Chapter 3
Because I didn’t know which hurt worse—the possibility that my husband doubted me or the knowledge that my sister had successfully planted that doubt.
Then Loretta called him.
His mother had heard Marlo’s jokes through a cousin.
She did not call me.
She called her son.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
That was what she asked him.
Elias told me afterward.
“She says she’s only worried.”
“About what?”
He rubbed his face.
“She thinks I trust people too easily.”
I laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“People?”
He looked away.
Then his brother Beckett started making comments.
Ren didn’t have Elias’s nose.
Ren’s eyes were shaped differently.
Ren was so fair.
Ren’s hair was impossible.
Every insignificant detail became evidence.
And the more Elias defended us, the more people acted as though he were refusing to see the obvious.
A lie repeated often enough had begun to sound like a question.
And questions, when repeated long enough, could become suspicion.
By Thanksgiving, I barely recognized my marriage.
Marlo arrived carrying a small rectangular box wrapped in cartoon baby paper.
She placed it beside the turkey like it was another centerpiece.
“What’s that?”
Mom asked.
Marlo grinned.
“A family activity.”
She opened the box.
Inside was a DNA test.
“Every family deserves a little honesty during the holidays.”
Elias stood so violently his chair scraped backward across the hardwood floor.
Mom shouted Marlo’s name.
Beckett stared at his plate.
Marlo laughed.
“What?
Come on!”
Elias walked outside.
I followed.
He was sitting in our car with the engine off.
His hands were wrapped around the steering wheel.
His shoulders shook.
I opened the passenger door.
“Elias?”
He didn’t answer.
Then I realized he was crying.
Not furious.
Not shouting.
Crying.
“I hate this,” he whispered.
I sat beside him.
He stared through the windshield.
“I know Ren is mine.”
My throat tightened.
“Then why are we sitting out here?”
“Because she keeps saying it.”
He wiped his face.
“My mom asks questions.
Beckett makes comments.
Your sister sends jokes.
Everybody notices her hair.
It’s like there’s this hole in my head now, and every stupid comment drops into it.”
I said nothing.
Then came the sentence I would remember for years.
“Maybe we should just take the test.”
I turned toward him.
“What?”
“Then everyone shuts up.”
“You mean
you
shut up.”
His face fell.
“That isn’t what I meant.”