Part 4
I enlarged the photograph until the laboratory seal and case numbers were clear. Both tests had used witnessed samples, and both reached the same conclusion. The old urology report had raised a question; the DNA results answered it.
I felt no triumph.
Derek’s certainty had collapsed, but two infants still needed an honest account of who their father might be. His humiliation was not justice for me, and their confusion would never be restitution.
Allison called before I could put the phone down. I nearly let it go to voicemail, then answered because there was one conversation I did not want filtered through Derek or Helen.
“Did he send you the results?” she asked.
“Yes.”
I heard a baby crying in the background and Allison’s whispered effort to soothe him. The ordinary tenderness of it made anger and compassion occupy the same narrow space inside me.
“Who is the other possible father?” I asked.
“Caleb Ward. We dated before I moved to Dayton.”
“Does he know?”
“No. I’m calling him tonight.”
“Call an attorney first. Those boys deserve better than another improvised version of the truth.”
Allison went quiet. When she spoke again, her voice had lost the frantic tone from the day of the photograph. “I deserve that.”
“This isn’t about what you deserve.”
She inhaled shakily. “I did believe they were Derek’s. The timing with Caleb was possible, but the doctor’s estimate matched the weekend Derek was here. I wanted that answer, so I treated it like certainty.”
Wanting an answer had governed more of our family than I understood. Helen wanted Derek protected from an old diagnosis. Derek wanted the twins to prove cancer had not taken anything permanent from him. Allison wanted the pregnancy to turn a hidden relationship into a legitimate one. For years, I had wanted our losses to be solvable if only I worked hard enough.
Evidence had no obligation to honor any of us.
“How long?” I asked. “How long were you with my husband?”
“Almost three years.”
I closed my eyes. “So when you stood beside us at our anniversary dinner last year—”
“Natalie, please.”
“Were you already sleeping with him?”
“Yes.”
The word was quiet and complete. I remembered Allison leaning into the anniversary photograph in my office, her shoulder against Derek’s while I set the camera timer. They had known what they were doing when they smiled beside me and complained that the restaurant lighting made all of us look tired.
“Why did you move?”
“I took the job because being near both of you had become impossible. Then Northline picked up the Dayton route, and he started coming more often.” She shifted the phone, and the crying softened. “When I found out I was pregnant, he said he would tell you. He kept saying he needed the right time.”
“You were pregnant with twins. How long did you think distance and a turned-off camera would hide that?”
“Only until he told you.” She admitted she had skipped Thanksgiving by claiming a respiratory infection and canceled a spring visit after her doctor restricted travel. On video calls, she kept the camera above her shoulders or said the connection was too weak for video. “Every month I thought the secret was almost over.”
I remembered worrying that Allison was depressed, mailing her groceries when she said she was too exhausted to shop, and asking Derek whether one of us should drive to Dayton. He had discouraged me each time. He said my sister needed space and that pressing her would only make her retreat further.
“Three weeks ago, he asked me to schedule another fertility consultation.”
Allison stopped breathing for a second. “He told me that was only cover. He said if he suddenly stopped talking about treatment, you would know something was wrong.”
The explanation was worse than if Derek had lied to both of us differently. He had understood exactly what another consultation meant to me—the examinations, the blood draws, the possibility of hope becoming another medical event—and had used it as camouflage.
“I thought he was trying to protect you until he could leave cleanly,” Allison said.
“There was never a clean way to do this.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew he was married then.”
She began to apologize. I let her finish once. She said she had envied the steadiness of my life, then convinced herself my marriage was already over because Derek described it as grief and obligation. She said she loved him. She said secrecy had narrowed her judgment until every new lie seemed necessary to protect the previous one.
Some of it might have been true. None of it returned my sister to me.
“I don’t hate your children,” I said. “But I’m not going to comfort you through the consequences of how they were conceived. Find out what Caleb needs to know. Get legal advice. Do not put another man’s name on anything until you have facts.”
“Will you ever speak to me again?”
“I’m speaking to you now. That is all I can promise.”
After I ended the call, Derek tried seven times. I silenced my phone and made myself eat half a bowl of soup at the kitchen counter. It was nearly nine when headlights moved across the living-room wall and stopped in my driveway. Through the glass beside the front door, I saw Derek standing on the porch. The old medical report was folded in one hand, the DNA results in the other. When I opened the door but kept my body in the frame, he looked at the papers as if they had brought him there. “They aren’t mine,” he said. “And none of this would have happened if my mother had told me the truth…”
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