Saturday morning proved quiet, culminating in a late, drawn-out family breakfast around eleven, once Don and Miah had finished their morning tasks. It was a somber affair, cast in the shadows of the previous night’s drama.

“One of the hands found two shell casings this morning,” Don said. “Twenty-twos.”

“No shortage of those in Fortuity,” Casey said.

Miah nodded. “No sign of a dark truck on the roads last night, but the sheriff’s going to station patrolmen along the highway for the next few evenings.”

“That’s something,” Abilene offered.

Christine delivered a plate of toast to the center of the table and took a seat. “We’ve had more than enough excitement for one week. I won’t sleep until they catch this jerk. Oh—speaking of jerks, that rep you told me about e-mailed this morning,” she added to her husband and son. “You weren’t exaggerating when you said it was a hard sell.”

Casey tuned out as the topic shifted. He was seated next to Abilene, acutely aware of how close their legs were, and acutely aware of that awareness. He tried to blame his edginess on the stress of those looming DNA results, but some of this agitation had a distinctly pleasurable edge to it.

Ware came by that afternoon to see Abilene and the baby, and it went much like the first time, except they passed the hour in the den, not in privacy. Once he’d left and Casey had made sure Abilene was pleased with how the visit had gone, he shoved a sandwich in his face and headed out.

The sun disappeared behind the hills beside him as he drove toward the highway. Stop one this evening was the grocery store in the next town, and he hurried through the aisles with the cart. He imagined doing this with Mercy in the little seat someday. Would that be fun, or a total pain in the ass? Parenthood struck him as a muddy mix of both those things. Then he realized he’d better save such theorizing for an hour or two from now, once he knew if he had any business contemplating such a commitment. Too much to wrap his head around. Too much to hope for.

The sky was black by the time he got back to Fortuity, and he parked in front of his mom’s house and headed up the driveway with a bag of groceries under each arm.

No sign of Vince’s bike, but he passed Kim’s orange Datsun in the driveway then jogged up the steps to the side door, knocking before he barged in. “It’s just me,” he called. “I brought food.”

It was Nita who appeared from the den, not Kim. “Casey, this is a nice surprise.”

“Kim texted me a list this morning.” He set the bags on the counter and started unpacking them. “Christine offered to help Abilene so I could swing by.”

“And get a break from diaper duty, no doubt.” Nita grabbed the yogurt and cold cuts and took them to the fridge.

“I don’t mind that stuff.” Sure beat the heck out of straining at every little creak and crack in the old farmhouse, expecting imminent disaster. You’d have thought that crap would’ve ended with Ware now placated. “Where’s Vince?”

“Garage. Finishing up Abilene’s car, I think. Kim’s with him.”

“Cool. I need to take a phone call in a few minutes. Mind if I hole up in my old room?”

“Not at all. It’s still your house, too, you know.”

Maybe, Casey thought as he closed himself in his tiny childhood bedroom. But also not. It was still his single bed under the one window, still his faded Super Bowl XXXIII poster on the door. The walls were still painted bright blue, but he’d moved on. Kim had a load of her things in here now—random furniture and a bunch of photography equipment—and he welcomed the change. He had an uneasy relationship with his childhood. On the whole, it had been happy enough, he supposed, but he’d left it behind. And maybe it was the leaving it behind that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. His dad had taken off when the stress of family life had become too much for him. Casey had taken off when the reality of his mother’s decline had become too disturbing to bear. And when he thought hard enough about that parallel, the shame burned, and deep.

He pulled out his phone. Four minutes to six. Four more minutes, and the question that had been haunting him for five years or more would finally be answered. One phone call, and he’d know with more certainty than any vision could offer what his future would look like. Funny how he’d been only too capable of ignoring this shit for all those years, but now that the truth was about to come out, four minutes felt like fucking forever—

Brrrzzzz. His cell vibrated; then the chime kicked in. It took him three full rings before he brought his shaking thumb down and accepted the call.

“Hello?”

“Am I speaking with Casey?” asked a cheerful female voice.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Casey, good evening. This is Carrie Albini, calling from LifeMap. Does this time still work for you?”

“Yeah. Lay it on me.”

She laughed politely, and there was typing behind her voice. “Great. So I’m one of the analysts here at LifeMap, and it looks like we’re going to be consulting this evening about three different tests—yours and also Deirdre and Vincent. Is that correct?”

“That’s right. That’s me, my mom, and my brother.”

“Great. And I see we’ve got disclosure waivers all signed and ready to go, so let’s dig in. Now, in the mail you’re going to receive very, very detailed reports on all three tests, but when a client requests a personal consultation, it usually means they have some specific concerns they’d like to address. Is this correct, in your case?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Okay, great.” Man, she sure liked the word great. “Where would you like to focus our thirty minutes together, then?”

“Well,” he said, sitting on the edge of his old bed, “my mom’s, um . . . Her mental health is declining. She’s never been diagnosed by a doctor, though.”

“Okay, let’s take a look.” More typing and clicking. “I see here in the APOE allele for her test that, yes, she does carry the gene for non-Alzheimer’s dementia.”

He nodded, no words coming. Luckily, the woman went on.

“Are you curious to know if you also have this gene?” she prodded gently, voice lilting upward.

“Yeah. I am.”

More clicking—easily three hours’ worth of clicking, it felt like.

“I have good news for you, Casey. You and your mother do not share that gene.”

He froze, eyes glued to a dark patch on the carpet. “We don’t?”

“No, you do not.”

“How sure are you?”

She laughed. “Ninety-nine-point-many-nines sure. Genetic testing is extremely accurate.”

“Dude,” he said, and flopped back on his covers. “You have no fucking clue how much of a relief it is to hear that.” Such a relief, he felt tears welling in his eyes, snot building in his sinuses. He sat up and wiped his lashes dry.

“I can only imagine,” she said.

“And my brother—is he cool, too?”

More typing. “Yes, your brother also doesn’t share it. Though of course your chances on that one were a bit less nerve-racking, I’m going to bet.”

Casey frowned, confused. It wasn’t as though she knew about him getting spells and Vince not. “Why do you say that?”

Silence—a pause deep enough to park a car in.

“Hello?”

“Sorry.” Click click click, tap tap tap. “You do know that you and Vincent don’t share a biological mother, correct?”

He stared at the carpet stain, blank. “’Scuse me?”

“Deirdre is not Vincent’s mother. Not genetically speaking.”

“The fuck?”

Another pause. “I take it this is news to you . . . You have the same father of course,” she went on quickly, like that even fucking mattered.

Fucking fuck, but Casey had always known the two of them couldn’t be full-blooded brothers. They didn’t look a thing alike. But all this time he’d hoped it was because he must have a different dad, somebody way better than the asshole who’d left them . . .