Chapter 7: Swab

I did not sleep.

At seven the next morning I sat in Odette's truck outside a walk-in lab in Lake Charles, holding a clipboard in my bandaged hand.

Odette had asked me once, at the kitchen table, whether I wanted the test.

I said yes before she finished the sentence.

"If it's no," she said now, "then you've lost nothing. And I'll still feed you."

"And if it's yes?"

She didn't answer.

She looked straight out the windshield with both hands tight on the wheel.

Inside, a technician with a ponytail swabbed the inside of my cheek and then Odette's.

"Two days for the rush," she said. "I'll call the number on the form."

"Two days," Odette repeated.

We went back out into the heat.

In the parking lot I stopped and looked at her.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"If I'm not her, are you going to be okay?"

She smiled, and it was the smile in the photograph, only tired.

"Honey, I've been okay for eighteen years. I know how to do it. What I don't know how to do is stand next to you and not hope."

I did not know what to say, so I took her hand.

It was the first time I had ever held a mother's hand because I wanted to.

We drove back to Westlake with the windows down.

I went to work with a bandage under my glove.

Luke put me on the labeling table, where I could use my good hand, and kept his eyes on his own work.

He was careful not to look at me, and I was careful not to notice that he was careful.

By two in the afternoon the whole line knew something was going on and was polite enough not to ask.

At three, the break room door opened and a girl in a pink sundress came in.

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