The DNA Test
I am 63 years old.
My two sisters, Linda and Susan, are 61 and 59.
We have been completely inseparable our entire lives.
We grew up in the same house in the Chicago suburbs, shared bedrooms, got married around the same time, had our children, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder holding hands when we buried our parents.
I never in a million years imagined that, at our age, we could uncover a secret so deeply horrifying that it would make us question absolutely everything we had ever known about our lives, our family, and our own identities.
It all started on a perfectly ordinary Sunday afternoon last October.
The three of us were sitting at a little café downtown, having lunch and splitting a bottle of Chardonnay, when Susan suddenly suggested taking a mail-in DNA test.
“Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out where our ancestors actually came from?” she said, laughing and pulling up the 23andMe website on her phone. “Maybe we’re Irish royalty. Or maybe we have some long-lost rich cousin somewhere.”
Linda immediately agreed, pulling out her credit card to split the cost of the kits.
I don’t know why, but the absolute second she mentioned it, a weird, heavy knot formed in the pit of my stomach.
It was an inexplicable sense of dread, a deep, primal warning bell ringing in my head.
But I didn’t want to ruin the fun or seem paranoid, so I forced a smile and agreed to do it.
Three weeks later, the results arrived in our email inboxes.
Susan was the very first one to call me.
The second I answered the phone, I knew something was terribly wrong.
Her voice was violently trembling, and she sounded like she was crying.
“Mary… are you sitting down?”
“What’s wrong? Is someone hurt?” I asked, immediately standing up from my couch.
“Something is wrong with our DNA results. Or… I don’t even know what to think. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What are you talking about, Susan? What does it say?”
She went completely silent for several seconds.
I could hear her ragged breathing through the receiver.
“The test says you’re not my sister.”
I let out a loud, relieved laugh.
“Oh, thank God, I thought someone died. Susan, that’s ridiculous. The laboratory must have just mixed up the barcode samples. We’ll call customer service on Monday and get them to run it again.”
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“Mary,” Susan sobbed, her voice breaking into a terrified whisper. “The test says you’re my mother.”
I nearly dropped my phone onto the hardwood floor.
