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My name was written across the front in Dad’s handwriting.
Inside were several documents.
The first was my birth certificate.
The second was an adoption decree dated thirty-four years earlier.
My name was on it.
So was my father’s.
I read the page twice before I understood what I was looking at.
Arthur Hayes was not my biological father.
He had adopted me when I was eleven months old.
I looked at Maya.
“I was adopted?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He intended to. But that isn’t the reason he hired me.”
There was another document in the envelope.
A DNA laboratory report.
I didn’t understand the names at first.
Then I saw one I recognized.
Jessica Miller.
My wife.
“What is this?”
Maya took a breath.
“Your father became concerned when he saw your wife’s mother’s maiden name on a Christmas card last year. He recognized the family.”
I kept reading.
Jessica’s mother was named Linda Miller.
My biological mother, according to the adoption records, was Linda Miller’s younger sister.
Rebecca.
I felt something cold move through my chest.
“No.”
Maya didn’t say anything.
I looked at the DNA report again.
The test did not say Jessica was my sister.
It said our DNA was consistent with a biological relationship in the range expected for first cousins.
I sat down.
For several seconds, all I could hear was the television mounted on the wall across the waiting room.
Some daytime show.
People laughing.
Applause.
Normal life happening twenty feet away.
“My wife is my cousin?”
“Biologically, the available records and DNA evidence strongly support that conclusion.”
I felt sick.
“How did my father get her DNA?”
“He didn’t secretly test her.”
Maya opened her folder.
“He first tested himself and you, with your permission sample from a genealogy kit you had previously taken and authorized for family matching. That confirmed he wasn’t your biological father. Then he located members of your biological mother’s family through the matching database. One of the close matches was connected to Jessica’s maternal family.”
I remembered the genealogy kit.
Jessica had bought us both one two Christmases earlier.
We laughed when mine came back with almost no close relatives.
I had forgotten about it.
Dad hadn’t.
“He spent months trying to make sure,” Maya said. “He didn’t want to accuse anyone based on a surname or an online family tree. The $1,000 was for certified adoption records, document fees, and my consultation.”
“Why didn’t he just tell me?”
“Because he was afraid you’d think he was trying to break up your marriage.”
That was exactly what Dad had said in my backyard.
Someone will say I’m confused or trying to interfere with your marriage.
I looked down at the last sheet in the envelope.
It wasn’t a legal document.
It was a letter.
Ethan,
If you’re reading this, I probably didn’t get the chance to explain it properly.
I should have told you years ago that I adopted you.
I was afraid.
Not that you would stop loving me. I was afraid you would start wondering whether I loved you less because you weren’t mine by blood.
So I kept waiting for the right time.
Then you became a teenager.
Then you went to college.
Then you got married.
There was always another reason to wait.
That was my mistake.
Your mother Rebecca was nineteen when she had you. She was struggling and couldn’t raise a child. I knew her through friends. I had already lost your mother—the woman I planned to marry—in an accident the year before.
When I heard Rebecca was considering adoption, I don’t know how to explain it except that I went to see you.
You grabbed my finger.
That was it.
You were my son.
Nothing that comes after this sentence changes that.
Last year, I realized Jessica’s family might be connected to Rebecca’s. I prayed I was wrong.
I wasn’t.
I didn’t want to humiliate Jessica. She may not know any of this either.
