Chapter 2 - THE TEST THAT PROVED TOO MUCH
I drove to the laboratory alone.
I didn’t call Ethan.
I didn’t call Vivian.
I barely breathed.
Dr. Lena Patel met me in a small consultation room.
She placed a folder on the table.
“Your daughter, Emmie, is biologically yours.”
“I know.”
“And Ethan Mercer is her biological father.”
I almost laughed from relief.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Dr. Patel hesitated.
“You submitted a family comparison sample.”
“I didn’t.”
“Your husband did.”
That surprised me.
“What sample?”
“Hair belonging to his father, apparently taken from an old grooming brush.”
My mouth tightened.
Ethan had gone much further than he admitted.
“He wanted to establish a three-generation relationship?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Dr. Patel turned the page.
“The expected grandparent relationship isn’t present.”
I stared at her.
“I don’t understand.”
“The man Ethan believes is his biological father appears to have no paternal genetic relationship to him.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Ethan’s father was George Mercer.
George had raised Ethan.
Taught him baseball.
Paid for college.
Built Mercer Construction with his own hands.
He had died three years earlier.
“You’re saying George wasn’t Ethan’s father?”
“Genetically, that appears to be the case.”
I leaned back.
Suddenly Vivian’s obsession with bloodlines sounded different.
Much darker.
“Could the test be wrong?”
“We repeated it.”
“Contamination?”
“Unlikely.”
I stared at the file.
Ethan had spent years calling himself a Mercer.
Vivian had used that name like royalty.
And according to the paper in front of me, Ethan wasn’t George Mercer’s biological son.
I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
Then I remembered Emmie chained outside.
“What happens now?”
“Nothing, unless you choose additional testing.”
“Additional testing against whom?”
Dr. Patel slid another page toward me.
“There’s something else.”
My heart sank.
Of course there was.
“We found a very close familial pattern with another sample already stored in our database.”
“Whose?”
“I can’t disclose that without authorization.”
“How close?”
“Potentially first-degree.”
I stared at her.
“Sibling?”
“Possibly.”
“Parent?”
“Possibly.”
The next hour disappeared into forms and consent documents.
By noon, Ethan had called fourteen times.
On call fifteen, I answered.
“Where are you?”
“Somewhere my daughter isn’t chained to furniture.”
“Claire.”
“What?”
“The lab called me.”
“So you know.”
Silence.
“I know Emmie is mine.”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong.”
“You were worse than wrong.”
“I want to talk.”
“Then talk.”
“My mother made me doubt everything.”
“No. Your mother gave you permission to doubt everything. You chose to use it.”
He went quiet.
Then his voice changed.
“What did they tell you about my dad?”
I didn’t answer immediately.
“Claire?”
“George wasn’t your biological father.”
I heard him breathe.
“That’s impossible.”
“It isn’t.”
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“My mother never—”
He stopped.
That was the first moment I knew Ethan had thought of something.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What, Ethan?”
“My father had a brother.”
I frowned.
“Robert?”
“Yes.”
Robert Mercer.
George’s older brother.
The uncle who disappeared from the family before Ethan was born.
Nobody spoke about him.
There were no photos of him in Vivian’s house.
I had once asked why.
Vivian said, “Some people deserve to be forgotten.”
“Where is Robert now?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve never met him?”
“Not since I was a baby.”
I remembered something.
George’s funeral.
A gray-haired man had stood across the cemetery behind a tree line.
He never approached the family.
But I remembered Vivian seeing him.
Her face had gone white.
Then she had grabbed Ethan’s arm and rushed him toward the car.
“Ethan.”
“What?”
“Was Robert at your father’s funeral?”
A long silence.
“I don’t know.”
“I think he was.”
Ethan’s breathing changed.
I stood.
“Where are you going?”
“To find him.”
“Claire, don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because if my mother buried something for forty years, I’m starting to think there was a reason.”
I stared through the laboratory window.
Maybe there had been.
But Vivian had just made one enormous mistake.
She had attacked my child in the name of family blood.
Now I intended to find out exactly whose blood ran through hers.
That evening, I searched public records until I found Robert Mercer.
Alive.
Seventy-one.
Living forty minutes away.
And according to the property database, he had purchased his house exactly six months before Ethan was born.
I called the number.
A man answered.
“Hello?”
“Robert Mercer?”
Silence.
“My name is Claire Mercer.”
Another silence.
Then he whispered something that made every hair on my arms rise.
“Ethan’s wife?”
“Yes.”
May you like
He exhaled slowly.
“I wondered how long it would take Vivian’s lies to finally reach you.”
