Chapter 4 - Callum Had Lost a Son Before He Ever Met Me
Her name was Rachel Morgan.
Callum dated her during his final year of college.
The relationship ended badly.
Two months later, Rachel told him she was pregnant.
Callum wanted a test after the baby was born.
Lenore took control immediately.
She found the laboratory.
She arranged the samples.
She handled the paperwork.
Callum was twenty-three and still financially dependent on his parents.
He trusted his mother.
The result excluded him.
Rachel insisted it was wrong.
Lenore told Callum:
“She’s trying to trap you.”
Rachel demanded another test.
Lenore refused to pay for it.
Callum did not have the courage to challenge his mother.
Eventually Rachel left the state with her baby.
Callum told me the story once, years into our marriage.
Not proudly.
But with the exhausted certainty of someone who believed science had closed the question.
I remembered asking:
“Did you ever meet the child?”
“Once.”
“Did he look like you?”
Callum had gone quiet.
Then said:
“Doesn’t matter. The test was negative.”
Now he was sitting beside our daughter’s birthday decorations holding proof that his mother had submitted somebody else’s DNA in Maisie’s test.
And the laboratory had identified the same unknown male profile in the test from fourteen years earlier.
Callum’s voice came out barely above a whisper.
“You did this before.”
Lenore stood abruptly.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Callum held up the report.
“This exact profile was used in Rachel’s case.”
“That proves nothing.”
“It proves whoever was tested wasn’t me.”
Lenore looked at me.
Hatred replaced fear.
“You had no right digging into private family matters.”
That sentence told us more than a denial ever could.
She wasn’t asking whether the old test had been manipulated.
May you like
She was furious that we had found it.
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