“Let me get you another one,” Chloe said, going back to the fridge. This time, she cracked the can open and held it out to Miles. He reached for it tentatively, and once he had his hand firmly around it, he nodded and Chloe let go.
He took a sip.
“This is why I want you to take a test.”
Chloe, trying to make light of what had just happened, said, “Written or oral?”
Miles sighed. “We talked about this. A genetic sample. You don’t even have to go anywhere. They’ll come to the house, it’ll take two seconds.”
“I’ve done that. When I sent in my DNA sample to WhatsMyStory I had to spit into a tube.”
“But they weren’t necessarily looking for—look, if we compare your sample to mine, there are certain genetic markers that’ll show whether you’ll develop what I’ve got, at some point in the future.”
“Who really needs to know this the most?” she asked. “Me, or you? Why do I even need this information right now, especially if there’s not a damn thing I can do with it? I think this is about you. If I test positive, then—wait. Is positive if you have it, or is positive if you don’t have it, because that kind of news would be positive?”
“Positive is if you have it.”
“Okay, so if I test negative, then you don’t have to feel all guilty that you’ve passed something on to me. Is that what this is about?”
Miles looked down.
“We all got to die from something, right? So I take this test, we get the result, and we find out, hey, good news, no signs of whatever it is, but guess what? I’ve got some rare kind of cancer. Something you weren’t even looking for. And then I got that shit to worry about for who knows how many years when if I didn’t know I’d be a lot happier. You following me?”
“Yes,” Miles said. “I do. But—”
“How will I be better off knowing?”
“You could … prepare.”
“Prepare,” she said, nodding. “Okay, let’s say, twenty years ago, you knew what was going to happen to you. What would you have done differently?”
He had to think about that. “I’m not sure. I think I would have taken things a little more seriously. I wouldn’t have wasted my time.”
“How did you waste your time?”
God, she could be infuriating, he thought. “I would have applied myself more.”
“So you could get a house like this a couple of years sooner? Would that have made you happy? And didn’t we already have the happy discussion? You know what? There’s a lot to be said for wasting time. You can’t spend your whole life on a treadmill. Sometimes you have to jump off and go sit on the beach. Sometimes you have to pick up a good book and sit in a hammock and fall asleep. And don’t forget getting actually wasted. I’m something of an expert on that.”
Miles sighed. “How’d you get to be so goddamn wise so young?”
“Maybe I’m not all that wise, I just look that way compared to you.”
Miles glared at her.
“Please don’t tell me that’s no way to talk to my father,” Chloe said.
Miles turned away, exhausted. Chloe, sensing it was time to offer a concession, said, “What about this? I’ll do your dumb test, but I don’t want to know the result. You can know it, and whatever it is, whatever it finds I’m going to die from, you can keep that to yourself because I don’t need to know. That a deal?”
Miles thought about that. He said, “Deal.” Chloe extended a hand and they shook on it. “I’ll set it up. We can get it done tomorrow.”
“How long for the results?”
“I have connections with a private lab that can expedite things. Maybe even the same day.”
Chloe nodded cynically. “With enough money, you can get whatever you want as fast as you want it.”
“Pretty much.”
“Does that apply to pizza, too? Because I’m so hungry I could eat a bucket of deep-fried beaks.”
“I thought you were a taco person.”
Forty minutes later they had a large pizza delivered to the door. Double cheese, pepperoni, black olives, green peppers. Chloe found two plates, put three slices on each of them, and set everything down on a coffee table in the media room. She went back into the kitchen for two more cans of beer.
Miles dimmed the lights before they got comfortable on the enormous black leather sectional. Chloe, sitting to his right, reached for the remote and said, “I’ve never seen anything on a screen this big, except in a theater.”
She hit some buttons and a streaming service filled the screen with movie thumbnails.
“Pick anything you want,” Miles said, biting into his first slice.
Chloe, with one hand holding a slice and the other wielding the remote, wandered through a screen filled with selections. “Seen it, seen it, seen it, liked it, don’t want to see it, saw it and hated it, didn’t see it—oh, what about this?”
“Little Women?”
“Yeah. Did you see it?”
“No,” Miles said.
“Because you thought it would be a stupid chick flick?”
“No. I just didn’t get to it.”
“You should see it. I’ve watched it twice.”
“Fine. I’ll watch it one day.”
“No, you should see it now.”
“I’m pretty beat, but go ahead.”
Chloe hit the button to download the movie. She settled back into the cushions, holding the plate up close to her chin so she wouldn’t drop crust crumbs or tomato sauce on herself. She downed two of the three slices, put the plate back on the table, and worked on her beer.
“My God, it’s so clear you can see right up Meryl Streep’s nose,” Chloe said.
About half an hour into the movie, Miles said, “This is really good.”
Chloe said nothing.
As Miles turned to see why she’d not responded, her head slowly drifted toward him until it came to rest on his shoulder. He carefully pried the half-empty beer can from her fingers, set it on the wide leather arm of the couch, then took the remote from Chloe’s lap and muted the movie.
