Chapter 8: Inclusion

I opened the email at my aunt's kitchen table with my thumb shaking over the screen.

Mother: Emmeline Stallworth.

Child: Eli Stallworth.

Alleged father: Floyd Stallworth.

Probability of paternity: 99.99%.

The word beside it wasn't EXCLUDED. It was INCLUDED, in the same bold black letters.

I read it three times, and this time I knew why.

My aunt came and read it over my shoulder. She didn't say a word.

She went to the printer in the hall and fed it paper, and it hummed for five pages.

Then she took her keys off the hook.

"Put the baby's good sweater on," she said. "We're going to a meeting."

The lawyer's office sat on the courthouse square in a brick building with a brass plate by the door.

Every Stallworth truck in the county was parked out front.

I carried Eli up the steps against my chest.

My aunt walked behind me without the shotgun. She had left it in the truck under a feed sack, and she had told me so twice.

The conference room had a table that could seat sixteen.

Harlan sat at the head with his hat on the table in front of him.

Marlene sat on his right, her hands folded.

Floyd's brother and his wife sat across from her, with their little girls left at home for once.

The lawyer, a narrow man with his sleeves rolled, was setting a white box in front of the empty chair.

It was full of sealed swab kits.

Doc Barksdale sat at Harlan's left.

He looked up when I came in, and his face changed four times in a second.

Floyd stood by the window.

He wore the pearl-snap shirt I'd ironed for his father's birthday. He had not sat down.

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