There is a grim justice in that, though it frightened me at the time rather than pleasing me.

Christopher had reached into our lives looking for something to use against us, expecting to pull out proof that I was a schemer and the child a stranger, ammunition for a clean and quiet removal.

Instead his own weapon had turned in his hand.

The very test meant to sever any connection between Raymond and my son had revealed a connection deeper than any of us could have guessed, and in doing so had conjured, out of nowhere, the two people most capable of destroying everything Christopher had spent years plotting to inherit.

He had gone looking for a knife and found a bomb, and he had found it with his own hands, and now he had to decide what to do about a truth he had never wanted to know.