Chapter 3 - The First Report Had Used Someone Else’s DNA
We never opened the new envelope on the porch.
The chain around Maisie mattered more.
I called the police.
That decision changed the atmosphere immediately.
Callum protested.
“Brenna, don’t turn this into something bigger.”
I looked at the chain.
“Your mother already did.”
A neighbor who had attended the party found bolt cutters in the garage. An officer arrived before we used them and documented everything first.
Maisie was released without physical injury.
I carried her into the house.
She wrapped both arms around my neck and refused to let go.
Only after she was safe did I open the envelope.
Callum stood several feet away.
Lenore sat rigidly in a patio chair with an officer nearby.
The first page was simple.
Probability of paternity: greater than 99.99%.
Callum Whitmore was Maisie’s biological father.
Callum stared at the result.
Then at Maisie.
Then at me.
I should have felt vindicated.
I didn’t.
Because the second page was more disturbing.
The laboratory had compared Callum’s verified cheek-swab profile with the genetic profile associated with the specimen number on Lenore’s earlier home test.
They did not match.
Not slightly.
Not because of contamination.
They belonged to two different men.
The sample Lenore submitted as Callum had never been Callum’s DNA.
Callum’s face changed.
He slowly turned toward his mother.
“Whose sample did you use?”
Lenore said nothing.
I looked back at the report.
There was an additional note.
The false male profile had appeared before.
Same laboratory group.
Different case.
Fourteen years earlier.
And the older file also contained the surname:
Whitmore.
Callum sat down.
I could see him remembering something I had only heard about once during our marriage.
A college girlfriend.
A pregnancy.
A paternity test.
May you like
And a child Callum had spent fourteen years believing was not his.
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