It hit the stucco wall hard enough to rattle the trash cans. Several people turned. Tyler came through it at a run, sixteen and all elbows, still wearing the gray hoodie he wore in every weather, his dark hair pushed up in front where he had dragged his hand through it. In one hand he held his phone. In the other he held a small white-and-green cardboard box, torn open along one side, its flap hanging like a broken wing. He was breathing hard, as if he had run the whole way from the front of the house, or from somewhere much farther.
He stopped at the edge of the patio and looked from his father to his mother and back again.
"Mom! Dad! I need both of you right now."
The spatula paused above the grill. Eric felt the hair lift on his forearms, not because of the words but because of the voice. It was not Tyler's normal voice, the bored half-mumble of a teenager asked to take out the trash. It was a younger voice. It reminded Eric of the night Tyler was seven and had woken up with a fever of a hundred and four and come down the hallway saying his name over and over.
"What happened?"
Tyler did not answer right away. He held up the torn box as if it explained itself. Up close Eric could see the logo printed across the cardboard, a stylized double helix twisting into the shape of a tree, and the words Discover Your Story in a cheerful font.
"I did one of those ancestry tests for class."
Across the patio, Melissa had turned all the way around. The laugh she had been sharing with Jenna was still on her face for one more second, and then it simply went, the way a light goes when someone flips a switch in another room. Her hand, holding a red plastic cup, lowered slowly to her side.