Chapter 4 - The DNA Test
Before searching for Daniel, Melissa demanded something practical.
A DNA test.
“I’m not raising our daughter inside another mystery,” she said.
She was right.
The mark had opened the door.
But a birthmark was not proof of parentage.
So we tested.
Ryan.
Melissa.
Emma.
And, eventually, me.
The first result came four days later.
Ryan was Emma’s biological father.
Melissa was Emma’s biological mother.
No embryo mix-up.
No donor error.
No secret third parent.
Emma was exactly who we believed she was.
Melissa cried for ten minutes after reading the report.
Ryan did too.
Then he apologized.
Not once.
Not vaguely.
He sat across from his wife and said every word she deserved to hear.
“I rejected our daughter at the exact moment you needed me most.”
Melissa said nothing.
“I let my fear become more important than you.”
Still nothing.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked at him.
“That doesn’t erase it.”
“I know.”
“You frightened me.”
“I know.”
“You made me think you could stop loving her because of something she was born with.”
Ryan’s face crumpled.
“I know.”
Melissa’s voice softened slightly.
“And I need to know it will never happen again.”
Ryan looked toward the nursery bassinet.
“It won’t.”
“You can’t promise never to be afraid.”
“No.”
He swallowed.
“But I can promise I won’t run.”
That was better.
Not perfect.
But real.
My DNA results arrived the next morning.
Ryan and I were full biological siblings.
Same mother.
Same father.
Paul was not our biological father.
That much was now certain.
The laboratory identified several close paternal matches with the surname Cole.
Gabriel Cole.
The man in the photograph.
Our real biological father.
I stared at the screen.
I expected anger.
Instead, I felt grief.
Not because Paul wasn’t my biological father.
Biology did not erase thirty years of childhood memories.
He had taught me to ride a bicycle.
He had sat beside my hospital bed when I had appendicitis.
He had paid for college.
He had walked me down the aisle.
Human beings were rarely simple enough to become monsters in every memory just because they had done something monstrous in another.
That was almost harder.
Ryan said, “Does this change how you remember him?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
That was the truth.
Then one final match appeared.
Estimated relationship:
Half sibling or full sibling.
Name:
Daniel Cole.
Ryan stopped breathing.
“He’s alive.”
The account had been active seven months earlier.
He was fifty-one years old.
Living less than four hundred miles away.
May you like
The brother we had been forbidden to ask about—
had been alive our entire lives.
