I was hiding February.

And I could have done that for another thirty years, and I was going to.”

I said: “You held onto a picture of him for eight years.

You looked at it.”

And my mother said, “Every so often.”

“Why?”

And she said the single worst sentence of the entire eight years, and I do not think she understood, while she was saying it, what she was telling me.

“Because he looks like your father.”

Part Ten: The Swab

I told her I did not want a test.