No. You? No. The technician explained the process.
Cheek swabs. Identity documents. Chain of custody. Results in three to five business days.
David signed forms with hands that did not shake until the last page. Connor signed for himself because he was eighteen. That detail mattered to him. For the first time in the whole disaster, there was something adults could not authorize without him.
After the samples were taken, Connor asked the technician, “If he is my biological father, the result is basically conclusive?” “Yes.” “And if he is not?” “The report will exclude him.”
Connor nodded as if science, at least, knew how to speak without protecting anyone. They waited four days. Those four days stretched longer than the previous nineteen years because everyone now knew uncertainty had an expiration date. Megan stayed home from school Monday and returned Tuesday only because final exams were approaching.
Connor went to school but ate lunch in the library to avoid questions about why he and Megan had not appeared at prom after buying tickets. By Wednesday, rumors existed anyway. Teenagers are efficient archivists of social rupture. Megan told one friend the truth.
By Thursday, six people knew some version of it. Connor confronted her after school by text, furious. Megan apologized. “I needed one person who knew why I feel insane,” she wrote.
Connor waited an hour before replying. “I get it. I just hate that my whole body is gossip now.” That sentence haunted Megan.