The Moment of Truth

“My mother knew she was pregnant when she married Daniel, but she didn’t tell him.”

Whoa. “Did she think the baby was his?”

It was dark out. There were very few streetlights on the road they’d taken. But he could still see the shake of Dana’s head. “She knew she was pregnant before she slept with Daniel.”

“That’s rough.”

“She didn’t tell him after I was born, either,” Dana continued, marching forward with her hands shoved in her pockets, her head bent against the cold. “He thought I was his.”

“When did he find out?”

He was assuming the other man knew, since Dana did. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe Daniel had just found out...

“The same time I did.” Dana put an end to his theory before it was even fully formulated. “I was thirteen. We were on a father-daughter field trip with school. We’d gone to a forensic museum and were the first ones to raise our hands when they asked for volunteers for a DNA demonstration.”

Holy hell. He knew what was coming and couldn’t imagine.

“While forensic DNA tests take a long time because of all of the steps involved, the test to actually compare one sample to another only takes about thirty-five minutes to run. That’s a total of an hour and ten minutes for two samples. They sent us off to lunch and told us that when we came back after lunch they’d show us how our DNA is connected.”

They were up to a brisk walk. Josh put his arm around Dana. She didn’t settle into him as Michelle would have done. But she didn’t shrug him off, either.

“Instead, they came into the lunch room and found us. They took Daniel aside and talked to him while I waited with another technician in the lab. He was my best friend in the world when he walked off. And a stranger when he came back.”

“He did not put that on you.”

“No. He was kind. Just in shock.”

“So who told you what they’d found?”

“My mom. Later that night. We finished the field trip. The technician told everyone that the sample had been destroyed in the testing and they used that as an example of how sensitive the tests can be and how expensive, and moved us quickly on to the next exhibit. I couldn’t tell you what it was. I don’t remember much else about the day except Daniel acting so weird. I couldn’t figure out why he was so upset that they’d destroyed our test.”

“I respect the fact that he waited to talk to your mother before saying anything to you.”

“He’s a good man,” Dana said without any of the obvious affection he’d heard in her tone when she’d been telling the first part of the story. “And I love my mother, too,” she said. “She made a mistake. And she’s spent the rest of her life paying for it.”

“Did Daniel divorce her? They’d have had your two sisters by then, right?”

“Yeah, and no, they didn’t divorce. They love each other. But that day changed our lives completely. My sisters changed as soon as they found out. I’d always been the oldest, of course, but also the boss of them. They no longer listened to me like they used to. My mother’s lie is there, like a member of the family. Daniel lost his ability to trust.”

And maybe Dana had, too?

They turned another corner and were back on a sidewalk but the yards were still an acre or more in size, and the streetlights low. He pulled her a little closer so they could fit side by side on the poured cement.

“From that day forward, Daniel has been unsure if Mom married him because of me, because she was afraid to be a pregnant single woman, because she wanted a father for her child and a wedding ring for her finger when she gave birth or because she really fell in love with him like he’d fallen in love with her.”

“I can understand that.”

“I can, too. Completely. And ever since then, he’s had this thing where he puts her in situations where she has to choose between him and me. She has to prove that she’d put him first. That he was the reason she married him, not me.”

“You can’t possibly ask a woman to choose between her child and her husband.”

“Sure you can. It happens all the time. Especially in blended families. But it’s not fair to anyone involved.”

“You think they would have been better off if they’d divorced?”

“I can’t make that call.”

“You think you would have been better off?”

“I don’t know that, either. I just know that my life changed that day. I wasn’t really a Harris. And I didn’t know what I was.”

“Daniel loved you, though. That couldn’t have changed.”