The results took six business days.

Carmen would not open it without me and I would not open it without her, and we ended up doing it in her car outside the lab like a couple of idiots, and she read it and handed it to me.

Combined paternity index in the millions.

Probability of paternity, 99.9999 percent.

Not excluded.

Included.

A three-page document with a notary stamp.

I did not feel anything I expected to feel.

I had expected joy, or grief, and what actually arrived, sitting in a Corolla in a parking lot, was something much duller and much heavier, which is the specific weight of a fact becoming a fact.

Carmen said, “Okay.”