“Be that as it may,” Dad said, “it’s premature to be discussing the details.” So much for Walt’s theory of an easy explanation.
Mom laughed mirthlessly. “Guess retirement has made you a little rusty on spinning the data.”
A text pinged in, and Caroline glanced at the screen nestled in her palm.
Got through by phone. They’re “confident” in familial matches, but they can’t be used in court, etc. So, not exactly official.
“I don’t think Sela would agree,” she said flatly. It seemed mean to say her name again, seeing how it stung them—Mom especially. But what else was she supposed to call her?
“How did she get your email address?” he asked, as if it mattered. Her phone pinged again.
A 25% DNA match indicates grandchild/grandparent, aunt/niece, or half sibling. They estimated relationship based on your ages.
“It’s public on our corporate website.” Another ping.
You can always retest, blah blah blah. No discount for those retesting “because of something they didn’t want to hear.”
Smug bastards.
“Your public awaits?” Dad looked critically at her phone.
“Sorry.” She placed it screen down on the table. “Walt called the company, to see if it could be a mistake.”
“And?”
“Unlikely.”
Mom’s head dropped, while Dad looked on with such anguish Caroline didn’t know how to stay.
“Can you give us a day, sweetheart?” He was asking his daughter, but his eyes didn’t leave his wife. “Give us a day to talk this out, and then we’ll decide where to go from here.”
“You two take a day.” Mom’s voice had returned to a whisper. “When I asked you to leave, Fred, I did not mean to drive around the block.”
Caroline could practically hear the bomb inside her mom ticking, and it suddenly seemed possible that maybe it had been there all along, waiting to explode on them all. Much like Sela herself. Caroline got to her feet, reeling in disbelief. There was no if about this. This was happening. In the foyer, she turned. They were both watching her go.
“You know what’s really weird?” Caroline couldn’t help it. “She lives in Brevard. I came so close to moving there. We could have passed each other on the street and not even known.”
Mom stiffened. “Yet another reason it’s a very good thing you didn’t go.”
A new layer of confusion wrapped around her thoughts. Caroline had been anything but glad when those plans fell through. Nothing had before or since laid her flat like the raw wound of that heartbreak, Keaton leaving her behind. She’d had to move home, where her parents spent weeks piling on sympathy, never once expressing relief that the split was for the best.
“Yet another reason?”
Very good thing?
“Leave it,” Dad barked, as if Caroline were the one in the wrong. She blinked at him in surprise. “Give us one day,” he repeated.
She turned without another word, childishly slamming the door on her way out. She had the curious feeling of floating above herself, watching her own exit while surveying the formative part of her life—all of their lives—from an angle she’d never had access to before.
It wasn’t Dad’s admission alone that carried her there, to this dizzy new height. She’d had since yesterday to allow for that possibility, however slim.
But she had not been the slightest prepared for what she saw in Mom, in that final moment. In the moment that pertained, most directly, to Caroline.
When she’d unmistakably looked as if her husband were not the only one who’d been caught in a lie.
4
Sela
Brody zigzagged the playground as fast as his squat legs could carry him, giggling and panting through a one-boy game of chase around the support poles, under the slides, and through the tunnels as if on some secret challenge to explore them all before a buzzer announced time’s up. From her perch on the closest bench, Sela might have envied his energy were the force of it not such an amazing feat.
For other toddlers, the physicality of their exuberance was a prerequisite, a default mode set to exhaust their parents, but for Brody it was his hard-fought reward in the endless game of catch-up he’d been playing since birth. Doug was so tall that by rights Brody should have dwarfed his infant counterparts, but instead he’d begun life barely big enough to join their ranks at all. Even now his height and weight were in line with the smallest one-year-olds, though his verbal and motor skills were almost on par with the two years he was about to mark. A child whose abilities so outpaced his size might have drawn attention among the parents of his peers, but in this park, dominated by older kids thanks to the rec center across the street, the other moms—and occasionally dads—rarely acknowledged Sela, as most were past the point of close supervision and thus engrossed in whatever was so interesting on their smartphones. At the moment, she and Brody—and Oscar, back on his leash and collapsed at her feet after a raucous game of Frisbee—had the place to themselves, the normal crowd at school.
“Sela!” Leigh came rushing down the sidewalk, breathy and late as always, pushing a mountain of gear in front of her. Annie strained against her stroller straps, having caught sight of the playground, kicking her little legs beneath the lap bar in excitement. In a pouch strapped to Leigh’s shoulders, her six-month-old looked right to left, in search of whatever her sister’s happy shrieking was about. Between them, an overflowing diaper bag swung like a pendulum from the stroller handles, a bottle and sippy cup rattling in the crossbar’s ill-fitting holders. Oscar raised his head and quickly ducked it again, wisely lying low from the toddler’s affinity for fur by the handful.
Seeing her best friend like this, laden and frazzled, always made Sela grateful Brody was so low maintenance in that respect, rarely demanding toys or snacks on the go with the impatience she’d seen from Annie. Then again, she and Brody spent an awful lot of time at home; when given free rein to explore, he took it.
“Have you been waiting long? I’m so sorry. As usual.” Leigh brought the stroller to an abrupt halt beside the bench and kicked the brake on, wrapping a protective arm around the baby as she bent to release the flailing Annie from the torturous confines of her straps.
“No worries. Although I did start without you.” Sela held up the half-eaten apple in her hand. “Bad me, I know.”
“Good you. That’s so much healthier than what’s about to pass for my lunch.” Leigh caught her misstep instantly, but Sela waved off her cringe. Though poor nutritional choices were a forbidden luxury for Sela, she was past being sensitive about it.
“Hi, Annie girl.” Sela smiled down at the toddler. “Love your dress.” It was zebra striped from top to bottom, the kind of thing only a certain kind of adult could pull off—the kind that wasn’t Sela. Annie rewarded her with a lopsided curtsy before running to join Brody beneath the jungle gym.
“Did you get your steps in?” Leigh plopped next to her on the bench and peeled the waxed paper from a salami sandwich. It couldn’t have been more pedestrian—white bread, yellow cheese, no garnishes—but Sela’s mouth watered. She quickly sank her teeth back into the apple.