A Flight Delay Stranded Me at O’Hare, Where I Found the Ex Who Vanished Six Years Ago Asleep Against a Wall With Two Little Boys Who Had My Eyes — Then My Mother Appeared With a Lawyer and a Folder, and Inside It Was a Letter Renouncing My Own Children, Signed With a Signature I Never Wrote

I did not blame her.

Chapter 14 — 99.99 Percent

Five days later the result came.

Probability of paternity: 99.99 percent.

I read it alone at my desk, and I sat in silence for ten minutes, and then I locked my office door and wept for the first time since my father’s funeral.

Not for the number on the page — I had known, from the moment I saw the notch in Micah’s eyebrow, what the number would be.

I wept for five birthdays.