The DNA Test
Chapter 06 - The DNA Test
I read the petition three times.
Richard was claiming Lucy was his daughter.
My niece.
My husband's child.
The world did not explode.
That would have been easier.
Instead, the refrigerator continued humming.
Cars passed outside.
Lucy sat at my kitchen table eating cereal while I learned that my entire marriage might have been built on a lie.
I didn't tell her.
Not yet.
The family court ordered an expedited DNA test.
Richard arrived with three attorneys.
I arrived with Lucy and a lawyer I trusted.
When Richard saw us, he smiled.
That smile made me want to break something.
The results came forty-eight hours later.
Probability of paternity: 99.99 percent.
I sat alone in my car afterward.
For almost an hour.
I thought about Caroline.
About Richard.
About every anniversary dinner.
Every Christmas.
Every time he had told me my sister destroyed our family.
Then the anger turned toward Caroline.
Had she slept with my husband?
Had Lucy been born while Richard and I were married?
Had my sister been hiding the ultimate betrayal?
That night, I opened the old photograph again.
On the back was a date.
I compared it to Lucy's birth certificate.
Then I checked my wedding date.
The numbers did not fit Richard's story.
Lucy had been conceived nearly a year before Richard and I met.
Caroline hadn't stolen my husband.
Richard had been with my sister first.
And he had hidden it from me.
The question was why.
The answer came from Lucy.
She was sitting on my bed when she said, "Mom said Dad didn't want a baby."
I froze.
"She called Richard your dad?"
Lucy shook her head.
"She never called him Dad."
"What did she call him?"
Lucy looked down.
"The man who wanted Grandma's company."
I felt cold.
My mother's company had been worth millions before it collapsed after her death.
Richard had been the attorney who managed the liquidation.
Suddenly, Caroline's disappearance wasn't a family scandal anymore.
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It was a business strategy.
And I had spent eleven years sleeping beside the man who benefited most from it.
