Judge Hargrove read the first page twice, then the second, and the only sound in the courtroom was paper turning. Delphine whispered that the test was wrong, that labs make mistakes, but he asked her to stand and answer one question under oath. Who was Theo’s father? She looked at me, then at the floor, and her voice came out small. It was Gideon, my younger brother, one winter eight years ago. The smirk she had worn for nine months had simply gone. “Court is recessed,” the judge said, and the gavel came down once.
In the hallway, her attorney shuffled away with his expensive pen still capped, and I sat alone on a wooden bench holding the empty manila envelope. People assume a man like me tested the children out of cruelty. I did it because of a question I could not put down. A year earlier, Theo had touched his chin in the mirror and asked why it looked like Uncle Gideon’s. I laughed, tucked him in, and lay awake until dawn. The results said Julian and Marigold were mine without a doubt. Theo was not. For forty-eight hours, I carried that fact like a stone in my pocket.
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