He listened to her soft, sleepy breathing, felt the warmth of her next to him.
When he’d made the decision to go looking for his biological children, it had been because he believed it to be the right thing to do. He felt he owed them something—a future. Accepting that his own was limited, it felt appropriate to make a better one for those he was leaving behind.
What he hadn’t anticipated was this. That he would forge a connection.
That he would find someone he could very possibly care about.
A daughter.
And there were others out there. Not as many as he’d originally come to believe, but there were others. Three unaccounted for—Todd Cox and Katie Gleave and Jason Hamlin—but, so far, according to Dorian, none of the others on his list—Nina Allman, Colin Neaseman, Barbara Redmond, Travis Roben, Dixon Hawley—had met with misadventure.
That said, he felt an urgency to find them. But at least, for now, he’d found one.
He rested his head against Chloe’s and, despite all the turmoil of the last couple of weeks, felt, at least in this moment, a sense of contentment. No, it was more than that. It was a sense of closeness.
As he allowed his eyelids to shut, as he permitted himself to let go and fall into a much-needed sleep, a thought came to him:
This is good.
And, even more incredibly:
I’m happy.
Thirty-Seven
Scottsdale, AZ
Dixon Hawley turned out to be, as the saying goes, a piece of cake.
Rhys and Kendra followed him after he finished closing up the art gallery where he worked late one evening. Dixon didn’t have a car, and he lived close enough to his job that he walked to and from work. He did not, like many his age, live at home with his parents, but in a small apartment complex. Yes, there would be some cleaning involved, as any attempt to set his residence on fire was going to be
met with limited success. The building was equipped with automatic sprinklers and only a couple of blocks from the closest fire station.
But for the most part, everything was going their way on this one.
To reach the entrance to his apartment building, Dixon had to walk down a narrow, dimly lit passageway lined with vines and bushes. At one end was the street; in the middle, the entrance to the building; and at the other end, the parking lot.
He was almost to the door, had the key in his hand, when Kendra, who was near the end by the parking lot, called out to him.
“Excuse me?”
Dixon stopped, looked, and said, “Yes?”
“Do you live here?”
“Yeah?”
“Okay, so, I’m visiting, and I was backing out, and I hit someone’s car and I wonder if you know whose it is.”
“Won’t be mine,” he said. “I don’t have a car.”
“If you know whose it is, I can see if I can find them in the building, give them my name and number.”
Dixon smiled. How often did you meet people that honest?
So he tucked his key back into his pocket and walked to the end of the passageway, where Rhys was hiding behind a bush with a landscape rock in his hand, which he brought crashing down on poor Dixon Hawley’s head.
They quickly bundled him into a body bag and then into the back of their rented van, where Rhys whomped Dixon one more time on the head, through the bag, just to be sure. They closed and locked the van and then, with Hawley’s key, let themselves into the building, bringing along several empty garbage bags and cleaning materials, including, of course, the bleach.
Aware that the building had security cameras, they both wore ball caps with large visors and kept their heads down as they made their way.
“Oh, I love this guy,” Kendra said upon entering the young man’s second-floor apartment. “He’s a neat freak.”
It was true. The unit was small but immaculate. The stainless steel kitchen sink was empty, and glistening. The dishwasher was empty, all the dishes and glasses put away. The bathroom, even before they’d broken out the cleaning kit, smelled of Lysol. A single toothbrush stood propped up in a crystal clear glass. Not that they still didn’t have their work cut out for them. Bagging the man’s clothes, his bedding, toiletries. Hairs removed from bathroom drains, then drain cleaner poured in for good measure. Surfaces Dixon was most likely to have touched were wiped down with bleach. Kendra ran through with a vacuum, emptied its contents into the garbage bag. And even though the glasses and dishes were clean, Dixon would have touched them when he emptied the dishwasher, so Rhys put them all back into the machine and set it to run.
What they were doing, of course, was not foolproof. Their employer had told them to do the best they could, and that was what they set out to do.
This time they remembered to make sure they had Dixon’s phone—it was with him, in his pocket, in the body bag out in the van. And they bagged the laptop that was sitting on the coffee table in the living room, even the remotes lined up in front of the TV.
You did what you could.
The apartment had a small balcony that overlooked the parking area, so when they were done, Rhys went outside and collected the garbage bags as Kendra dumped them over the railing.
Then all that was left was to drive out in the desert, find a nice, secluded spot away from the main road, bring out the body bag, soak it with unleaded, and put a match to it.
The following morning, they were on a plane headed for Fort Wayne.
Now, standing in the bowling alley, they assessed the situation.
They’d been following Travis Roben around for the better part of a day and had concluded this one was going to be more difficult than Dixon Hawley. The young man lived at home with his parents—always more problematic when there were other people on the scene—and when he wasn’t at home he was in the company of this blond chick.
