But Dexter did not know everything.

He did not know about the burnt page.

Three weeks earlier, just before he handed me the divorce papers and locked me out of the accounts, I had been packing a box of his old tax files, and I found a half-burnt folder shoved into the ashes of his study fireplace.

My foster-care instincts — the ones that always whispered check the exits, read the fine print — told me to look closer.

It was a genetic sequencing report.

It had my name on it.