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He still held her hand, didn’t meet her eyes. She waited for him to answer and when he didn’t she pressed.
“What did itsay, Mickey?” Sometimes she called him that, in their most intimate moments. He hated it when his family called him that, but he liked it from Liza.
He shook his head. “It was weird. I’ve been doing some research.”
“What kind of research?”
Her head was pounding, but the pain suddenly took a back seat to her worry for him. He’d asked for the full suite of information from family history, medical data, other potential relatives out there looking for connections.
“It’s just that, you know, how my dad is from Italy—like his whole lineage is pure Italian.”
“Right...”
“According to this test, I’m not Italian. Like, not at all. Zero percent.”
“Oh,” she said, relieved. “It could be a mistake, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought at first. But this is not the first time I’ve taken one of these. I took one a couple of years ago when a buddy of my mine was investing big in this technology. It was a different company, the science was still evolving, so when the results were not what I expected I didn’t really think anything of it.”
“Did you talk to your parents?”
He laughed. “I tried after the first time. But—you know Mom—it didn’t really go that well. They acted like I was trying to hurt them or something. I just dropped it. She said something weird—” He did his best Sophia impression, complete with fluttering eyelids and a hand at his throat. “‘Family is not about biology, Michael, it’s about actions.’”
“Okay,” said Liza.
“That was a while ago,” he said. “I kind of forgot about it. Or buried it, or whatever. And then the Origins test at Christmas opened up the issue for me again.”
She put a hand on the worried furrows in his brow. His head felt warm to the touch.
“What about Hannah’s results?”
“I haven’t asked,” he rolled on his back and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t even know if she did it. I guess I don’t really want to know. I thought maybe we’d have time to talk this weekend.”
That was classic Mako—ignore, deflect, bury until you couldn’t.
“Do you think that’s true?” he asked. “That family is about actions, not just about biology.”
She considered it. “I think it’s true in a way. I mean, if you think about it, all family is about choice. You choose who you love; you choose to have children from that love. You choose to be a good parent, take care of your children. Youcouldbe biologically related but not really a family. You can be family—like spouses—but not be biologically related.”
He nodded, seemed about to say something else, when Cricket’s laughter rang up from downstairs.
“I should get back to the table.”
He shifted away, but she reached for him, pulling him back.
“Mako.”
The darkness had left him. He was just Mako again, bright and looking for a good time. “It’s probably nothing. I shouldn’t have brought this up now. We’ll talk it all through later.”
“Are yousure?”
“Totally,” he said, kissing her head. “You just try to feel better.”
“Okay,” she said. She was just relieved it wasn’t something like he had the genetic coding for some disease or disorder. Lots of people were wrong about their heritage, weren’t they? And how reliable even were these tests?
Then he was gone; she heard him thundering down the stairs. And she was alone in the dark, with the pain in her head that was getting worse instead of better.
Now she heard him laughing downstairs.
