The first time my sister asked for a DNA test, she was smiling.
That was what I remember most clearly when I think back to the morning everything broke apart. Not the lawyer’s office in downtown Chicago with its polished walnut table and its expensive silence. Not the gray weather pressing against the windows like the city itself was holding its breath. Not even the envelope that sat in front of Martin Chen, thick and cream-colored and heavy enough to ruin lives.
It was Alyssa’s smile.
She sat two chairs away from me in a black dress that looked carefully chosen to suggest grief without sacrificing beauty. Her legs were crossed at the ankle. Her blond hair fell in a perfect wave over one shoulder. One manicured hand rested on the table, and the diamond bracelet she had worn since college flashed every time she moved. She looked like the daughter of a wealthy Midwestern family was supposed to look at her father’s will reading: composed, elegant, touched by sorrow but not wrecked by it.
I looked like what I had always been in that family. The complication. The afterthought. The daughter who had never fit the picture.