briefly. “Then what?”
Then, Sierra said, she had compared her DNA results to millions of others on a variety of online databases.
Lucy frowned. “Surely you couldn’t get on— I don’t know. Whatever one law enforcement uses. Isn’t that the main one?”
Sierra’s sky-blue eyes gave a betraying flicker. Lucy recognized it. Aghast, she whispered, “You didn’t.”
Her foster daughter was going through a Goth phase. Currently her hair, shoulder length and blunt cut, was dyed blue, a change from last year’s jet-black. A tattoo of a dragon twined around one slender ankle. Her nose and one eyebrow were pierced. More piercings climbed the rim of each ear. Lucy had nixed the idea of a tongue piercing until, at a minimum, Sierra turned eighteen. Fortunately, she’d taken the refusal in good humor.
The thing was, she was brilliant. Scary smart. At home she was rarely without her fingers on a computer keyboard. She carried her laptop everywhere. Screens constantly popped up as friends sent instant messages. They didn’t seem ever to talk; they communicated in a sort of bizarre shorthand via the internet. Lucy knew that Sierra was very, very good at hacking in to forbidden websites; she’d gotten into big trouble while in eighth grade for changing a friend’s marks in the school records. When telling Lucy about it recently, she’d said blithely, “It was easy. Hey, I did them a favor! They’ve at least made it a little harder now.”
Lucy had not pursued the subject. Had there been more recent incursions into the school district personnel or student records, she didn’t really want to know about it. What worried her were Sierra’s exact capabilities now, almost three years later.
Now gazing sunnily back at Lucy, Sierra said, “Um…I didn’t have to. I bet I could, though. It’s called CODIS. Combined DNA Index System. You can do partial-match searches in it, too. Haven’t you read about it? The American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t think cops should be able to compare, like, some guy’s brother’s DNA to the sperm taken from a raped woman.”
Lucy grappled with that. “You mean, if I had a brother who’d raped a woman, my DNA could be matched to his sperm?” She heard her voice rising.
“Sure. I mean, it wouldn’t be a perfect match. That’s what a partial match is. See, that’s what I did.”
She went on to explain that there were DNA databases for all kinds of reasons. Some were medical, for people trying to find a match who might donate an organ, or bone marrow. Others were for people into genealogy. DNA was a new way to track family and ancestors.
“So I found this woman in Seattle.” Her pretty face was aglow with enthusiasm. “She’s a really close match. Then I did more research, and I found out she and her husband had two kids. One was a girl, one a boy. He’s the right age, and he went to college at the UW.”
Lucy found herself nodding numbly. The University of Washington was in Seattle, less than an hour northwest of Kanaskat, where Lucy had her home and business. Sierra’s mother had grown up in the Seattle area and never left, and had presumably used a local fertility clinic.
“And…this man. He’s still around here.”
“Yes!” The teenager indulged in another delighted dance. “It’s just got to be him. I know it is.”
Lucy couldn’t argue on a factual basis, given her relative ignorance of DNA testing and profiling and online databases. And, heck, genealogy.
Maybe I could find my father.
A little shocked that the thought had even flitted through her mind, she almost snorted. Like she’d want to find him.
“Sierra,” she said, “this man gave sperm with the understanding he’d remain anonymous. The deal was never that he’d actually take any kind of parental responsibility.”
For a timeless, stricken moment, Sierra’s crystal clear eyes held Lucy’s. Then the girl ducked her head and her blue hair swung down to hide her face. Lucy felt cruel.
“I know,” Sierra said in a small voice. “I just, um, want to meet him. And see. That’s all.” She lifted her face, a pleading expression on it. “He might like to meet me. I mean, wouldn’t you think he’d be curious? It’s not like I expect him to actually want me.”
“I want you,” Lucy said quietly.
Her foster daughter gave her a tremulous smile and her eyes filled with tears. “I know. I know how lucky I am. I love living with you, Lucy. It would just be nice to have family who would, like, call sometimes. Care if I get accepted into college. You know?”
A lump filled Lucy’s throat. She knew.
Sierra’s mother, Rebecca Lind, had died in a head-on car accident eight months ago. She’d never had any other children. She did have a brother, who lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When social services contacted him, he’d said there was no way he and his wife could take on a teenage girl. The social worker had privately told Lucy that his exact words had been “For God’s sake, I haven’t seen Becky in twenty-five years. We didn’t even try to stay in touch after Mom died. It’s too bad about the accident, but I can’t take on some kid of hers.”
The last thing a grief-stricken fifteen-year-old had needed was to be rejected by the only relative she had left in the world. At the time, Sierra had begun working on Saturdays for Lucy, cleaning and stocking shelves. After her mom died, she’d stayed temporarily with a friend. She had come by midweek to tell Lucy she wouldn’t be able to make it to work anymore.
Lucy hadn’t seen her since the funeral. She’d looked awful. Her hair had been dyed black at the time, but the pale roots were showing. A tall, skinny girl, she looked as if she’d dropped ten pounds in two weeks. She was gaunt, and her eyes were puffy, and her fingers writhed together while she talked.
“I’m being sent to a foster home in Midford,” she said. Even her voice was dull. Her thin shoulders moved in a listless shrug. “They tried to find one here so I could stay in the same school, but I guess there weren’t any.”
Lucy was still in shock that the aunt and uncle had said no. Hearing that they had refused made her mad. No, worse than that. It made her ache inside for this gawky child-woman who had already been so very vulnerable, even before the only person in the world who loved her had been stolen from her by a drunk driver.
Sierra might have a little barbell through one eyebrow and a ring in one nostril, her hair might be dyed pitch-black, her clothes black and the dog collar she wore around her neck spiked, but she was a sweetheart. She was smart, and funny, and oddly innocent. Lucy had already thought that she would like nothing better than to have a daughter like Sierra.
Which was probably why, that day, her mouth had opened and she heard herself say, with no forethought whatsoever, “Would you like to live with me?”
So now here they were. Although at twenty-eight she was too young to actually be a mother to a girl Sierra’s age, she’d gotten properly licensed as a foster home, and now she was Sierra’s family.
Which meant, of course, that there was no way she could let the girl go by herself to see this man who might or might not be her father. Clearly, stopping her wouldn’t fly. Look at all the effort she’d gone to finding him in the first place. And, face it, the chances were really good that he wouldn’t believe Sierra’s claim, even if he had given—or did the men sell?—sperm