This was looking more and more like a collateral damage situation. To get to Roben, they were going to have to risk exposing themselves to the girl. So they might have to take her out, too. At least, where she was concerned, there was not the added business of cleanup. So what if her body was found? So what if someone got her toothbrush or extricated some hairs from her shower drain? Their client was not concerned about any DNA test on her. They had concluded, on the flight to Phoenix, that the mandated cleanups were to erase DNA evidence, although they still had no idea why that mattered.
Kendra said, “She’s gonna do him.”
Rhys was skeptical. “What are you talking about? You got some sort of sixth sense? You a student of body language?”
“I can read lips,” she said. “She just asked him if he wanted to do it. I can’t tell you what he said because his back’s to me.”
“I can tell you what he said. He said yes.”
“Oh. Do you have some sort of sixth sense? Are you a student of body language?”
“No. But there isn’t a guy on the planet who’d say no to her.”
“You like her?”
“She’s cute. A little young for me, but if I was twenty again? It’s not rocket science. Look at him. Ever since she asked him, he looks like he’s got the fidgets.” He smiled. “I think he’s new at this.”
Kendra leaned up against the wall, crossed her arms. “They’ll have to go somewhere. Somewhere private. Could present an opportunity.”
Rhys nodded thoughtfully. “But a short one. Got a feeling this guy’s gonna come before he’s even got his pants off.”
Thirty-Eight
New Haven, CT
Around one in the morning Chloe, her head still tucked into Miles’s shoulder, stirred, waking him. They struggled off the couch, leaving their plates of pizza crusts on the coffee table. Miles showed Chloe to a guest room, where she flopped down onto the bed without even turning back the covers, and Miles went off to his own bedroom.
He was up shortly after six, having slept fitfully in his own bed. He’d gotten more of a rest when they’d fallen asleep on the couch. He kept asking himself one question: Who knew the names?
Dorian and Heather.
His brother, Gilbert, although he had shown him a printout of the names for only a second.
There was the woman at the ReproGold Clinic who had provided the names of the women who’d been artificially inseminated with Miles’s donation.
There was Dr. Gold himself.
Maybe Gold was worth visiting again. Go back to the source, except this time don’t settle for noncooperation. Lay it out for him, if possible without exposing his assistant as the source of the information. Miles might be able to bluff his way through that part, persuade Gold he’d made some headway through the services of WhatsMyStory. Or, given his own background, maybe Miles could persuade him he’d hacked into some database somewhere to get the information.
The other matter weighing heavily on Miles was the need to get in touch with the rest of his biological children. If there really was a chance they were in danger, he needed to alert them. But as of today, as of right now, what would he tell them?
It was enough of a shock to have someone walk up to you and announce he was your father. Even more of a shock to then be told that one day you might come down with a crippling disease. Now, on top of all that, imagine adding, Oh, and by the way, something really, really terrible might be about to happen to you.
Jesus.
Having stared at the ceiling long enough, he got up, wandering into the kitchen at 6:15 A.M. He dropped a pod into his Nespresso, and while he drank his coffee, he made yet another list—a mental one—of what needed to happen today.
Miles got out his phone and texted Dorian.
COME TO THE HOUSE INSTEAD OF OFFICE. ASAP.
He hit Send.
Before he could put the phone back down on the countertop, he saw the three dancing dots indicating that Dorian was already getting back to him.
NEARLY TO YOUR PLACE.
It was barely light out an
d Dorian was coming to the house? He debated asking why, then figured he’d find out when Dorian arrived. He typed:
OK.
He walked down the hall to the guest room. The door was open a crack and he peeked inside. At some point during the night, Chloe had crawled under the covers. She was asleep, her hair splayed out across the pillow. Miles watched her for several seconds before gently and noiselessly closing the door.
When he got back to the kitchen, he saw a set of headlights coming up the driveway. Dorian’s Prius. He went to the door so she wouldn’t have to ring the bell and possibly wake Chloe.
“Hey,” Miles said as Dorian got out of the car and approached. “And here I was worried my text would wake you.”
“I’m your personal 911,” Dorian said.
Dorian came into the house and accepted Miles’s offer of a coffee.
“If you were already headed here, you must have news.”
“Well, you texted at the crack of dawn, so I’m guessing you’ve got something urgent on your mind, too. You go first.”
“Can we get same-day test results?” he asked.
“What kind?”
Miles tipped his head toward the back of the house. “Genetic. I have a guest. Chloe Swanson.”
“First on the list,” Dorian said, and smiled. “How’s that going?”
Miles took a moment. “Good, I think.” He paused, appeared on the verge of being misty-eyed. “I like her. She’s her own person. Doesn’t take any shit. Single-minded. Smart.”
Dorian nodded. “Like my mom used to say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“I’ve been feeling pretty stressed.”
“Who wouldn’t be? This is a crazy situation.”
“It’s not just that. It’s the Huntington’s. It’s clouding my brain at times. And everything that’s happened in the last few days, it’s like it’s accelerating some of the symptoms. Short-tempered, frustrated, unable to concentrate. Not to mention that I feel like I’m wobbling around all over the place. I’m feeling this sense of urgency. That we need to find these people, that Chloe needs to get tested.”
Find You First Page 23