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“Back then, donors were promised complete anonymity,” wrote one half brother William, who’d declined an in-person meeting or even a phone call. “They never expected anyone to come looking. Maybe it’s better that way. I love the people who raised me. I have a good life. Might just leave well enough alone.”
Well, good for you, bro.
Cat opened one of the files in front of her. “On DNA Detectives, one of our half siblings—Bethany in Connecticut—had this woman pop up in her relatives group as a twenty-five percent match. I have her, too. Do you?”
She turned the page out toward him. There was no thumbnail photo just an androgynous white figure on a gray frame. Marta Bennett. The name rang a bell.
“I think so. Yeah, maybe.” He didn’t carry his files around with him.
“It looks like she’s a close relative but she’s much older. So maybe an aunt?”
“Our father’s sister?”
“Maybe,” said Cat. “She took the Origins test, checked the box to be connected. But she hasn’t answered anyone’s messages on the site. A couple of people have tried in the past to reach out to her, sent friend requests on Facebook. But she didn’t respond.”
“Maybe she changed her mind about wanting to connect. Maybe she was surprised by what she found.”
That happened a lot, he’d gleaned from his research. Some people wish they’d never sent in the kit. They thought they were one thing, then discovered they were something else altogether. What they learned about themselves and their family they couldn’t unlearn.
“Well, I did some digging around and I found a Marta Bennet living up in the Bronx, in Riverdale. I went up there.”
He found this surprising. The woman sitting across from him, this found sister, had silken dark hair much like his, the same searing intensity to her gaze that Piper always commented on in Henry.Dial it back, honey. You make people nervous.The same high cheekbones, long nose. Cat’s features were puzzle pieces that fit with his; it was comforting in a strange way, to be of a piece with another person. But there was something about her that unsettled Henry. A boldness, a kind of edgy determination.
“You did? You went to see her?”
“Yeah,” said Cat. She took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. “I basically stalked her. Waited around her apartment building, looking for a woman who maybe looked a little like me.”
The bartender came and brought another round, a fresh tea, another bourbon, a vodka soda for Cat though they hadn’t ordered.
“On the house,” he said, giving Cat a smile. The bartender was, as Henry predicted, thickly muscled, bearded, with full sleeves of tattoos. A type.
“Thanks, Max,” she said. “You’re the best.”
“Regular here?” asked Henry after the other man was back behind the bar.
“Max and I are—friends. I met him actually at a Donor Sibling conference.”
“He’s not—?”
“Related to us? No,” she said. “But his father was a sperm donor. They’ve met; not a love connection. Sometimes the biology is there but the chemistry isn’t, right? Anyway, there are a lot of us, looking for answers.”
He was getting that. Maybe when it came to family, there were more questions than answers for some people. Maybe some people had to live with that.
“So, you were stalking Marta. Did you connect?”
Cat took a breath, shook her head.
“She wouldn’t talk to me. I approached her when she was coming home from work one night. I introduced myself politely, asked if she would have a coffee with me, answer some questions.”
“But she refused?”
Something flashed across Cat’s face—anger, frustration. But it passed quickly and left the shape of sadness around her eyes.
“She more than refused. She looked—terrified. She said she made a horrible mistake, that she never should have taken the test. And if I knew what was good for me I would stop looking for my father.”
Henry tried to imagine it. A gray street in the Bronx, Cat approaching a stranger on the sidewalk, blocking her way home. He wouldn’t have done that; wouldn’t have had the nerve.
“Huh,” said Henry. “What does that mean?”
