My Husband's DNA Test Said Our Baby Wasn't His novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Excluded
At Sunday dinner her husband sets a DNA report beside her plate, and Emme walks out with her baby, then finds the envelope was opened before dinner.
At six o'clock on Sunday, my father-in-law tapped his steak knife against his glass.
Every fork at the long table went down.
"Friday," he said. "My lawyer's coming out with the new trust and a box of cheek swabs."
He had announced it at his seventieth birthday last March.
Now he said it again, slower, for the people in the back.
Every grandchild would be swabbed against him, in the lawyer's office, before one dime of the ranch moved.
The ranch passed to his own blood. Nobody else.
My husband sat beside me with his napkin still folded.
Our son was asleep on my shoulder, warm and heavy, four months old.
My husband stood up.
"Dad, you can skip the box for the baby," he said. "I had him tested last week. Figured I'd save everybody the trouble."
He set a long white envelope on the tablecloth.
He didn't set it in front of his father. He set it beside my plate.
I thought it was a kindness. I thought he wanted me to see it first.
A strip of clear tape ran across the flap.
I peeled it back with one hand and unfolded the page against the edge of the table.
At the top was a lab's name, Brazos Genetic Partners, and an address in Waco.
Under it, in black, it said: PROBABILITY OF PATERNITY: 0%.
Under that was one word in bold. EXCLUDED.
I read it three times.
Then I looked up, because I was sure someone was about to laugh.
Nobody did.
My mother-in-law laid her hands flat in her lap.
My brother-in-law's wife drew both of her little girls against her sides.
My father-in-law, Harlan Stallworth, looked at my son like a calf that wasn't worth the feed.
"Who is he?" he said to me.
"He's Floyd's," I said. My voice came out steady, which surprised me. "He's your grandson."
Floyd didn't shout.
His eyes filled, and he sat back down and said, so quietly I almost missed it, "I didn't want to believe it either, Emme."
"Then don't," I said. "Look at me. Don't."
He looked at the tablecloth.
Harlan pushed his chair back, and the legs scraped on the tile.
He was seventy-one and still the biggest man in any room.
"Marlene, get the baby's carrier," he said. "The boy stays with family until we know whose family he is."
Marlene didn't move.
Harlan didn't seem to notice.
Eli stirred, and his small fist found my collar and held on.
I stood up.
My knees were shaking, so I locked them.
I backed toward the dining room door with my son against my chest.
"I have never touched another man," I said. "Not one. Swab anyone you like."
Floyd's brother laughed once through his nose.
"Every woman says that," Harlan said. "We'll test every man who was at my birthday. Start with the ones she knew."
Someone came in from the living room, where the basketball game was still going.
It was Doc Barksdale, with a plate of pie balanced on his knee.
He had been the Stallworths' doctor for forty years, and he had delivered both brothers.
He had delivered Eli too.
My own father died four years ago, a month before my wedding, and Doc Barksdale had walked me down the aisle.
He picked the report up off the table and pushed his glasses up his nose.
He read it slowly, rubbing the small pit at the top of his right ear with his thumb, which he always did when he was thinking.
Then he set it down and stepped between Harlan and me.
His voice stayed low and even.
"A baby doesn't leave his mother's arms at my friend's table, Harlan. Sit down."
Harlan sat.
Doc walked me out to my car with his hand on my back.
He opened the rear door and buckled Eli into the car seat himself.
He pulled each strap once, then again, the way he had shown me in his office when I was still crying over every negative test.
"I'm on your side, kiddo," he said. "I have been since the day you walked in."
I nodded. I couldn't talk.
He eased the door shut so it wouldn't wake Eli, and he went back inside.
I sat behind the wheel with the engine off.
Through the big front window I could see the dining room.
Floyd had his face in his hands, and his mother was clearing my plate.
I smoothed the report flat on my thigh and squared its edges with my fingers.
Then I picked up the envelope and tilted it to the porch light.
Under the tape, the flap had a crease down the middle.
It was sharp, the kind you make with a fingernail when you fold something open very carefully.
Somebody had opened this and sealed it again before dinner.
At the bottom of the report were two lines of small print I had missed.
Sample collected: Thursday. Barksdale Family Medicine.
On Thursday I had driven Floyd to Doc's office myself, because his truck was in the shop.
He had told me he was getting a flu shot.
Nobody had told me Doc was running the test.
I started the car.
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