The DNA profiles obtained from the tested parties were compared at multiple genetic loci. Deon Rodgers cannot be excluded as the biological father of Amara—.
Combined Paternity Index (CPI): 8,942,731 to 1
Probability of Paternity: 99.9999%
CONCLUSION
Based on the genetic markers analyzed, the probability of paternity indicates that Deon Rodgers is the biological father of Amara.
TESTED PARTIES
The papers fell from her hands and dropped to her side.
She stood there and didn’t say anything and the silence in that living room was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life.
Then she held out her hand.
“Give me your phone.”
“Simone, why? I’ve never cheat on you I swear. I just found out about this baby not even a month ago, and it was before you.”
“Give me your phone Gutta.”
I unlocked it and put it in her hand and she went straight to my photos without hesitation and scrolled. I knew the exact second she found it because she stopped completely. She turned the phone around and showed me the picture of Amara on the swings at Riverside Park.
“Is this her?”
I didn’t answer.
“IS THIS THE BABY?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the picture for a long moment. Then she looked at me with the saddest expression that damn near broke me.
“I saw this picture the other day when I used your phone to play a game,” she said quiet. “And I told myself I was being paranoid. I told myself it was somebody else’s kid. A cousin. A friend’s baby. Something.” She set the phone down on the couch arm. “But that baby looks just like you and I already knew it in my spirit, I just didn’t want to say it out loud because saying it out loud made it real.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Who is the mother?”
“Somebody I dealt with before you and I were ever together. One night, that’s all it was. I never knew a baby came from it. I didn’t know that little girl existed until the day she bumped into me in the grocery store when we were shopping together.” I took a step toward her. “I swear to you on everything I love that I did not know.”
“The grocery store?” She looked at me.
“When we were at the grocery store together weeks ago and you said that little girl looked just like me that it was scary. I didn’t know she existed til that day. Remember that next morning, I jumped up out of my sleep paranoid, and wouldn’t tell you what was wrong.”
“Yes. I remember all of that. That’s what you were hiding?”
“Yeah, that’s part of it. Hell, the biggest part of it. I promise I was going to tell you as soon as I knew for sure.”
“That’s what that text was about. Somebody sending me that message telling me you had a secret.”
I didn’t say anything.
She let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t quite a cry either. She pressed both hands over her face and stood there.
“You laid next to me every night for weeks knowing this,” she said through her hands. “You let me talk about our future. You let me start the process of purchasing a house with you. You let me get excited about what we were building and you knew the whole time.”
“I was trying to find the right way to tell you—”
“There is no right way Gutta.” She dropped her hands and her face was wet and she wasn’t trying to do anything about it. “There is no version of this that has a right way. You should have told me the day you found out. The same night. You should have come home and sat me down and told me the truth and let me decide what I wanted to do with it. Instead you kept it and kept it and covered it up. and let me keep falling deeper into somethingthat was built on a lie. You forced me to stay here when I wanted to go home and the whole time you’ve been lying to me.”
