She asked whether the results would be shared with the person named.

The technician said no.

And Valerie Nkemdirim said, “Okay, good,” and rolled her sleeve down.

Part Eleven: My Mother-in-Law

Beatrice Voss is seventy-one and lives in Shaker Heights in a house she and her husband bought in 1981, and she has disliked me since 2011 for reasons she has never articulated and I have never been able to guess.

She came to my house on the eighth day with a dish.

She did that perhaps six times a year and it was never about food.