She had been standing halfway up them the entire time.
“Did she really switch Grandma’s DNA?”
I looked at my daughter and hated that there was no version of the answer that made sense to a sixteen-year-old.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I sat down on the bottom stair.
“Because sometimes people convince themselves that ending uncertainty is the same thing as telling the truth.”
Sophie frowned. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“No.”
“It shouldn’t.”
Detective Allison Crane arrived forty minutes later.
She watched the entire doorbell recording twice without interrupting. The first time, she wrote notes. The second, she simply listened.
When Gloria admitted changing the sample, Crane paused the video.
“That is more specific than anything we had before.”
“Can you arrest her?” Laura asked.
Crane did not answer quickly.
“The sample change occurred in 2007. What criminal statutes apply, whether any limitation period has expired, and whether this conduct qualifies as evidence tampering under the laws in effect at the time are questions for the prosecutor. I’m not going to guess.”
“What about the mailbox?”
“That is current. So is the attempted interference with registered mail. Postal Inspector Grant is handling the federal side.”
I looked through the front window toward Gloria’s dark house.
“What happens now?”
Crane closed her notebook.
“Now I ask you not to talk to her again without calling me first.”
“She lives twenty feet away.”
“I know.”
“She can walk over whenever she wants.”
“Then don’t let her in.”
Crane stood.
“And Nathan?”
“Yes?”
“Do not start investigating her yourself.”
I almost laughed.
“I’m a history teacher.”
She gave me a look.
“Exactly. You people see an archive and forget you have families.”
Laura smiled despite everything.
I did not.
Because by then I already knew I was going to look.
I just did not know how much there was to find.
The first new piece did not come from Gloria.
It came from Aunt Carol.
She called the following morning before seven.
“I’ve been thinking all night,” she said.
“So have I.”
“There’s something I didn’t tell you.”
I sat up in bed.
Laura opened her eyes beside me.
“What?”
“When your grandmother died, I took three boxes from her attic. Family papers. Old cards. Tax stuff. I never sorted most of it.”
“Okay.”
“There was a box with Samuel’s name on it.”
I swung my feet to the floor.
“Do you still have it?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“I moved twice.”
“Carol.”
“I’m looking.”
I heard drawers opening on her end of the call.
Then a pause.
“Nathan, there was something else.”
“What?”
“After the quarry remains were identified, your mother wanted to throw that box away.”
I stood.
“Why?”
“She said keeping it felt like refusing to accept he was dead.”
“But you kept it.”
“I took it without telling her.”
I closed my eyes.
“Thank God.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I don’t know what’s in it.”
She found the box that afternoon.