Chapter 19: A Key, Not a Deed

The family lawyer read the result at the lake house kitchen table, and nobody had to stand in a courtroom for it.

He had taken my sample himself, with my father watching.

The kit came sealed from an independent lab, and nobody else had touched it.

My father sat across from me with both hands wrapped around a mug of plain coffee, which he had made himself.

Leander leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed.

"Gregory Ashcroft is the biological father of Marin Ashcroft," the lawyer read. "The probability is above ninety-nine point nine nine percent."

He put the page down.

"The earlier report," he added, "was collected by one person and carried by one person, and I will say in front of a judge that I do not trust it."

My father's mug trembled. Coffee slopped onto the table.

"I knew," he said. "I knew from the first morning she was born. She had my mother's mark. I never doubted."

"Dad."

"I let her say it on that stage, and I stood there." His eyes were wet. "I'll spend what's left of my mind making that right."

I went around the table and put my arms around him. He smelled of soap and old wool.

"You came to the dinner," I said. "You stood up. That counts."

He held on longer than he ever had.

Helen was in a hotel two towns over, with her own lawyers and a doctor's note.

No one had charged her yet.

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