That fact alone did not surprise me.
Dad had been alive then, and he had signed the consent forms attached to the report.
The name of the second person did.
It was not me.
It was Fiona.
My sister stepped backward and struck the edge of a chair.
“That is impossible.”
Dr.
Walsh handed her the consent page.
Dad had requested a comparison between himself and Fiona, not between himself and me.
The result excluded him as her biological father.
No one spoke.
The rain seemed louder.
The hotel’s old lights hummed above us.
Somewhere beyond the dining room, a staff member dropped a piece of cutlery, and the sharp metallic sound made Fiona flinch.
She read the page again.
Then again.
“This is wrong,” she whispered.
Mum began to cry, but not with surprise.
Fiona looked at her.
“You knew?”
Mum pressed both hands against the table.
“I knew there was a possibility.”
“A possibility?”
“You were born before your father and I married.
I told him the truth.
He chose to raise you.
He chose to be your father.”
Fiona’s face changed so completely that I almost did not recognize her.
The smugness disappeared first.
Then the anger.
What remained was a frightened expression I had seen only once before, when we were children and she lost sight of Mum in a crowded market.
“You let me believe—”
“We let you believe that the man who loved you was your father,” Mum said.
“Because he was.”
Fiona shook her head.
“No.
You lied.”
“Your father wanted to tell you when you were older,” Mum replied.
“Then he became ill.
Every time we tried, he asked for more time.”
Dr.
Walsh gathered the loose pages into a neat stack.
“Your grandmother did not order these tests to rank one daughter above another,” he said.
“She was trying to preserve medical information and prevent a family secret from being weaponized.”
The irony was impossible to miss.
Fiona had spent the evening trying to cast me out of the family with a secret that belonged to her.
One of our uncles finally spoke.
“Did Dad treat you differently?” he asked her.
Fiona stared at him.
“No.”
“Did he leave you less?”
“No.”
“Did he ever call you anything except his daughter?”
Her mouth tightened.
