My name is Claire, and for 21 years, I believed I knew what family meant. Family was Sunday dinners at my sister Emily’s house, where her daughter, Lily, would steal olives from the salad bowl while my son, Ethan, pretended not to laugh. Family was my husband, Richard, squeezing my shoulder from behind as he poured wine for everyone.
The family was ordinary.
Safe.
Until Lily ordered a DNA kit for fun.
“It’s just for ancestry,” she said that evening, waving the box at Ethan across our dining table. “Maybe we’re secretly Italian royalty.”
Ethan smirked. “With your luck, we’re probably 90 percent unpaid bills.”
Emily laughed, but I noticed Richard didn’t. He went still beside me, his fork hovering over his plate.