Harder this time.
“Doctor, open the door!”
I knew that voice.
David.
I looked at the doctor.
“Why is my husband so afraid of me hearing this?”
The doctor didn’t answer.
He simply stared at the folder between us.
Then he whispered, “Because he knows what I’m about to tell you could destroy your family.”
My heart hammered against my ribs.
I stood.
“Open the door.”
The doctor hesitated.
I walked past him and opened it myself.
David was standing there, pale and breathless.
His eyes went immediately to the DNA report in my hand.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I held it up.
“Zero percent.”
His face crumpled.
“Emily—”
“Don’t.”
I had never heard my own voice sound so cold.
“You told me Grace was ours.”
David swallowed.
“She is ours.”
“She’s biologically yours according to this report.”
“I know.”
“Then why did the doctor say you’re not her father?”
David looked toward the doctor.
The doctor lowered his eyes.
“Because the test doesn’t explain everything.”
I stared at him.
“Then explain it.”
He took a slow breath.
“Grace’s DNA matches yours.”
“How?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“You just told me there’s a ninety-nine-point-eight percent biological relationship.”
“Yes.”
“But I’m fifty-four years old.”
“I understand.”
“Women don’t suddenly give birth at fifty-four.”
The doctor nodded.
“That’s why we need to talk about something else.”
He took another document from the folder.
It was older.
Much older.
At the top was a date from seventeen years earlier.
My stomach tightened.
“What’s that?”
David stepped closer.
“Emily, please.”
I turned toward him.
“You knew.”
He didn’t answer.
“You knew.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“I knew something.”
“What?”
He closed his eyes.
“Grace wasn’t born today.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“What did you say?”
David’s voice broke.
“She was born seventeen years ago.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Emily—”
“No. I saw her.”
I looked at the baby through the small window in the office door.
Grace was asleep in the nurse’s arms.
“She can’t be seventeen.”
David wiped his face.
“She’s not.”
I shook my head.
“Then what are you saying?”
The doctor finally spoke.
“Grace’s birth certificate says she was born yesterday. But her genetic profile contains something that shouldn’t be possible.”
“What?”
He looked directly at me.
“Her mitochondrial DNA matches yours.”
I didn’t understand.
He continued carefully.
“Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to child.”
My breathing stopped.
“So you’re saying…”
“Grace’s biological mother is someone genetically connected to you.”
I looked at David.
He was crying now.
“Who?”
He didn’t answer.
“David, who is her mother?”
He reached into his coat pocket.
His fingers trembled as he pulled out a photograph.
He handed it to me.
The photograph was old.
Seventeen years old, perhaps.
A young woman stood beside a hospital bed.
She was smiling.
Holding a newborn baby.
I stared at her face.
My hands began shaking.
I knew her.
I knew that face better than I knew my own.
Because I had seen it every morning for seventeen years.
It was my daughter.
The daughter I had always believed I never had.
My eldest son, Michael, had been born first.
Then Daniel.
Then Thomas.
Three boys.
And after Thomas was born, I had suffered a devastating miscarriage.
At least, that was what I’d been told.
I looked again at the photograph.
The woman holding the newborn was my younger sister, Sarah.
My sister who had died seventeen years ago.
“No…”
The photograph slipped from my fingers.
David caught it.
“Sarah didn’t die in an accident,” he whispered.
I looked at him.
“What?”
He closed his eyes.
“She died after giving birth.”
My knees nearly gave way.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Because Sarah made me promise.”
“Promise what?”
