about her anymore. It was about Lizzie, too.
‘We don’t have much to go on,’ she reminded him.
‘We have a name, and a picture. We have a place, a month, and a year.’
‘Roughly,’ she cautioned, because she had thought about this far more than he had. ‘My mother never said exactly when they were together, so it’s fine to count backward from the day I was born, but if she delivered me early or late, we could be wrong.’
‘You never asked?’
‘I was five when she died.’
‘Ellie Jo must know.’
‘She says no.’
‘What about your mom’s friends? Wouldn’t she have confided in them?’
‘I’ve asked before. I could ask again.’
‘Sooner rather than later, please.’
It was the please that bothered her – like this was a business matter, and she had let him down. She told herself it was only the Clarke seeping out through a crack in his otherwise human veneer, but tears filled her eyes. ‘I can’t do it now,’ she said. ‘I just had a baby.’
‘I’m not saying now.’ His cell phone vibrated. He looked at the ID panel. ‘Let me take this. It may help.’
Genevieve Falk was a geneticist whom Hugh had found years before when he needed a DNA expert for a case. She was intelligent and down-to-earth.
Now, standing at the window with the phone to his ear, he said a grateful, ‘Genevieve. Thanks for calling back.’
‘We’re on Nantucket, but you said it was urgent.’
‘I need your help. Here’s the scenario. A very white couple gives birth to a baby that has the skin and hair of an African American. Neither parents nor grandparents have remotely brown skin or curly hair. The assumption is that there’s an African-American connection further back – mabe a great-grandparent. Is this possible?’
‘Great-grandparent, singular? On only one side of the baby’s family? That’s not as probable as if there were such a relative on both sides.’
‘There isn’t. The baby’s father’s family is thoroughly documented.’
‘Was the mother adopted?’
‘No, but her father is an unknown quantity. In the one picture we have, he looks very blond.’
‘Looks don’t count, Hugh. Miscegenation has created generations of people with mixed blood. Some say that only ten percent of all African Americans today are genetically pure. If the other ninety percent have genetic material that is even partly white, and that material is further diluted with each level of procreation, not only would their features be white, but suddenly producing a child with African traits would be improbable.’
‘I don’t need to know what’s probable, only what’s possible,’ he said. ‘Is it possible for racial traits to lie dormant for several generations before reappearing? Can a light-skinned, blond-haired woman produce a child with non-Caucasian features?’
Genevieve sounded doubtful. ‘She can, but the odds are slim, especially if those several generations before were filled with blond-haired ancestors.’
Hugh tried again. ‘If, say, the baby’s grandfather was one-quarter black but passing for white, and the baby’s mother had no African-American features at all, could the baby inherit dark skin and tight curly hair?’
‘It would be rare.’
‘What are the odds?’
‘I can’t tell you, any more than we know the odds of a redhead appearing after several generations without.’
‘Okay. Then at what point would it become impossible?’
‘“Impossible” is not a word I like to use. Genetic flukes happen. Suffice it to say that the further back you have to look, the less probable your scenario becomes. Does the mom know of no black relatives?’
‘None.’
‘Then I’d suspect hanky-panky,’ Genevieve concluded bluntly. ‘Someone had an affair, and clearly it wasn’t the dad. Have your client do a DNA test to prove paternity. That would be the first and easiest line of attack. By the way, how’s your wife? Isn’t she due soon?’
*
Dana listened to Hugh’s half of the conversation with her eyes closed. She opened them the instant he ended the call. He looked so grim that her stomach began knotting. ‘Is it not possible?’
‘It is if your father has a healthy dose of African-American blood. The smaller that dose is, the more remote the chances.’
‘But it is possible,’ Dana repeated. ‘It has to be. I refuse to believe that if my father was first-or second-generation racially mixed, my mother wouldn’t have known. According to Gram Ellie, she truly didn’t know. Unless she was hiding it from everyone.’
Hugh stretched his neck, first to one side, then the other. ‘What Genevieve suggested,’ he said, ‘and this is a quote, is hanky-panky.’
‘Like the wife had an affair? Well, of course she suggested that. She’s used to working with you when you’re representing a client, and your clients aren’t saints. She would never have suggested it if she’d known you were talking about us. Why didn’t you tell her?’
‘Because it’s none of her business,’ he said. ‘And because I wanted an objective opinion.’
‘If you’d told her it was us, she might have been able to give an informed opinion.’
He made a sputtering sound. ‘They just don’t know the odds.’ Turning back to the window, he muttered, ‘I half wish you’d had an affair. At least, then, there’d be an explanation.’
‘So do I,’ Dana lashed back. ‘I’d like an explanation for why my mother died when I was five, or why my father never wanted to know about me, or why Gram Ellie’s Earl, who was the kindest, most loving person on earth, didn’t live to see me get married, but some of us don’t get explanations. Most of us aren’t privileged like you, Hugh.’
‘It’s just that this is all so bizarre. It’d be nice to have something concrete.’
‘Well, we don’t.’
He shot her a glance. ‘We will. If you talk to anyone who might have information on your father, even the slightest idea of where he was from, I’ll get Lakey on it. Will you ask? This is important, Dana. It isn’t idle curiosity. Promise me you will?’
Dana felt a stab of resentment. ‘I’m not blind. I see how important this is to you.’
‘It should be just as important to you,’ he shot back. ‘We wouldn’t be in this situation if you’d tracked your father down when you were young.’
‘And
