Chapter 10: Who Gets the Forty Percent

My family had come to stand in the front hall, all eight of them, and not one had said a word.

I held out my hand for the page.

The lawyer hesitated, and Torsten nodded, and he gave it to me.

It was one sheet with a laboratory's letterhead and a chart of numbers.

I read it standing up, the way I read everything.

"This lab isn't the lab from May," I said.

"It's a more rigorous facility," said the lawyer.

"It's dated yesterday. The first report was dated in May. Same sample, two answers." I looked up. "Which one of them is lying?"

"Hattie," Torsten said sadly. "Science is not a matter of accusations."

"Then let's do the sums."

I turned to Eliana, who was standing very small beside Barrett, and held out my other hand.

She gave me the gray folder without a word.

I found the older order form and held it up where all of them could see it.

"This is dated the third of March," I said. "It has the same case number as May."

I put my finger on the request line.

"Torsten asked for it, three months before he told any of you he knew."

Lydia made a small sound.

"He told us last Thursday," she said.

"He told you last Thursday."

"I was waiting for the right moment," Torsten said, quite gently. "These things require care."

"The note on the form says hold all results until Eliana's twenty-fifth birthday. Why?"

Nobody spoke.

My father had taken a slow step forward, and the older twin's jaw was working.

"Maybe I can help," said Barrett, in his surgeon's voice.

"There's a clause in the family trust."

"Go on," I said.

"Forty percent of Ashgrove Marine goes to the blood daughter on her twenty-fifth birthday."

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