked, Rachel opened the door but did not move aside.
He looked exhausted.
“What happened downstairs?”
“My mother is gone.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“The board chair got her out through the kitchen. There were reporters in the lobby before she reached the car.”
“Reporters?”
“Someone posted a video.”
Rachel turned toward Lily.
Daniel lowered his voice.
“You can’t see her face in the clip.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He loosened his bow tie. His hand shook enough that he stopped and dropped it.
Rachel stared at him.
“Was that test about you?”
“Yes.”
“And your father?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Yes.”
Rachel folded her arms.
“What did it say?”
“That Peter isn’t biologically related to me.”
“Your uncle Peter?”
“Yes.”
“Charles’s brother.”
“Yes.”
“So you think—”
“I don’t think.”
His answer came too quickly.
Rachel waited.
Daniel looked at the sleeping child behind her and tried again.
“The lab says the probability of Peter being my biological uncle is effectively excluded.”
“Effectively?”
“That’s the wording.”
“You had your uncle tested?”
“He agreed.”
“When?”
“Six weeks ago.”
Rachel laughed once, without humor.
“Six weeks.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“That sentence should be illegal after a certain age.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Rachel.”
“Did you know your mother had seen the report?”
“No.”
“I did.”
His expression changed.
She walked to the dresser and picked up her phone.
Three nights earlier, a notification from the security system at their house had shown activity in Daniel’s study while they were both at Lily’s winter concert rehearsal. Eleanor had been staying with them because the gala committee had turned her Georgetown townhouse into a temporary command center and she claimed she could not sleep while assistants were “stapling near the piano.”
Rachel had opened the security app expecting to see the housekeeper.
Instead she had watched Eleanor enter Daniel’s office.
There was no camera inside, only one in the hallway. Eleanor had remained there for eleven minutes.
Later Rachel found the bottom drawer of Daniel’s desk not fully closed.
She had not searched it. She had simply taken a photograph of the drawer and planned to ask him after the gala.
Then, that afternoon, Eleanor had made an odd remark while fastening the pearl tiara onto Lily’s hair.
“Family pieces should stay with family children.”
Rachel had answered, “She is a family child.”
Eleanor had smiled.
Rachel had understood then that something was wrong.
“I should have told you,” she said. “I thought she’d looked at financial papers. Or the trust documents. I didn’t know there was a DNA report in there.”
Daniel sat in the chair near the window.
“It was in a sealed envelope.”
“It wasn’t sealed after she visited.”
“No.”
“What exactly did she see?”
“The first page probably.”
“And what does the first page say?”
“Relationship testing. Two subjects. Relationship excluded.”
“No names?”
“Codes.”
Rachel stared at him.
“She thought you tested Lily.”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to explain why your mother publicly told our seven-year-old she didn’t belong in this family because she misunderstood a test you kept secret from your wife.”
Daniel put both hands over his face.
For a few seconds he said nothing.
“I found something after Dad died.”
Rachel’s anger paused.
Charles Whitmore had died eleven months earlier after a short illness that had become long in the way serious illnesses sometimes did—nine weeks of doctors using hopeful words while quietly changing the purpose of every conversation.
Daniel had been with him most nights.
Rachel sat across from him.
“What?”
“A blood donor card.”
She waited.
“In one of his desk boxes. Old Red Cross card. O positive.”
Rachel did not understand.
Daniel looked at her.
“My mother’s O positive.”
“And you’re?”
“AB.”
Rachel stopped.
She knew enough basic biology to hear the problem, though not enough to trust it.
“Could the card have been wrong?”
“That’s what I told myself.”
“So you did a DNA test.”
“Not immediately.”
“Six weeks ago.”
“I spent months not doing one.”
May you like
That sounded more like Daniel.
He was a man who read contracts twice and restaurant menus three times. He could postpone an emotionally dangerous decision until the decision grew roots.
