She scrunches up her face at me and looks down at her phone again.

I hold out the form. “You need to fill this out. I don’t know your address. I have to have the results mailed somewhere. And I can’t have them sent here.”

She grabs the form and studies it, shaking her head. “I don’t want my name on that thing.”

“Well, we can’t put mine on it. Jeez, it’s for mailing purposes. It’s no big deal.”

I take a pen from my bag and hand it to her. With an aggravated sigh, she snatches it from my hand, plops onto her stomach on the bed, and starts writing.

I open one swab, swipe my mouth and put it back into the foil. There, done. Now I just have to figure out how to swipe Khloe’s cheek without Aarsi or Krystal seeing me.

My legs start jiggling as I wait for Zoe to finish filling out the form. “Do you think this is really going to work? What if it’s just a racket and doesn’t work?”

She frowns, double-checking the form as she chews on the end of the pen. “Of course it’s going to work. They wouldn’t sell these tests if they didn’t work. Besides, I saw this on an episode of Law & Order. This girl wanted to prove some rich guy was her father, but he wouldn’t take the test, so she tracked down her half brother and did a kinship test. Great episode. Riveting.”

Really, Zoe?

Your big idea came from TV?

Oh well, it’s probably better than anything we could think up. They do research those cop dramas pretty well.

“Are you done yet with that form?”

“Uh-huh. I think so,” she says with a nod. “We need to write down which tester belongs to which one of you.”

“No we don’t. We’re only sending two.”

Her eyes light up. “Yep. That’s right. We can skip that step.”

I sigh and rise from the bed. “Here’s the step we can’t skip. We’ve got to figure out a way to get Khloe away from Aarsi.”

I leave the box, the form, and the extra testers on the bed, and slip a fresh one for Khloe into my pocket. She’s got to nap sometime.

Back in the family room, I sink down on the sofa close to Krystal and Zoe does it again—hangs back in the kitchen, hovering and anxious.

Krystal turns her face to look at me. “What?”

I shrug, innocent. “What are you talking about?”

“Why are you sitting behind me, staring at me?”

I make a face. “I’m your sister. Where should I be?”

Krystal rolls her eyes, slaps shut her laptop, and leaves the room. Aarsi continues reading her textbook, glancing at me in between highlighting.

“Where do you go to school?”

She lifts her face. “UCLA. I’m in graduate school.”

“I thought you were younger than that. What are you studying?”

“Environmental economics.”

“Why? Do you plan to cure the world’s inequalities through wealth redistribution like every other college airhead out there too ashamed to admit they’re in college so they can make money? Or do you really believe all that shit about micro-managing fairness?”

She slams shut her book.

Ah.

I’ve pissed her off.

“I need to make the boys their lunch. Can you sit with Khloe for a while? She refuses to sleep today.”

Winning.

I smile. “Sure.”

I wait until she’s down the hallway.

I rip open the foil and pull out the stick. “Zoe, keep watch. Make sure she doesn’t see me.”

A loud frustrated sigh comes from the kitchen, but she moves from the counter to the doorway as a lookout.

I stare down into my sister’s face and I feel it, an out of nowhere jab that this is wrong—damn it, Zoe, thanks a lot—but I gently ease the tip into Khloe’s mouth anyway. She just stares up at me with Mom’s giant blue eyes. I quickly take the tester away and shove it into the foil.

Not even a tear from Khloe. For some reason that makes me feel lousier about doing this. Her trust is an absolutely shaming thing.

I kiss her on the forehead. “I’m sorry, baby girl.”

I cross to the kitchen. “Play with Khloe while I get everything ready to mail.”

Zoe shakes her head at me, but goes into the family room and sinks down on the carpet close to my sister.

My pulse is beating double time as I make my way down the hall. I’ve got everything I need for undeniable, irrevocable truth, but it doesn’t feel the way I thought it would.

I’m nervous. Agitated. Afraid and sad.

Maybe Bobby is right. Maybe it’s not always a good thing to know everything. Doing that to Khloe definitely felt wrong.

I’m angry that they’ve lied to me.

Does that make this right?

I’m not at all certain anymore, and halfway to convincing myself to toss everything in the trash and not do it.

I step into my room.

“Kaley! What is wrong with you?”

My heart stops.

Krystal.

Sitting on my bed with the box.

And what the fuck has she done with my testers?

“How dare you come into my room and snoop?” I snap, rummaging through the wrappers and used test sticks on the bed.

Oh God.

They’re all ripped open.

I don’t know which one is mine.

Krystal springs to her feet. “Tell me what’s going on or I’m calling Mom.”

I whirl on her. “You call Mom, if you so much as breathe one word of this to anyone, and so help me, I’ll never speak to you again.”

Her eyes cloud over, stricken. “Sneaking around the house and now this. What is it you’re trying to prove?”

I let out a ragged breath. “Duh, Krystal, you can’t be that dumb. I want to know if Khloe and I are half sisters or whole sisters. I have a right to know and you don’t have a right to stop me.”

I do another frantic study of the testing kit. Shit, why did she mess up the sticks? I can’t tell which one I used and which ones she destroyed.

She tries to stop my hands. “Then ask Mom. Don’t do this. Something terrible will happen if you do.”

I drop Khloe’s sample into the mailing envelope and then, carefully one by one, the others. “I’m mailing it off. And you’re not stopping me.”

“Do you know how wrong this is?”

I give her the stare. “Yeah. About as wrong as you thinking messing with the other testers would matter.”

She crosses her arms, challengingly. “Oh no, I didn’t just open them. I used them for their intended purpose. One of those is Eric’s. One of those is Ethan’s. One of those is mine.”

“What?” I frown. Why would she do that?

She shoves her face close to mine. “That’s how wrong this is, Kaley. Swabbing all of us is as wrong as you only swabbing yourself and Khloe and thinking that makes it OK. This is bad. It’s wrong. You can’t do this without hurting all of us. You didn’t even think of that, did you?”

I seal the mailing envelope. “For a genius, Krystal, you are pretty not-smart at times. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know which tester is which. I’m just mailing all of them off. All I need is two to match. Bingo. I win.”

She looks away, lower lips quivering and on the verge of tears as if she’s struggling hard against saying something she doesn’t want to tell me.

“It’s too late, Krystal. And I have a right to know who my father is.”

Her eyes are giant, frightened, glassy saucers in her face when she looks at me. “For a genius, you are pretty not-smart at times yourself. Don’t do this, Kaley. Please. I’m begging you. You’re going to ruin everything.”

CHAPTER 20

Zoe pulls into the curb in front of Velvet Jones, and puts the car in neutral.

I check my texts. No answer from Bobby. My internal panic grows more severe. It’s probably nothing. I’m just being paranoid. So he didn’t text me back when I texted him two hours ago. He’s out having fun with the guys. It was all good when he called me this morning. His not rapid-fire answering now is nothing to get all butt-hurt over.

Crap, I’m probably just freaking over this because I’ve been a tight bundle of nerves since I mailed off the kinship test. Chaotic. Afraid. Regretful. And really confused. So not the reaction I expected being this close to having the proof that Alan is my dad.