« Maybe it’ll help me find my real parents someday. »
She said it casually, the way she’d learned to talk about her adoption.
« Sure, honey, » I said, and I told myself it was nothing.
Chris thought it was fun. He talked about his ancestry and made jokes about being descended from royalty, while Susan rolled her eyes and I laughed along with them.
We mailed the samples off and forgot about them.
The results had been mailed directly to Susan, and I hadn’t seen them yet. The day they arrived, something was wrong with her.
She ate dinner without saying much. She kept her eyes on her plate whenever I looked her way. Then she asked Chris if they could talk. Just the two of them.
Something was wrong with her.
I stayed in the kitchen and listened to the door close down the hall, followed by the low murmur of voices and then, clearly and unmistakably, Susan crying.
I didn’t understand what was going on.
